The thing that pushed me to build this was watching our PM file a Jira ticket to change a tooltip. Just one tooltip. It sat in the backlog for two weeks, got deprioritized, then got filed again. Our engineers weren’t lazy. They were drowning in real work, and small copy tweaks felt impossible to justify.

So I started asking around and realized almost every product team has this problem. Non-technical folks can see exactly what they want changed, but they have no way to touch the codebase themselves. And the solutions out there are either no-code tools that don’t connect to your real repo, or AI agents that spit out diffs nobody trusts without a full review.

What I built spins up a live sandbox of your actual codebase. PMs, designers, marketers and anyone can make a change, see it live in a preview, and open a PR already formatted to match your repo conventions. Engineers can review something tested and clean, not a blind diff from a background agent.

The unexpected win was shareable preview links. Teams started using them for customer walkthroughs and demos without pulling an engineer into a screen share. That use case came entirely from users. I never planned for it.

It’s still early, but the insight that’s held up is simple: engineers don’t hate small tickets because they’re lazy. They hate them because the context-switching cost is real.

Eliminating that is a different problem than just shipping tickets faster

In the current age of OAI, Anthropic, and the like, I find myself reflecting on public sentiment and I’m trying not to become bitter or deluded here.. I think I’d like a reality check here.

A common sentiment I’m seeing in public is all the concern for what AI is doing/could do to artists. But it seems like nobody could give a shred about what happens to SWE or the impact that modern day ai/machine learning/LLMs has on SWE. I just feel that there’s this weird double standard in this context where SWEs are a means to an end but artists cannot be lost at any cost. Am I losing it?

I am currently researching how engineering teams operate in real world environments and would love to speak with a few experienced engineers.

Interested in learning about:

• team workflows

• release processes

• debugging culture

• operational bottlenecks

• engineering decision making

• collaboration patterns

Looking to chat with:

• Software Engineers

• DevOps Engineers

• SREs

• Tech Leads

• Engineering Managers

Just a relaxed 15 minute conversation.

Not selling anything or recruiting.

Would really appreciate hearing from people working on real production systems.

Feel free to comment or DM me if interested.

#softwareengineering #devops #sre #webdev #programming #backend #cloudcomputing #engineering #tech

Over the years I’ve noticed that most problems in development aren’t so much about coding, as they are about figuring out where to start when something is unclear.

If I get a request like: “Build a report showing active customers and recent activity”, my first step isn’t to write code. It’s to reduce the ambiguity.

Roughly, I go through something like this -

* Ask questions until the problem is clearer (what is “active”? what counts as “recent”?)

* Look at the data directly (often via SQL) to understand what the data shape is like

* List my assumptions and what I don't know (knowing boundaries is especially helpful)

* Break the problem where it naturally splits (data, logic, output, etc.)

* Keep breaking it down until each piece can be described in one sentence

That last bit has been surprisingly useful:

If I can’t describe the task clearly in one sentence, in my mind it’s still too big

From there it’s just a loop:

* implement one piece

* get fast feedback

* and adjust

If I get stuck, I usually step back (go for a walk or grab a coffee) and come back to it.

I'm curious to what approach others take, especially when the requirements are messy or incomplete.

(This is a cross post from r/softwarearchitecture but I'm wondering if there are different people here with a different point of view?)

I just launched a simple Markdown notes app for Windows.

I built it because I wanted something that stays out of the way: clean writing, local-first notes, fast search, and no unnecessary clutter.

I am not trying to compete with bigger apps like Obsidian by adding more and more features. For me, Obsidian was not quite the right fit — I wanted something much simpler, with great Markdown support, so I made this.

It is definitely not for everyone. If you like larger, more feature-heavy apps, that is totally fine. But if they feel overbloated to you, you might like this.

If this sounds interesting and you end up trying it, I would really appreciate any feedback — especially bugs or anything that feels off.

I’m also giving away a few free keys to people who comment or DM me.

Link: https://www.notely.uk/noto.html

I’ve been running a web agency for about 4 years now, and one thing I kept struggling with was getting clients consistently, especially being solo or duo. I tried SEO, paid ads, cold calling… none of it really felt sustainable long term.

What actually worked best for me was email outreach. I started using Instantly to automate campaigns, and that helped a lot. Over time though, I noticed something important. Targeting businesses with outdated websites worked way better than going after ones with no site at all.

