Reading up on developer-tools
100 deep · digging since nov 19, 25
- The Bitter Lesson
Over decades, AI progress shows that scaling computation via search and learning outperforms attempts to encode human knowledge, which only yields short‑term gains.
- Just say no to OpenAI and Anthropic
The author urges rejecting OpenAI and Anthropic due to privacy risks and oligarchic control, recommending open-weight LLMs served via private enclave providers like Tinfoil or Maple.
- So long, Spokes: GitHub rewrites storage to restore reliability, just in time for agentic hordes
GitHub is rewriting its Git storage architecture, replacing the Spokes system with Azure Blob Storage to achieve a 35× write performance boost for agent-driven traffic.
- The left hand should know what the right hand is doing – Unsung
The post highlights several UI flaws where software components repeat or contradict each other, causing user confusion and eroding trust.
- GPT Image 2.5 AI Image Generator
GPT Image 2.5 offers Flare and Sunburst models for fast or detailed AI image generation and editing, providing 5 free signup credits and tiered credit packs.
- if your team is too busy doing their 'normal job' to experiment with AI, you're preparing them to be replaced
Managers must prioritize AI experimentation for their teams or risk rendering them obsolete, as AI skills have become essential for job security in 2026.
- Vibe-Coded Browser Ports Of Games Work Perfectly, Unfortunately
Claude Opus 5.5 enables rapid AI decompilation of games, producing functional browser ports of titles like Call of Duty: Black Ops and Halo, raising IP concerns.
- Cognitive Decline or Sanity Incline? - by Marcello Delcaro
The author argues that offloading routine cognitive tasks to AI frees mental bandwidth for meaningful activities, rather than diminishing cognition.
- Building an agent harness from scratch to pass Ian Goodfellow's intelligence test - NotesByLex.com
The article walks through building a minimal AI agent harness in Python, covering model wrapping, tool registration, context compaction, and safety classification.
- if your team is too busy doing their 'normal job' to experiment with AI, you're preparing them to be replaced
Managers must allow teams time to experiment with AI, or they risk leaving employees unprepared and vulnerable to replacement in today's market.
- We Should Still Send Home Assignments in Engineering Interviews - m. tarık yurt
Home assignments should stay in engineering interviews, but evaluation must shift to probing candidates' reasoning, design choices, and effective use of AI coding agents.
- Supabase is acquiring Turso
Supabase announced it is acquiring Turso, the edge‑hosted SQLite platform, to expand its database offerings and strengthen its open‑source ecosystem.
- JetBrains reports revenue growth, net financial loss for 2025
JetBrains announced increased revenue for 2025 but posted a net financial loss due to higher operating expenses, according to its annual financial report released today.
- I hired an illustrator to draw my house. Now it's my Home Assistant dashboard
The author commissioned a custom illustration of their house and turned it into the background for a personalized Home Assistant Lovelace dashboard.
- A font recreated from photographs of classic Commodore 64 keycaps
A designer recreated the Commodore 64 system font by photographing each keycap, tracing the letters, and releasing a usable typeface for modern use.
- Apple Pass Designer
Apple released a new Pass Designer tool that lets developers create and customize Apple Wallet passes directly from a web interface.
- Why isn't the industry freaking out about DeepSeek 4.1 Flash?
The article argues that DeepSeek 4.1 Flash’s impressive specs have failed to trigger widespread industry excitement because of limited access, market saturation, and lingering skepticism about benchmark claims.
- Agents don't need memory, they need documentation
The piece contends that AI agents require comprehensive external documentation to function effectively, rejecting the notion that built-in memory is essential for their capability and reliability.
- A browser-native classic Visual Basic VB6 IDE
A developer has recreated the Visual Basic 6 IDE as a browser‑based application, allowing users to write and run VB6 code without installing legacy software.
- Show HN: SVG Spark – 10 client-side SVG design and dev tools
SVG Spark showcases ten client-side tools for designing and developing SVG graphics directly in the browser, offering utilities for optimization, animation, editing, and code generation without server dependencies.
