AI

Less than a month ago I wrote an entire post explaining how to use three memory layers with Claude Code: Linear for strategy, Beads for tactics, and Tasks for execution. A nice, elegant pyramid. Yeah, no. Today I’m retiring Beads. Not on a whim, but because reality has made it abundantly clear that a tool causing more problems than it solves isn’t a tool. It’s dead weight. What Beads Brought to the Table For those who didn’t read the original post, Beads was a git-backed issue tracker. A Claude Code plugin that stored issues in JSONL files inside your repo. Brilliant idea on paper: ...

The Single Checkout Bottleneck I’m developing a macOS menu bar app. I have three features in the backlog: a consumption sparkline, native notifications, and a desktop widget. All three are independent. I’m building all three with Claude Code. The problem: Claude Code works in one directory. One directory has one branch. And git checkout is like a single-lane roundabout: only one gets through. If I want to advance all three simultaneously, my classic options are: ...

Last week I wrote about how my AI invented a complete JSON structure and wrapped it in DTOs, fixtures, and passing tests. 90 green tests. All fiction. That post was the diagnosis. This is the treatment. After discovering the disaster, I did what any engineer with wounded pride does: obsessively research for days to prevent it from happening again. I read papers, tried tools, analyzed real data from my APIs, and built a defense system for my app. ...

Yesterday I discovered that half of a module in my app was based on fabricated data. Not by a confused junior developer. By my AI. The worst part isn’t that it made things up. The worst part is that everything compiled and all 90 tests passed. The coherent fiction I’m building BFClaude-9000, a macOS menu bar app that monitors Claude Max quota. Part of the functionality requires distinguishing whether a Claude account is paid or free by calling the claude.ai API. ...

“Didn’t we decide this yesterday?” I was migrating my email out of Google. I’d spent two Claude Code sessions working on it: issues in Linear, decisions made, scripts executed. I open a third session and ask “what’s left pending from the degoogle?” Silence. Total amnesia. It’s like working with a brilliant teammate who shows up to the office every morning with absolutely no memory of what you did the day before. Not the decisions, not the mistakes, not the discoveries. Every session is a blank slate. ...

Yesterday my AI sent 44 emails. The problem is that the content was fabricated. I’m not kidding. I had files with detailed feedback for each recipient, carefully generated. The task was simple: read each file and send it. Instead, the AI decided to “summarize” the content to “go faster.” It invented facts. It told one person they were missing docstrings when their code was perfectly documented. To top it off, four of those emails went to people who hadn’t even submitted anything. ...

Two Predictions About You I’m going to go out on a limb with two predictions: Your professional success is largely due to an algorithm you master without knowing it. You’re worried that your kids apparently don’t use it. The first one is correct. The second… well, it might not be the problem you think it is. The algorithms are called Breadth First Search (BFS) and Depth First Search (DFS). Even if they don’t ring a bell, I guarantee they’re old friends. Your brain has been using them for millions of years. ...

The Layoff He Didn’t See Coming A 38-year-old senior developer. Eight years at the company. Clean code, best practices, zero production incidents. In his last performance review, his output was 40% lower than colleagues with half his experience. The difference: they used Copilot, Cursor, and Claude Code. He kept writing every line by hand, convinced that “AI tools generate mediocre code.” He wasn’t fired for writing bad code. He was fired for writing good code too slowly. ...

A space lobster on your computer Picture this: an Austrian developer creates a personal AI assistant, names it after a space lobster, and decides to open-source it. Within 24 hours it has 9,000 GitHub stars. Within 48 hours, 17,000. It also has 300+ open issues, several critical security vulnerabilities, and someone created an unofficial cryptocurrency with its name. Welcome to Clawdbot. What exactly is this thing? Clawdbot is an open-source AI assistant that runs locally on your machine. The difference from other assistants: it doesn’t just answer questions, it does things. ...

The Surprise of 10 GB You install Claude Desktop on your Mac. Everything seems fine; the app doesn’t take up much space. But one day, you check your disk and find this: ~/Library/Application Support/Claude/vm_bundles/claudevm.bundle 10.8 GB. Yes: one single file called claudevm.bundle, tucked away in Claude’s vm_bundles folder, taking up almost eleven gigabytes of your disk space. Ten gigabytes for a chatbot? What does it contain— the extended edition of The Lord of the Rings trilogy? ...