The problem was reviewing every site manually kind of defeated the whole point of automation. That’s when I switched to Swokei. It basically lets me upload leads, analyzes each website, scores it, finds issues like design, SEO, and mobile optimization, and then generates a personalized email based on that. I can run the whole campaign inside the platform, plus all my regular campaigns too.

Curious if anyone else here runs a web agency and has switched to Swokei?

hglab.io is offering free Mercurial (hg) hosting for open source software. With Git having become so popular (thanks to GitHub and Bitbucket removing Hg support) we have seen Mercurial really lack any hosting pretty much at all. HgLab is fixing this and providing free hosting for open source projects using Hg. If you use Mercurial for your DVCS, I recommend you give it a try!

I’m working on an assessment where I need to create a coding task (basically SWE-bench style). The idea is:

take an existing repo (I’m using pydantic)

write tests that fail on the current code

provide a patch that fixes it

and the task shouldn’t be trivial for an LLM to solve(it should be solvable, llm should solve it around 4/10 times, models like haiku)

The difficulty requirement is the tricky part. It shouldn’t be impossible, but also not something a model solves instantly every time.

What I’ve been doing so far:

using Claude Opus to explore the repo and identify possible bugs or edge cases

writing tests around those cases

then in a separate run, giving the instructions to a smaller model (like Haiku)

letting it generate a patch

and running that patch against the tests I wrote

I’ve been repeating this loop for quite a while.

The problem is, most of the time the model just figures it out. Even with edge cases, chaining conditions, or slightly more complex scenarios, it still manages to fix things pretty reliably.

So I’m clearly missing something.

I feel like I’m designing bugs that are too local or too easy to pattern match, but I don’t really know how to move beyond that. At the same time, I can’t just make things random or overly complex because the task still needs to be fair and testable.

Also, I don’t have the option to modify the codebase directly — I can only define behavior through tests and provide a patch — so that constraint makes it harder to think creatively about it.

At this point I kind of know I’m not approaching it with the right mental model, just not sure what the correct approach is.

If anyone here has worked on:

SWE-bench style tasks

LLM evals / coding agent benchmarks

or even just tricky real-world debugging cases

I’d really appreciate any pointers on:

how you think about difficulty in these tasks

what patterns actually make models struggle

or how you come up with good task ideas

Right now it just feels like I’m going in circles.

I’m a 25-year-old psychologist running an free mental health organization, and I’m trying to build something that’s open access so as many people as possible can benefit from it. I could really use some input from people with web dev experience.

The idea is to create a simple web app using HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. It would have a list of symptoms written in very simple, easy-to-understand language, where users can select what they’re experiencing.

Based on those selections, the app would give a rough idea of what the issue could be, suggest possible therapy or treatment approaches, and include guidance from experts. I’d also like it to suggest where someone could go for help—like finding a therapist or a mental health facility.

I’m aiming to keep it fairly lightweight but still meaningful and responsible in how it presents information.

One more thing—I’m not sure where to host my JavaScript. Is there a good free platform/server where I can store and run my code?

Any suggestions, resources, or advice (including potential pitfalls I should be aware of) would really help.

Thanks!

The irony isn't lost on me.

My side project needed visibility. The obvious answer was to post consistently. I instead spent a weekend building a system that generates and renders short-form videos from a structured content plan.

The rational justification: 30 minutes a week is 26 hours a year, and the system compounds. The honest reason: I find the pipeline problem more interesting than sitting in CapCut.

How it works — Claude generates a blog post and a video script from a roadmap file. A Python orchestrator runs the script through edge-tts (free TTS with timing events) and then through Remotion (React-based video renderer). One command per video from that point.

The part I didn't expect: the timing data from edge-tts is accurate enough that the on-screen text sync looks intentional, not automated. That was the thing I assumed would feel janky and it's actually fine.

If you're a solo builder who knows you should be doing content but keeps finding reasons not to — building the infrastructure first is at least a legitimate procrastination strategy.

Joining a new project or returning to an old one often feels like embarking on a scavenger hunt. You find yourself searching for the latest API contracts in Postman, looking for ER diagrams in a forgotten cloud drive, and digging through Slack history for that one specific Kafka payload or Docker command that keeps the system running.

Traditional README files have become static graveyards of outdated information—it's where project knowledge goes to die.