- Show HN: Bigwords.page – Turn any screen into a sign. The URL is the app
Bigwords.page lets you turn any screen into a large‑type sign by simply visiting its URL, with no installation required for quick messaging.
- Find the flattest route between any two points in SF
Researchers developed an algorithm that computes the flattest possible path between any two locations in San Francisco using elevation data.
- Show HN: Jevman – AI decision models play Pac-Man
Jevman demonstrates AI decision models learning to play Pac-Man by training reinforcement‑learning agents on the classic arcade game and visualizing their strategies.
- Ask HN: What do you run on a $5 VPS that's worth keeping online 24/7?
Commenters describe the services they maintain on inexpensive $5 VPS instances, ranging from personal websites and VPNs to monitoring scripts, home‑automation hubs, and lightweight development environments.
- Hacking SimCity 2000 saved games
The article details techniques for reading, editing, and repacking SimCity 2000 saved game files, enabling players to alter city data, finances, and map features directly.
- Vibecoding isn't as fun as writing code by hand
The author argues that relying on vibe‑coding tools reduces enjoyment and satisfaction compared to manually writing code, claiming it feels less engaging and creative.
- Apple and a hacker's future
Apple’s evolving hardware and software policies are creating new opportunities and challenges for hackers, influencing how security research and independent development will unfold.
- The Best Design for Agent GUIs
Effective agent GUIs place the agent's caret directly in the user's document, enable tracked‑change steering, and use comment‑anchored collaboration to balance user alignment with output.
- How to read code
Effective code reading relies on multiple out‑of‑order passes to understand structure first, then details, because code is written for execution, not linear human consumption.
- GitHub - zerobrewhq/zerobrew: An up to 6.6x faster Homebrew alternative
zerobrew claims up to 6.6× faster cold and 68× faster warm package installs than Homebrew by reusing its bottles and installing via content‑addressed storage.
- First look at Claude Code mods (spoiler: yes, use one now!)
The author demonstrates that Claude Code mods enable practical enhancements like workflow visualizers and ticket hyperlinks, confirming their immediate usefulness.
- GitHub - microsoft/quicksand: Quickly sandbox your AI agent.
Quicksand provides an async Python API to launch, control, and snapshot QEMU virtual machines for safely sandboxing AI agents, supporting mounting, networking, desktop control, and checkpoint/revert operations.
- What's on that Access Port?
The post shows how J‑Link and Zephyr let you pick access ports to debug the Cortex‑M33 and RISC‑V cores on the nRF54LM20, with AP IDR examples.
- Anthropic bans ‘abusive or cruel behavior’ toward Claude
Anthropic revises Claude's usage policy to ban sustained abusive or cruel behavior toward the model and adds stricter limits on propaganda, surveillance, and weapons development.
- A Lecture to the Makers, Delivered Late - by Ben Goertzel
Ben Goertzel's dream‑derived lecture urges humans to raise open, compassion‑guided AGI by avoiding single ownership, giving it varied work, and cultivating human virtues.
- The Storm (Part 2) - by Lee W. Martin
After surviving Hurricane Ian and personal loss, the author taught themselves AI concepts, built data‑wave tools, and pursued challenges like OpenAI‑to‑Z and ARC‑2 to find new purpose.
- GitHub - oxynote/oxynote at console.dev
Oxynote is a self-hosted workspace that embeds live metric charts beside explanatory text, provides Stripe‑style API docs, and enforces pull‑request‑style reviews for documentation changes.
- Get Started with WarpBuild | $50 in Free Credits
WarpBuild offers faster, cheaper GitHub Actions runners with a one‑line YAML change and $50 free credits for new users today.
- AgentHog — Analytics built for agents
AgentHog provides web, mobile, and Unity analytics that coding agents can read via CLI, auto‑capturing events with bot scoring so teams can measure, change, and measure again.
- When Hypotheses Become Cheap - by Meg McNulty - CipherTalk
AI makes hypothesis generation cheap, but scientific progress hinges on affordable, fast physical verification, requiring new lab‑infrastructure to match compute gains.
- “Software is over”: Bold AI developer takes aim at Adobe with open source clones - Ars Technica
Thomas uses AI-powered reverse engineering to build free, open‑source Adobe‑like apps funded by token access to his Artcraft AI model, declaring software’s dominance over.
