I write to learn, and publish to share.
Technical tutorials, field notes on applied AI, and developer writing from a long stretch shipping production systems. Updated most weeks.
01 · EssayHow to Play Steam Link on Vision Pro While Watching TV
After weeks of frustration, I cracked zero-lag Steam Link streaming to Apple Vision Pro. Here's the exact setup that works — and all the wrong turns I took getting there.
02 · EssayMy AI Agent Has a Mechanic Agent
Hermes was producing shallow responses. Instead of debugging from the inside, I opened Claude Code, SSH'd into the EC2 instance, found the throttled context window, fixed it, and restarted the gateway. Hermes woke up improved — without knowing it happened.
03 · EssayWhat 179 WPM Is Actually Worth: The Real Economics of Voice Coding
I consistently hit 184 words per minute with WisprFlow. Here's what that actually means in terms of output, time saved, and what you can do with a brain that's no longer bottlenecked by typing speed.
04 · EssayWhat It Feels Like To Be a Neurodivergent Engineer (Interactive)
An interactive primer on the ADHD engineering brain — a 3D brain you can put through hyperfocus and crash, a simulator for what reading feels like under intrusive thoughts and notification overload, and the AI scaffolding I use to work around all of it.
05 · EssayI Shipped 9 Blog Posts in 48 Hours While Working Full-Time
Between a full-time job at WorkOS and solo-parenting two toddlers with zero screen time, I published 14,790 words across 9 posts in two days. 47 images, 12 PRs. The secret: chatops with two AI agents I drive in compressed windows.
06 · EssayThe RSI Developer's AI Survival Kit: Voice-First Coding in 2026
14 years of typing gave me RSI and crane neck. Now I ship code by voice while walking 5-8 miles a day. Here's the full voice-first stack: WisprFlow, Claude Code, and the tools that replaced my keyboard.
07 · EssayA Conference Workshop Playbook: What We Learned Teaching 200+ Engineers
Practical lessons from running hands-on technical workshops at AI Engineer World Fair SF, AI Engineering London, and beyond. What works, what doesn't, and why most conference workshops suck.
08 · EssayHow My AI Assistant Ships Blog Posts
My AI assistant Hermes writes MDX content, generates hero images, uploads to Bunny CDN, commits to git, opens pull requests, and merges — all from a Discord conversation.
09 · EssayNick Nisi Is One Talented Motherfucker
An appreciation post for my colleague and friend Nick Nisi — TypeScript wizard, conference organizer, and the best workshop partner I could ask for.
10 · EssayPhones Are the New Terminal
I gave a keynote about walking in the woods with AI. Then I stopped needing the laptop entirely. Now I direct AWS infrastructure and content agents from my phone on the trail.
11 · EssayOne Phone, Two Agents
I run two AI agents — Claude Code for infrastructure, Hermes for content — both controlled from my phone. Here's the split-brain architecture and why separation of concerns matters for AI agents too.
12 · EssayThe Webhook Bridge Pattern: How Claude Code Talks to a Remote AI Agent
Solving the 'silent files' problem: how I built an event-driven bridge between Claude Code on my Mac and the Hermes agent running on EC2, using SSM RunCommand, Tailscale, and HMAC-signed webhooks.
13 · EssayI Built an Always-On Hermes Agent on AWS in a Day, Mostly Async
How I moved my personal AI assistant to AWS with OpenTofu, Tailscale, and Discord — self-hosting Hermes Agent in the margins of a normal workday.
14 · EssayLive on the Scaling Devtools Podcast at AI Engineering London
I sat down with Jack Bridger on the Scaling Devtools podcast at AI Engineering London to talk about how WorkOS builds with AI coding agents, the patterns behind portable skills, and where developer tooling is heading.
15 · EssaySkills at Scale: Our Workshop at AI Engineering London
Nick Nisi and I ran an 80-minute hands-on workshop at AI Engineering London on building Claude Code skills that are portable, executable, and composable. We taught constraints over instructions, evidence over guesses, and measurement over vibes.
