I had a stray idea that I should let all the local speech-to-text models battle it out over the same audio clip to figure out which ones to recommend and now, thanks to coding agents, I can just say it out loud and have it.
Two areas where Dunning-Kruger had me delusional in the past: cooking and FPS gaming.
What've you realized recently you actually were mid at then fixed it?
One of you should build a reeeaaaally good email service that's just the API. So IMAP but also something more fancy like Gmail's API or Fastmail's JMAP. Make it super fast, super reliable, sorta cheap.
Make it easy to build fun stuff without the hassle of running email servers.
Of all the psychoses I've taken part of, this current AI coding one sure is my favourite.
Never have I felt this unlocked, locked in, ambitious and unconstrained by time or skill. And even at 10x (or whatever) the output, I am never done.
Every time I get the thought "I've always wanted this app to do it like this" I can just dream it and build it. Prompt, prompt, prompt, Poof! (Literally.)
Especially for what they call bespoke software: Software just for one. There are many apps but this one is mine.
When turnaround is this fast, you barely have to justify the effort.
I've built my own email app. I use it for 99% of my email reading and writing. It does everything (just about) I need and exactly how I want it to. I can run through a full inbox faster than in any other app I've tried before. (Which weirdly acts as a justification to my whack-ass mind for ignoring my inbox for longer. Can't fix me, apparently.)
It has its rough edges, it's imperfect, it's unapologetically opinionated to my tastes. You can't have it.
It used to be that at least you would open source the work because that way the effort would pay itself back in clout somehow and, I don't know, nerd karma?
But now. Building an entire email app solely for myself isn't an absurd idea. It's already done.
What's that Spellbook.app you ask? Well, it's just the bespoke Markdown reader app I was dreaming of. Unapologetically opinionated. I use it all the time. You can't have it.
I haven't read the source code of either. Just, like, parts of it. I know how they work but not through strict code review.
The first leap of faith is to use codex --yolo and skip the permissions checks. Let the AI run like the wind.
The second is to stop reading the code.
The code doesn't matter. Sometimes – but honestly, most of the time, not. It's not there to be good code, it's there to do a good job.
And when there's only one user to take the L when it eventually wipes your entire harddrive: you – even more so.
I don't think everyone will be building their own bespoke software anytime soon. It's still not easy, it's just faster. Building is a skill but more so it's a personality trait.
This psychosis is the best thing to ever happen to my computer use.
Because I keep running into people in apparent disbelief that coding agents can do Real Programming, I decided to wear it loud and proud by creating a GitHub badge for all my projects that wouldn't have existed without coding agents as Certified Shovelware
– Certified Shovelware by Justin Searls
Here are some agent transcripts of apps and tools I've been building.
Mostly, you just use Codex and talk to it like you would to another human. No weird loops, crazy skill packs or MCP mega structures.
How blessed are we that Coke Zero doesn’t travel through the strait of Hormuz
The other day I used agents to convert a dollar field to a cents field. I’ve wanted to for a literal decade. But this is dangerous territory. You don’t want to 100x your users’ bills.
Using agents I felt safer than I ever would without.
Agents…
- Investigated the necessary changes and their consequences
- Confirmed that this would generally be a good idea – to standardize and to remove the risk if hitting float math troubles.
- Made the necessary changes to code and unit tests.
- Wrote the data and schema migrations.
- Did manual testing in Chrome.
- Watched the deploy.
- Ran spot and full diagnostic checks on db backups of before/after to verify.
Not only can I work faster, I can also be extra thorough, be my best developer self.
The best time ever for juniors
What if AI is the best thing ever to happen to junior devs?
When I was coming up what held me back was not knowing and having to find the right apis, googling for errors, wasting time on the wrong abstractions, missing blind spots. All of this can be done at 10x the speed with AI now.
To be useful (ie. get a job) practice unblocking yourself. Be like an AI agent++. The further you can go without needing help or guidance the more useful you are. Has to be in the right direction of course or close to. So also practice business sense, actually listening to your lead, understanding the company direction, dabble in design, SEO, marketing. Just enough of everything and don’t tell yourself anything is “not for you”.
You can be more than twice the speed of an anti-AI-maxxing senior dev at a fraction of the price. That’s a great bargain.
Maybe it’s the best time ever to be a junior?
I wish I could justify using only Amp. With Opus 4.5 it is incredible.
I have it set to buy tokens for the same price as a Codex/Claude subscription every month but it only lasts a fraction of that 😭
Sponsorship deal if I put your logo on my wedding suit maybe?
Sadly I married before I knew we had options like that.
"More and more I'm starting to believe every major issue we caused has a solution to it once we actually start to get close to it becoming a massive problem. Refreshing way to not be a doomer." (x.com/dannypostma)
My mind is also starting to shift towards this.
Both because of increased belief in human ingenuity and because of decreased belief in human ability to downgrade comfort expectations.
Degradable plastic, lab meat, carbon removal tech. It’ll work out. I hope it will. It has to.
Started a thing 5 years ago. Spent a few days, realized the scope made it unrealistic, walked away.
Coding agents have made it feel within reach.
In the evenings, on the side, I am making 𝐩𝐫𝐨𝐠𝐫𝐞𝐬𝐬.
The only bad thing about Sketch is how impossible it is to google for shit and not hit tons of generic “sketch” stuff.
New Aerospace 0.20 can print the current window’s layout mode. Means we can add icons to Sketchybar.
I wonder if, in this new agentic coding world, the old we can’t justify both iOS and Android apps is obsolete? What if you now make the one you prefer first, but faster with AI, then when demand is there, make the agent of the moment clone it to the other platform – or maybe 85% there – and you just bring home the details?
They call these feeds “For You” but it’s not for you. It’s for them.
Powerful stuff as always from Jack Conte, CEO of Patreon.
Some open questions of course – like, how would Patreon try and filter stuff if it had as much as say X or YouTube?
Also, ads are actually kind of great for funding internet distributed digital stuff.
They aren’t the enemy, they’re just ads.
The reality is that creators want as many eyeballs and earholes as possible. And only so many want to - or are able to - pay. Bless their hearts, they’re the best. But because of the scaling of digital media, you don’t actually need everyone to pay.
My take is Patreon (and my own 10er!) are super important, wonderful services that work great on their own or alongside the ad-bound platforms.
Planning and finishing the project becomes the biggest task.
You wrote 100,000 lines of whatever? Done in an afternoon.
You came up with an original idea, carefully managed scope, beat edge cases and presented it with a clear description in a tidy package?
How did you do that?!
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