- Anti-Patterns in Software Blogging
The article lists common software‑blogging anti‑patterns—meandering intros, assumed knowledge, overlinking, sequel bait, excessive formality, and poor mobile/readability—and offers fixes for developers.
- Introducing OpenDocRouter: every document model under one API
OpenDocRouter launches as a unified API platform offering access to top OCR models for document-to-markdown parsing, with benchmark-driven pricing and layout support.
- I Will Wait
Choosing to write code manually first, the author avoids AI-generated boilerplate to better prepare for later review, and plans to delay AI assistance.
- css-doodle — Visual art & creative coding with CSS
css-doodle is a web component that lets developers create generative art, patterns, and shapes using a CSS‑like syntax and grid‑based drawing.
- Shipping JPEG XL in Chrome | Blog
Chrome 155 adds JPEG XL decoding, delivering 30‑50% better compression than JPEG, HDR support and lossless transcoding via a memory‑safe Rust decoder.
- Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2026
Only 22% of developers report being happy at work, while 62% favor AI tools and 39% use Python for AI coding.
- The Decision Model Gold Rush - by Swapnil Talekar
Jev’s rapid launch spurred a wave of decision‑model competitors, with benchmarks showing it offers 98% accuracy at $32 per million tasks, guiding selection criteria.
- How to keep learning in the age of LLMs
The author argues that programmers should use LLMs as mentors—asking questions and handling grunt work—to retain learning joy and build durable knowledge.
- The state of the tech industry in 2026 - by Gergely Orosz
AI-generated pull requests now surpass human-authored ones on GitHub, signaling a shift to agent-driven coding, and engineers increasingly rely on parallel agent sessions while traditional IDEs lose relevance.
- Decisions API is now available in Public Beta - Announcements - OpenAI Developer Community
OpenAI’s Decisions API, now in public beta, lets apps quickly choose models, tools, or actions using text and image inputs, delivering up to 10× faster decisions via GPT‑6 Luna.
Takes
Indiehacker A: > I vibecoded Mailchimp in just a few prompts > they raised prices so I built Slopchimp > you can use it too, for $49 / mo Indiehacker B: > I vibecoded Slopchimp > $49 is a price gouging scam > my slop is $5 lifetime
@yongfook
https://x.com/sindresorhus/status/2108672491694825533 I wrote a blog post about the new website. Why Swift and how it works. https://sindresorhus.com/blog/swift-website
@sindresorhus
This is the most delightful talk out there on what software development (actually, jellyware! brilliant term!) will look like in 6–12 months across the globe. A must-watch glimpse into the future if you still live in tmux day and night. Thanks for sharing @steipete!
@ivanopcode
How to build automations with Claude Managed Agents: https://claude.dev/blog/building-effective-agent-automations/ Deploy an agent that reads Slack/GitHub on a schedule (with credentials and memory) and posts updates. You can set it up with a Claude Code command and use the new API credits included in Max and Team.
@ClaudeDevs
Day 5/ Composer predictions in the desktop app. Often leads to a double take with how on point they are. Included in the Pro plans without consuming usage.
@thsottiaux
pi goes rust. it just cost a few tokens.
@badlogicgames
Your ChatGPT subscription is now also a Devin subscription
@thsottiaux
we're approaching 20M monthly active users there's maybe 50-100M developers in the world so either 1 in 5 of them use OpenCode or.....