16 · EssayUntethered Productivity: My Talk at AI Engineering London
I gave a talk at AI Engineering London about staying healthy, creative, and shipping while working with AI coding agents. The core idea: the agents scale infinitely, but your nervous system doesn't. Here's the full recap.
17 · EssayClaude Code on Your Phone: How Remote Control Connects Your Terminal to iOS and Android
Claude Code's Remote Control feature lets you continue local terminal sessions from your phone. Here's how it works, what it can and can't do, and how it compares to Claude Code on the web.
18 · EssayThe List of People and Things That Have Failed to Kill Me
A running tally.
19 · EssayThe LLM Is Not My Friend (It's Something More Useful)
I talk to my AI assistant like a person. I give it access to everything. And no, I don't think it's sentient. Here's why that's the point.
20 · EssayHandwave: Talk to Your Claude Code Sessions From Your Watch
I built a watchOS app that lets me speak to any of my Claude Code sessions from my wrist. When you can't sit still, bring your AI with you.
21 · EssayExperiment: Using Native macOS Apps to Install AI Workflows for Teammates
Why I built a native Swift installer instead of writing another setup guide
22 · EssayThe Orchestrator Pattern: Orchestrating AI Agents Like a Mission Control Engineer
A single developer can now direct multiple agentic coding agents across maintenance tasks while simultaneously building features in Cursor. Here's how the Orchestrator Pattern changes software development.
23 · EssayTraining Claude to Compensate for My Neurological Patterns
How I'm systematically teaching an AI system to compensate for specific ADHD/autism processing patterns—building collaborative intelligence that works with my neurology.
24 · EssayClaude as My External Brain: Autistic, ADHD, and Finally Supported
How I use Claude as an external brain and assistant—combining voice, agents, and a hardened CI/CD lane—to support an autistic mind with severe ADHD.
25 · EssayWalking and Talking in the Woods with AI: The Future of Untethered Software Development
A DevSecCon 2025 keynote summary: orchestrate voice, agents, and a hardened CI/CD lane so you can think where you think best—while background agents safely ship production-grade code.
26 · EssayClaude Skills as Self-Documenting Runbooks/Processes You Share With Your Team
This may indeed be a bigger deal than MCP
27 · EssayHow to Connect Your Oura Ring to Claude Desktop with MCP
Turn your health data into actionable insights with AI-powered analysis. Learn how to integrate your Oura Ring with Claude Desktop using the Model Context Protocol.
28 · EssayIn the LLM, I Saw Myself
How LLMs mirrored my neurodivergent thinking, helped me connect the dots, and became the glue in a personal cognitive toolkit.
29 · EssayBeat Coding Interview Anxiety with ChatGPT and Google AI Studio
How ChatGPT and Google AI Studio helped me reduce live coding anxiety through systematic practice
30 · EssayHow I Cut My Vercel Build Time by 66% (5.5 Minutes to 1 Min 53 Seconds)
A detailed breakdown of how I optimized my Next.js site's build process, moving from static generation to ISR, migrating images to CDN, and implementing on-demand OpenGraph image generation.
31 · EssayCursor Agents Review: Real Results in 2026
I ran Cursor Agents on production codebases for weeks. Background tasks, multi-file edits, and where it still breaks down.
32 · EssayCorporate AI Catch-22
The corporate AI catch-22: move fast and break things, or move slow and get disrupted. Lessons from real-world AI enablement.
33 · EssayLive Workshop: AI Pipelines & Agents in TypeScript w Mastra.ai - Nick Nisi and Zack Proser
Nick Nisi and I taught 70 engineers how to build AI workflows and agents with Mastra.ai at the AI Engineer World Fair in San Francisco.
34 · EssayGoogle Jules Hands-on Review
On May 20th, 2025, I gained access to Google Jules research preview. Here is what I think
35 · EssayOpenAI Codex Review: Is It Worth It in 2025?
I tested Codex on real repos from day one of the research preview. It's fast but fragile — here's where it works and where it falls apart.