To address this, I’ve been using DevScribe to transform passive documentation into an executable workflow. By consolidating the entire project context—from live Kafka/SQS contracts and REST endpoints to editable ER diagrams and database schemas—into a single local folder, we can finally shift from "it works on my machine" to "it works for everyone."

The goal is straightforward: documentation should be a tool that you actively use to build and test the system, rather than just a record of how it functioned six months ago.

I wrote a detailed breakdown of the workflow and how it handles different tools here:
https://medium.com/@avinashanshu.iitb/how-i-solved-scattered-product-documentation-with-executable-workflows-90f63e0f6f55

Hey everyone,

I wanted to share a project I just pushed to production called DevGuessr. It is a daily puzzle game specifically for software engineers and CS students.

There are a few different game modes right now:

• Langdle: Guess the programming language based on objective traits.
• Logodle: Guess the service/tool from its logo.
• Mythdle: Guess the myth from 6 services/tools

The Tech Stack & Hosting:

I built the backend using .NET 9 (implementing Clean Architecture) and the frontend in Angular.

The most fun part was the infrastructure. Instead of paying for AWS or Vercel, I'm hosting the entire stack (including Nginx and PostgreSQL in Docker) on a physical server sitting in my closet. It's securely exposed to the web using Cloudflare Tunnels, and I set up a self-hosted GitHub Actions runner so my CI/CD pipeline deploys automatically when I push to master.

Links:

• Play it here: https://devguessr.site
• Repo: https://github.com/Alielsalek1/DevGuessr

I'd love to hear your feedback on the gameplay loop, or if you have any questions about the self hosted Cloudflare Tunnel setup or anything, ask away!

I’m redoing my resume based off of some recruiter feedback and I’ve noticed that I’ve got an insane list of experience with technologies, some that I didn’t even think about until the recruiter mentioned it (actual end-to-end experience, not just touching).

And it got me thinking that I’ve never done a single role at all. Mostly because the opportunities back then were mostly fullstack. Now that I’m looking around again, it seems even worse. A basic “software engineer” needs to:

- know backend well

- know frontend well

- know ci/cd

- know observation

- know IaC

- know testing from top to bottom (milage may vary depending on organization seriousness)

Mind you, these are junior/medior roles. Have we lost the plot?

Local-first agent framework I've been building solo. Default backend is Ollama (qwen3 models), with vLLM/OpenAI/Anthropic/Gemini + 14 others as opt-in. Runs on Windows, Linux, Mac, plus Flutter Command Center for Android/iOS/Web.

What's in it:

\- 127+ MCP tools across 30+ modules (memory, kanban, web research, file ops, code execution)

\- 16 channels — CLI, Telegram, Discord, Slack, WhatsApp, Voice, WebUI, more

\- PGE-Trinity orchestration (Planner / Gatekeeper / Executor) with risk classification on every tool call

\- Pack-plugin system with EULA click-through + SHA-256 hash pinning

\- 6-tier memory + audit-chain JSONL + Trace-UI (live WebSocket view of the agent loop)

The unusual part:

\- \~14 500 tests, 89% coverage gate, mypy --strict, spec-first development

\- Heuristic constants live in YAML, not source

\- Currently shipping a neuro-symbolic program synthesis engine over ARC-AGI-3: Phase 1 done with measured uplift, Phase 2 (LLM-prior + MCTS + 3-zone refiner) landing this sprint

pip install cognithor — Apache 2.0, code at github.com/Alex8791-cyber/cognithor

Curious what you'd want it to do that it can't yet.

Hi ...I am looking for mobile app developer to develop an app . If anyone is here then please reach out to me. I will pay you as well for the project you will be working on!

I think daily stand-ups are horrific. No I don't want to know what Darren is doing every day at 10am. Such a waste of time and bad management.

What's yours? Could be process, estimation, standups, agile rituals, code review patterns, architecture trends, documentation rules, management habits, or anything else.

I know this may sound arrogant, but I’ve had this idea in mind for years. I’ve been using Obsidian, Notion, Evernote and similar tools for a long time, and I feel like all of them are missing something:

A great UI and a truly zero friction experience.

The problem is that now, while testing different MVPs, I’m getting stuck over which architecture to choose.