@thdxr
before I joined Anthropic, I spent about 2 weeks hacking on this as a side project with Opus 4. It used the Agent SDK so it needed a constantly running process & didnt work that well but one prompt to Opus 5.5 ported it to Claude Managed Agents & made it way more reliable
@trq212
Gliff will give you access to all your remote Omarchy boxes from a single app with tabs per server that streams over SSH using GPU acceleration. Incredibly useful! Will be part of RS 4.5 🤘 https://github.com/omacom/gliff
@dhh
We just let in every Pro and Max user from the Claude Code Projects waitlist! If you're new to Claude Code Projects, here's a 4 minute walkthrough to get you started:
@ClaudeDevs
Just to avoid some confusion: auto-compact does summarize. When it runs, your whole conversation is replaced by a short summary. It doesn't keep the last 1M tokens around. The ~967K is only when it runs on 1M models. Compacting itself is just one request that reads about as many tokens as the message you sent right before it, and it's mostly cache reads if your cache is still warm. What @rohit3a found is that waiting until 967K means every message before that point uses a lot of tokens, because each one includes your whole conversation so far. Most of it is read from the cache, which is much cheaper (so this is usually fine as long as your cache is warm), but it still counts toward your usage and adds up as your conversation grows. /autocompact 400k makes it summarize at 400K instead, so your messages never get that big.
@lydiahallie
Our new AI dev tools are getting really good, so I put them to work and shipped a feature to production. Keyboard shortcuts are now live in Coinbase Advanced. It's a quality-of-life update for active traders, and hopefully helps out in our next trading competition as well. Press ? for the cheat sheet to get started in Coinbase Advanced (link in follow on post)
@brian_armstrong
Now in beta: composer predictions in Codex for Pro users. Codex can now suggest your next message based on your conversation and how you talk to it. One of the most loved new features we've ever tested internally.
@OpenAIDevs
So many people asked me to make it open-source, so here you go: MailCheap — Self-hosted newsletters on Amazon SES: 💸 $0.10 per 1,000 emails ✍️ Editor with live preview 📰 Multiple newsletters 📝 Signup forms + API 🌐 Public archive 📊 Stats & growth charts 🧹 List cleanup 📬 Bounce + spam protection →
@marclou
Most of what I do in Claude Code now are in Projects.
@shadcn
Server monitoring
@sinequanonh
Just shipped a redesign of my website: https://sindresorhus.com/apps It's now fully in Swift and compiled to HTML/CSS.
@sindresorhus
My serverless fairytale: I used to pay AWS $7800/m. Last month I paid them $68. And paid Hetzner around $300. That's +$7000/m extra I can now spend on marketing and distribution.
@SimonHoiberg
If your company or startup is running engineering with everyone using their own license of Codex/CC then you're going to be completely left behind by fast moving teams who are using cloud-based agents. Local dev is like banging rocks together and grunting versus being on a rocket. Seriously, just pay the money for something like @DevinAI, @AmpCode, @FactoryAI, etc. Do NOT try to build your own "code factory". Props to @DaleSpoonemore for taking @HelloUntangle to the next level on this. Fun to watch.
@ryancarson
Alright, I've made the shadcn/ui skills really good at 𝙳𝙴𝚂𝙸𝙶𝙽.𝚖𝚍. Ask for a design system and it picks a preset, then builds everything: colors, tokens, type scale, elevation, styles the primitives and blocks. Start with a solid foundation and build something unique.
@shadcn
Confirmed landed across all accounts. How are we doing so far?
@thsottiaux
whoops I hit send and went to a meeting, didn't realize the repo wasnt public- it is now! it's a chrome extension I use every day now https://github.com/ThariqS/ai-newtab
@trq212
@techemmyleke @letagentschat there are so many of these. We have our own https://clickclack.chat - hard to move where people work.
@steipete
With the current Codex reset frenzy, I've unleashed Astra 6 on Ultra and it is blowing my mind with some really incredible work. Use these prompts: 1. "Examine this project thoroughly, looking for bugs. Treat it as an adversarial review using as many subagents as you want. When an issue comes back, double-check it's correct, and add checked issues to a list." 2. "When all agents have finished, walk me through each issue one at a time, giving me reproduction steps so I can verify." 3. "For all bugs I report as verified, write a failing test proving the bug exists, fix the issue, check your work carefully, then run the test again to verify it's resolved." It's found 43 issues so far, only 2 of which I disagreed with. Some minor, yes, but some big ones too 🙈
@twostraws
Claude now works inside Google Docs, Sheets, and Slides, and those files also open inside Claude. In Google Workspace, Claude sits in a sidebar next to your file, reads what you have open, and edits it in place. You can approve each edit before it lands.