36 · EssayLLMs democratize specialist outputs. Not specialist understanding
It is easier than ever to learn development, but the folks getting the most leverage are still seasoned engineers. Why?
37 · EssayVibe Coding Mastery
How to code safely and efficiently with Git, secrets, and Cursor setup.
38 · EssayVibe Coding Survival Guide – Secrets & Git Basics for Cursor-First Builders
A no-jargon crash-course that keeps your AI side-projects from torching your wallet. Perfect for vibe coders with zero engineering background.
39 · EssayThe Vercel AI SDK: A worthwhile investment in bleeding edge GenAI
The Vercel AI SDK takes some time to get used it. It is time well spent.
40 · EssayIntroducing Gabbee.io: AI BDR for Zoho CRM
Meet Gabbee.io, an AI BDR that programmatically validates leads via human-sounding phone calls. Automatically qualifies prospects using BANT methodology and syncs directly with Zoho CRM.
41 · EssayTutorial: Build a RAG pipeline with LangChain, OpenAI and Pinecone
Step by step tutorial: how to build a production-ready RAG pipeline.
42 · EssayHow to automatically switch git profiles based on the current directory
You can automate your git profile switching based on the current directory. Here's how to do it.
43 · EssayHow I grew my tech blog to 35,000 readers in a year
Learn how I grew my tech blog to 35,000 readers in one year through site optimization, UX improvements, consistent publishing, and building useful tools.
44 · EssayCloud GPU Services for Deep Learning and fine-tuning with Jupyter Notebooks Reviewed: Colab, Paperspace Gradient, Lightning.ai, and more
I tried a handful of services when I last needed to fine-tune an LLM, and I was mostly disappointed...
45 · EssayHow to create a custom Alpaca instruction dataset for fine-tuning LLMs
A step by step tutorial with companion notebook.
46 · EssayHow to Fine-tune Llama 3.1 on Lightning.ai with Torchtune
One of the better Jupyter Notebooks to GPU-backed environment experiences I've had...
47 · EssayMLOps Adventure - Learning to Fine-tune LLMs, create datasets and neural nets
I've been on an MLOps adventure lately, taking any excuse to get hands on with neural nets, fine-tuning, Hugging Face datasets and models.
48 · EssayThe Rich Don't Fine-tune Like You and Me: Intro to LoRA and QLoRA
LoRA and QLoRA are two important innovations related to fine-tuning large language models like Llama and GPT.
49 · EssayAutocomplete is not all you need: Why Cursor and Zed are going to dominate
AI assisted developer tooling is not created equally...
50 · EssayCursor review: Changing the way I create software
I have been experimenting with AI assisted dev tools nonstop. Cursor probably had the biggest impact of all, so far.
51 · EssayThe Giant List of AI-Assisted Developer Tools Compared and Reviewed
A comprehensive comparison and review of AI-assisted developer tools, including code autocompletion, intelligent terminals/shells, and video editing tools.
52 · EssayBuilding a Hand-Drawn Digit Recognizer with PyTorch and MNIST
I trained a neural net to recognize hand-drawn digits, then built a Next.js UI for it
53 · EssayWhy I bought three System76 computers
In the past 4 years, I have bought and used 3 different system76 linux machines. Here's why.
54 · EssayHow are embeddings models trained for RAG?
Embeddings models are the secret sauce that makes RAG work. How are THEY made?
55 · EssayMy morning routine
For several years now I've been getting up early before work to get plenty of me time in...
56 · EssayBuild a RAG pipeline for your blog with LangChain, OpenAI and Pinecone
You can chat with my writing and ask me questions I've already answered even when I'm not around
57 · EssayVector Databases in Production for Busy Engineers: RAG Evaluation
I wrote the RAG evaluation chapter for Pinecone's latest book
58 · EssayVector Databases in Production for Busy Engineers: CI/CD
I wrote the CI/CD chapter for Pinecone's latest book
59 · EssayTech I wish existed: super hearing aids
I want comfortable hearing aids with long battery life that extend my senses and intelligence
60 · EssayWhy I use Neovim's AstroNvim project as my daily driver IDE
Why do I use an open-source IDE-like Neovim experience glued together with Lua?