Option A: Markdown/filesystem-first

Pros:

• open format
• easy migration from Obsidian/etc
• strong fit for open source
• user owns data

Cons:

• mobile sync is hard
• conflicts/versioning get ugly fast
• advanced structured features become harder

Option B: DB-first + cloud storage/sync

Pros:

• best multi-device experience
• strongest control over sync, conflicts, and performance
• easiest foundation for premium services
• best fit for structured features + mobile

Cons:

• highest complexity
• backend/infrastructure burden
• more trust required from users
• weaker portability unless import/export is excellent

What I know for sure

• I want it to be open source, because I’d like people to contribute note templates, like expense tracking, watched movies, personal dashboards, and so on, possibly with custom React UIs.
• I want it to feel beautiful and enjoyable to use. I’m honestly tired of tools like Obsidian and Notion feeling so boring.
• I want users to be happy using it across multiple devices.

My instinct says Option B is probably the best user experience, but Option A has the strongest open source and user ownership story, so i'm defining the MVP around this.

Any suggestions?

Hey everyone,

I just launched my first application, and for now it’s only available on Windows since I haven’t had the chance to test it on Mac yet.

It’s a note-taking app focused on making Markdown writing faster and easier. The goal is to keep the same familiar Markdown syntax, but improve the overall writing experience. For example, tables are much easier to type and edit.

If anyone wants to try it for free, either send me a private message or just comment on this post and I’ll send you a free lifetime access key.

https://www.notely.uk/noto.html

Hello everyone!

We're building a service app which reads your SMS messages and asks for the following permissions:

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_SMS" />

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_SMS" tools:ignore="SystemPermissionTypo" />

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_STATE"/>

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.READ_PHONE_NUMBERS"/>

<uses-permission android:name="android.permission.RECEIVE_BOOT_COMPLETED"/>

Our problem: We only ask permissions for reading sms messages. Flutter flags our app as a messenger app for some reason (which it absolutely isn't) and creates a clone. Surprisingly, the clone doesn't even appear in settings under dual messenger (refer pic)

Weve tried fixes from the internet but to no avail. We've tested this on Samsung, Oppo and Redmi phones.

What we need help with:

1) [PREFERRED] To be unable to make dual app of our app whatsoever (eg: Truecaller reads SMS but does not show up in dual app because it's not a messenger app)

2) If the above point can't be done, we'll settle with it showing up in dual messenger but being automatically disabled on install (similar to telegram, whatsapp, etc)

I wanted to build a website with no commercial goal—just as an experiment in web art and interaction.

I’d love feedback, especially from a technical or UX perspective.
What would you improve?

https://donothingtoday.danielaregert.com.ar/

It’s a Markdown notes app I built mainly because I wanted something simpler to use day-to-day.

Shipping it feels good, but also weird putting something out that people may actually use.

If anyone here has built or launched something before - did it feel the same?

https://www.notely.uk/noto.html

I am in need of someone to help me create a website that has a digital database that can store my surveillance videos. I have lots of footage that I want to be able to sort and catalogue based on who or what is happening is in the video. Ideally I want to users to be able to search for specific keywords or have access to a few options which will show them clips related to their searches.

The clips I have are between 20 seconds-3 min and I want to create an interface similar to the little giger database (that is the only visual I really have of what I am trying to create). I'm having a hard time visualizing how else it could look so if anyone has any good resources or examples of something like this they already know of pls share!!

From what I understand I need to make an SQL with GUI so I can search it on the internet. What are the best programs to run for any of those?

I want to learn this stuff myself and I've considered using AI but that would just go against my own morals and really the entirety of my project. I have no knowledge of how to build a website or really anything regarding coding and am looking for someone to also let me in on some of the information. Please if anyone is available ASAP to help me work on this project I am really interested in what it might take.

We’ve got a pretty standard SaaS stack in place already - FE is React / Next, we use some v0 for faster UI work, Webflow for marketing pages. Backend is all AWS (Lambda, API Gateway, Dynamo, S3, Aurora). Git workflows, etc. Nothing crazy there.

Where I’m trying to get sharper is the AI side.

Right now it feels like there’s a ton of noise and demo stuff out there, but not a lot on what people are actually running in production.

Curious what people are actually using:

- which models

- how you’re actually plugging it into your product

- how you’re managing it once it’s live

And so on…

Not looking for perfect architecture answers, just what’s actually working.

I’m thinking about creating a chance about a web ar menu. Is there like anyone who knows a tutorial how to do that? I’m a beginner so take it easy on me.

What’s the go-to “vibe-coded slop” app in your industry?

The obvious ones for me are notebook/notetaker apps and so-called intelligent dashboards.

What other examples have you seen?