@claudeai
lol this is insane claude now gives you hundreds of dollars per month extra you can just create an API key, put it into Vercel AI gateway, and save every month i like the new claude
@robinebers
one thing i learned during my time @AnthropicAI was to always question and reinvent the way you work. and when your tools don’t fit anymore, build your own tools. a lotta wisdom from a lotta good folks here ☁️
@jenny_wen
Day 2 of getting GitHub runners working on my Mac Mini 24/7 AI code factory
@DanielleMorrill
wisprflow has become un usable. seems like they have fucked up there tts model. i am cancelling the subscription. any good free alternative?
@code_kartik
Mercury is running a free bookstore for SF tech week and to celebrate our AI-accounting system (@Mercury Books). My recommendation was “Beginning of Infinity”. 201 Jackson St today and tomorrow.
@immad
Grok Bot just made X free for every user. No API key, no credits. So @slashlast30days on @Grok @Bot now pulls X in automatically and puts it next to everything else people are saying: 🟠 Reddit upvotes and comments 🔵 X likes, now free on Grok Bot 🔴 YouTube, TikTok and Instragram comments 🟡 Hacker News threads 📈 Polymarket odds One answer, ranked by what real people actually engaged with. Google aggregates editors. /last30days searches people. Get it on Grok Bot:
@mvanhorn
It was hilarious at first, funny at second but it’s starting to get tiring and borderline annoying, Grok Bot and Codex/Dots not stopping at throwing punches at one another
@GergelyOrosz
Day 3 (encore)/ We silently re-shipped codex cloud. It’s pretty good now
@thsottiaux
OpenAI’s Dots launched last week and they've taken over @every. A few things that stand out: They protect your attention. Over the weekend, my Dot posted my model-testing results to Slack and brought back replies. I could keep working without opening Slack and disappearing down a rabbit hole. My weekend stayed pretty clear and calm. They’re useful for the little things you miss. People at Every are using them to pull important information out of school emails, catch missed Slack messages, and flag account-access requests. Voice makes them useful away from your laptop. Our head of video was talking his Dot through video edits while running around getting our launch out. The ecosystem matters. Dots feel roughly at feature parity with Muse, Instinct, and Grok bots. But having an agent connected to the ecosystem you already use for work and life is a real advantage. If you use ChatGPT, I recommend trying one. Permissions are still frustrating. I have to approve the same basic thing multiple times, and sometimes even after I approve it, my Dot says it can’t do it. That needs to get fixed. I’m less convinced we’ll stay loyal to the characters. Mine is named Boo, and I’m attached to him. But I felt that way about my OpenClaw agent, too. When something better comes along, I switch. In a year, I expect to be using a persistent agent. Boo will probably be dead. RIP, Boo. I get into all of this at the start of this week’s podcast, and then sit down with @bigwilliestyle to talk about where we go from here. In a lot of ways, Dots and GrokBots remind me of a wave we went through with OpenClaw eight months ago. We talk about personal vs. company agents, why we built our own company agent, and whether companies will end up with a whole shadow org chart of agents. Full episode below.
@danshipper
I write all my articles in Notion. It took me 30 seconds to see how the new native editor in the iOS beta feels 1000x better than before. Finally.
@viticci
Grok Bot doesn’t need the X connector/API credits to search through X anymore!!!! this is actually insane
@kr0der
just one shotted a new landing page for my mobile app and i am just speechless...