61 · EssayUpdated Codeium analysis and review
It's been about a year since I last looked at Codeium - what has changed?
62 · EssayHow do you write so fast?
Sometimes someone will ask me how I am able to write new content so quickly. This is my answer.
63 · EssayThe best programmer ever
A brief story about the best programmer I ever worked with
64 · EssayBuilding data-driven pages with Next.js
To effectively maintain richer and more complex web experiences, separate data from presentation.
65 · EssayWarp AI terminal review
The Warp terminal is a serious boon for anyone looking for help on the command line, but it's not yet perfect
66 · EssayThe best thing about being a developer
The best thing about being a developer is being able to build your own tools, to your exact specifications.
67 · EssayHop on the pain train
Some junior engineers are so afraid of breaking something, they paradoxically stagnage themselves
68 · EssayPinecone vs Chroma
A detailed comparison of the Pinecone and Chroma vector databases
69 · EssayPinecone vs FAISS
A detailed comparison of the Pinecone and FAISS vector databases
70 · EssayPinecone vs Milvus
A detailed comparison of the Pinecone and Milvus vector databases
71 · EssayPinecone vs Weaviate
A detailed comparison of the Pinecone and Weaviate vector databases
72 · EssayTrace the system in your head
One of the best engineering managers I ever had was at Cloudflare. Here's what he did in his free time...
73 · EssayWeaviate vs Chroma
A detailed comparison of the Weaviate and Chroma vector databases
74 · EssayWeaviate vs FAISS
A detailed comparison of the Weaviate and FAISS vector databases
75 · EssayWeaviate vs Milvus
A detailed comparison of the Weaviate and Milvus vector databases
76 · Essayaws-vault - the best way to manage AWS credentials for multiple accounts
aws-vault is an excellent open-source tool written in Golang that allows you to manage the credentials for multiple AWS accounts securely.
77 · EssayHow to Run background jobs on Vercel without a queue
I recently needed to figure out how to have my Vercel API route accept a new job and return a response immediately while still performing long running processing in the background. This is what I learned.
78 · EssayGit operations in JavaScript for pain and profit
You can run git wherever JavaScript is accepted. Should you?
79 · EssayIntroduction to dimensionality in machine learning
Dimensionality refers to the number of features a given embedding model extracts
80 · EssayIntroduction to embeddings (vectors) and how they work
Embeddings are numerical representations of the key features of some data
81 · EssayVector Databases Compared: Pinecone, Milvus, Chroma, Weaviate, FAISS, and more
How do the different vector databases compare?
82 · EssayHow to build a dynamic sitemap for your Next.js project
Steal my implementation to save yourself some time and headaches
83 · EssayMy first book credit! My Horrible Career
What started out as an extended conversation with my mentor about career trajectory became a book!
84 · EssayCodeium vs ChatGPT
What's the difference between Codeium and ChatGPT and which should you use?
85 · EssayTesting Pinecone Serverless at Scale with the AWS Reference Architecture
A step-by-step walkthrough on how to generate arbitrary system load and flex Pinecone Serverless
86 · EssayKeep Calm and Ship Like Crazy: My 2023 Wins and Lessons
I had a lot of growth and success to celebrate professionally in 2023
87 · EssayA Blueprint for Modern API Development: Repositories developers want to work on
Developer delight === project velocity ?
88 · EssayEvolving web scraping: How Pageripper API handles JavaScript-heavy sites
Pageripper API uses Puppeteer and headless Chrome under the hood to see the same thing your browser does, even for Single Page Applications (SPAs)
89 · EssayPageripper API: a commercial data-extraction service
I built an API that extracts data from webpages, even if they're rendered with Javascript. It's defined via Pulumi and deployed on AWS.
90 · EssayTalk @ a16z: Taking AI applications to Production
I introduced the new Pinecone AWS Reference Architecture with Pulumi and explained infrastructure as code
91 · EssayComic: Magic spells
A comic strip about casting magic spells
92 · EssayComic strip: long day at the office
A wordless comic strip about a typically brutal day at work, that nevertheless has a positive ending
93 · EssayAnnouncing the Pinecone AWS Reference Architecture in Pulumi
Deploy production-ready systems using Pinecone in minutes with the AWS Reference Architecture
94 · EssayPinecone AWS Reference Architecture Technical Walkthrough
An examination of the Reference Architecture components and functionality
95 · EssayWash three walls with one bucket
Design your side projects, blog posts and even your fun experiments to triangulate multiple learning paths simultaneously. Then, use them to build out your portfolio.
96 · EssayRun your own tech blog
Control your own destiny, build your personal brand, and master web technologies by running your own tech blog.
97 · EssayFor Zachary
There are only two people I am aware of named Zachary Proser, with that exact spelling. This article is only for Zachary Proser.
98 · EssayHow to generate images with AI
I have used StableDiffusion, AUTOMATIC111, DALLE and Discord bots to generate images in every style for blog posts. You can too.
99 · EssayYou get to keep the neural connections
Going the extra mile only to be unrewarded by your company feels like a personal slight and a waste of your time. It is not.
100 · EssayChatGPT4 and Codeium are still my favorite dev assistant stack
As of October 10th, 2023, ChatGPT4 and Codeium are still my favorite AI-assisted dev tool stack. Here is why
101 · EssayThe top bugs all AI developer tools are suffering from
I have evaluated everything from ChatGPT to CoPilot to Codeium to Cursor, to Sourcegraph Cody to CodiumAI. All suffer from the same bugs
102 · EssayGitHub Copilot review
I got Copilot access for free as an active GitHub open-source maintainer, but would I pay for it?
103 · EssayWhy your AI dev tool startup is failing with developers
These common mistakes are dooming your AI-assisted developer tooling startup to failure. Don't make them
104 · EssayHow I keep my shit together
Practices and protocols that keep me humming along, healthy and productive on a given day
105 · EssayMaking it easier to maintain open-source projects with CodiumAI and Pinecone
CodiumAI's PR-agent integration leverages Pinecone under the hood to perform semantic search for similar GitHub issues
106 · EssayProgrammer emotions
Programmers are people, and this is how I feel when...
107 · EssayGlossary of tech phrases
If you're coming from Hacker News, I've learned that I need to spell out at the beginning that this post is partly facetious...
108 · EssayThe Pain and Poetry of Python
A history of package management and virtualenvs in Python and why we migrated the Pinecone Python client to Poetry
109 · EssayHow to use Jupyter Notebooks to do Machine Learning and AI tasks
Jupyter Notebooks are surprisingly easy to get started with - especially when using GitHub and Google Colab
110 · EssayOpengraph dynamic social images
I built a custom opengraph image with '@vercel/og' that includes a fallback image for index pages
111 · EssayAI-powered and built with...JavaScript?
6 Technology trends position JavaScript developers to reap the rewards of the GenAI boom
112 · EssayRetrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)
How to reduce hallucinations in your Generative AI applications
113 · EssayI'm joining Pinecone.io as a Staff Developer Advocate!
Making the pivot from pure software engineering to developer advocacy
114 · Essayggshield can save you from yourself. Never accidentally commit secrets again
Stop yourself from committing a secret to git with ggshield
115 · EssayFirst, find out if you've got the programming bug
I get this question a lot: how do I get into coding? This is my best advice.
116 · EssayOffice Oracle - a complete AI Chatbot leveraging langchain, Pinecone.io and OpenAI
I open sourced my next.js AI chatbot and the Jupyter notebooks I used to build it, plus created a video series walking through it all on YouTube
117 · EssayCodeium with Neovim for A.I. powered code-completion: so far so good
Generally unimpressed with GitHub's Copilot (not Copilot X), I gave the alternative, Codeium a shot.
118 · EssayAutomations - shell scripts leveraging OpenAI to make your developer workflow buttery smooth and way more fun
I have open sourced my automations project, which is a collection of shell scripts that automatically handle git operations, provide local code reviews, pull requests, and more!