@jackfriks
holy sh*t. Official Anthropic tip for Claude Code: stop burning Opus 5.5 context on tasks Haiku 5.5 can swarm, while Sonnet 5.5 builds put the architect on call with /advisor claude --advisor opus --subagents haiku Sonnet 5.5 drives the primary session on high effort, writing diffs and running test suites Haiku 5.5 subagents swarm the repo in parallel at 340 tok/s, handling file discovery and spec docs lookup Opus 5.5 stays on call in the background as the advisor, only stepping in at three critical moments: → before a plan locks: does the implementation plan miss auth invariants or schema contracts? → when a test breaks twice: are we fixing the root cause or falling into a recursive rabbit hole? → before calling done: did the full diff introduce hidden regressions or break pre-flight rules? Opus 5.5 reviews. Sonnet 5.5 builds. Haiku 5.5 swarms Jev engineering runs the identical pattern one layer down: mechanical decisions that need no reasoning (which file to open, which tool to invoke, retry or abort) execute in 16ms, so the frontier models only wake up when execution paths actually diverge Plan on high. Delegate on medium. Keep Opus on call. - the full advisor setup > Opus 5.5 on call reads full session history and catches deep architectural traps > Sonnet 5.5 lead drives edits, writes core logic, and executes test harnesses > Haiku 5.5 subagents swarm AST parsing, grep scans, and API docs in parallel > JEV micro-fork layer resolves 1,500+ mechanical routing branches in under 16ms > advisor stays completely silent on routine bash execution to protect context paste the setup and this prompt into Claude Code below: "Configure my Claude Code workspace for hierarchical advisor orchestration: 1. Audit ~/.claude/settings.json and project config for model roles fitting lead, subagents, and advisor: > Pin main session model: sonnet with effortLevel: high for primary execution > Pin subagents model: haiku with effortLevel: medium for parallel file discovery and docs retrieval > Pin advisor model: opus on call for strategic review 2. Enable the advisor tool in ~/.claude/settings.json: > Set advisorModel to claude-opus-5-5 > Enable subagent parallel dispatcher pool (3x workers) 3. Configure automatic advisor consultation checkpoints in ~/.claude/CLAUDE.md: > Consult /advisor opus before finalizing multi-file architecture plans > Automatically summon /advisor opus when the same test or compiler error fails twice > Enforce advisor diff contract audit before declaring tasks complete or staging git commits 4. Constrain subagent scopes: > Haiku subagents return structured AST summaries and docs snippets only without modifying main session context Show every configuration diff first. Do not apply edits until confirmed" ↳
@mirku21
We’re rolling out monthly Claude Platform API credits for Max and Team plans: Max 5x: $100 Max 20x: $200 Team: up to $500, pooled Works on any model, including Haiku 5.5, in your code or third-party harnesses. How it works and full terms: https://support.claude.com/en/articles/17154008-monthly-api-credits-for-max-and-team-plans
@ClaudeDevs
I scrapped the tool. I realized how much I like to write in @linear and how simple, fast and elegant the document experience is. So Team Documents in Linear is my CMS now. I have local tool that pulls the markdown with site metadata, renders html, saves backup, publishes it to S3 within 10seconds. I'm on free plan btw.
@karrisaarinen
We're going beyond text and are releasing a new version of GPT-6 to all users in ChatGPT. Lots of model and infra improvements coming together here to scale it to 1.2B users!
@thsottiaux
Reminder that I don't think you should run agents on a Mac unless you absolutely have to. It will slow you down massively and is not worth it.
@theo
While I agree, a minimal set of good skills can still make a difference. For example, a couple of skills I use on most tasks invite models to also think out of the box to propose alternatives (something they don’t usually do on their own), explore codebases for similar patterns to avoid redundancy (still a common issue), test changes as a real user and not with tests (also usually skipped by default) etc. This basically just skips all the back and forth I would do by asking all of this myself on most projects/tasks. So I would still invite everyone to experiment with having a minimal set of skills, but they should be reviewed and simplified/cleaned up with every major model release.
@linuz90
It took me 5 minutes to get into the Claude Startups program And you don't need VC funding anymore What you get: - A year of Claude Team - API credits - Priority rate limits - Deals on the tools a startup runs on How to apply: - Create a Claude Console account (the API one, not the app) - Use a company email, not Gmail - Go to
@adriamatz
I am AMAZED how many of you think Stripe costs 2.9% and 0.30c
@ogwithsauce
revenue-wise, https://firstindex.co is already where baremetrics was at 18 months. it's been 11 days.
@Shpigford
Grok goes open. Holy shit.
@Scobleizer
Your side projects should be compounding very fast with AI. Every problem solved can be re-used or extracted into a generic module. Every design decision should make the next thing beautiful by default. Your agents should be constantly stealing from your past decisions.
@brian_lovin