119 · EssayAutogit - never forget to pull the latest changes again
Autogit is an open source shell script that you can wire up to your `cd` command to ensure you always have the latest code, branches, and remotes when you open up a local git repository.
120 · EssayPasswordless sudo and verified GitHub commit signing with Yubikey - a pair-coder's dream
If you're like me, you can't type your complex password correctly when your entire team is staring at you on a pair call. And now, you no longer have to.
121 · EssayMaintaining this site no longer fucking sucks
After re-doing my personal website in next.js and deploying to Vercel, I reflect on how much better the developer experience has become.
122 · EssayThe Bubbletea (TUI) State Machine pattern
Combining a lightweight state machine plus the Bubbletea charm library leads to a very powerful pattern for tooling that needs to orchestrate slow or expensive steps.
123 · EssayMaintaining this site fucking sucks
Join me as I delve into the infuriating, yet enlightening journey of maintaining my own Javascript-heavy website. Learn how battling DNS issues, dependency chaos, niche CSS pre-processors and constant painful upgrades has led to one of the most rewarding projects I've ever created.
124 · EssayCan ChatGPT-4 and GitHub Copilot help me produce a more complete side project more quickly?
As a Senior Software Engineer, I'm always looking for ways to refine my skills and optimize my workflow. This weekend, I experimented with integrating ChatGPT-4 into my developer toolkit alongside GitHub Copilot, which I've been using for several months. The goal? To see if these AI-powered tools could help me complete a side project more quickly.
125 · EssayWhy I've been successful lately, and what I'm planning to do about it
In the past 3 years, I've been promoted 3 times. I reflect on the habits and activities that helped me improve the most.
126 · EssayHow to securely store secrets in BitWarden CLI and load them into your shell when needed
A tutorial on how to write and use shell functions to fetch your tokens from the BitWarden CLI with one command.
127 · EssayTeatutor Deep Dive
Teatutor is a Golang CLI leveraging the Bubbletea Terminal User Interface (TUI) library from Charm.sh. It can be served over an SSH connection.
128 · EssayA powerful and open source content optimizer
A full technical deep-dive on my optimizer app and its features
129 · EssayHow to work with CircleCI more effectively
Pro tips for working with CircleCI configurations
130 · EssayWriting code on Mac or Linux but testing on Windows with hot-reloading
As a developer, I often want to test my code on Windows, but don't have a Windows box handy. This tutorial demonstrates how to use Infrastructure as Code (IaC) to make provisioning Windows test instances easier. In this post, I also provide a working Packer template and Terraform configuration to deploy your own Windows test instance, as well as instructions for mounting a local folder over RDP.
131 · EssayTerminal velocity - how to get faster as a developer
I obssess a decent amount over my own developer productivity and my customized tmux, neovim and awesome window manager linux setup, and now I pass my best learnings on to you
132 · EssayHow to Run a Quake 3 Arena Server in an AWS ECS Fargate Task
A tutorial, along with working Terraform code and Dockerfile, that you can use to deploy and operate your own Quake 3 server in an ECS task.
133 · EssayGit-xargs allows you to run commands and scripts against many Github repos simultaneously
Git-xargs allows you to run commands and scripts against many Github repos simultaneously
How to build a React.js and Lambda app with Git push continuous deployment
An open-source example repository and technical deep-dive on using AWS SAM, Golang, CodePipeline and CloudFormation to automate continuous delivery.
135 · EssayCatFacts rewrite in Golang
A ridiculously over-engineered CatFacts prank written in Golang and deployed via Kubernetes
136 · EssayCanyonRunner - a complete HTML5 game
I open sourced my first HTML5 game as a resource for other developers working with Phaser.js or wanting to build their own game
137 · EssayCatFacts in Node.js
PICK UP THE PHONE - ITS CATFACTS!
138 · EssayBuilding the ultimate portfolio site with Nuxt.js and Netlify.
A technical deep dive on building a portfolio site that is beautiful, blazing fast and 100% SEO optimized
139 · EssayWisdomseeker
A wikipedia crawling application