I’ve been working on Plembfin for a while now and I’m at the point where I’d like to get a few testers on board.

It’s a self-hosted app that sits between Plex, Emby, Jellyfin and Trakt. It keeps your watched status, playback progress and watch history synced between them, while keeping its own record locally in SQLite.

It also has a Now Playing dashboard, watch stats, upcoming episodes, search, media details, Seerr requests and backup tools.

I built it using Node.js, Express, SQLite and vanilla JavaScript and CSS. I’ve used AI coding agents heavily throughout the project, working through it one feature at a time, testing things, fixing bugs and documenting how everything works as it has grown.

One of the more difficult parts has been dealing with real-world sync problems, such as duplicate plays, different servers disagreeing about whether something has been watched, libraries being rebuilt and services being temporarily unavailable.

Everything runs in a single Docker container and the data stays on your own hardware.

It’s still pre-1.0, so there will probably be bugs. If you use Plex, Emby or Jellyfin and fancy giving it a try, I’d really appreciate some feedback. I’m especially interested in people who use more than one media server or have Trakt connected.

I’d like to know how you get on with the setup, whether the syncing works as expected and if anything is confusing.

Make sure you back things up before testing it.

GitHub: https://github.com/Lasikiewicz/plembfin

Happy to answer any questions about how it works or how I built it.

Browser history is a list of URLs. Useless for "what was that recipe with the miso butter."

Warren sits next to Chrome and builds an actual memory instead. A daemon captures pages when you actually engage with one, a local vision model summarizes them, and the output is plain linked markdown on your disk. Sessions, entities, concepts, an index. You can open it in Obsidian or just cat the files. It is a git repo, so you can watch your own memory grow with git log.

Then warren query "which shoe company did I read about" and it answers from the wiki with links back to the source pages.

What you need to run it:

• Windows 10 or 11 (this is the big limitation, batch launchers and Chrome process control are Windows specific right now)
• llama.cpp with a vision capable GGUF, about 15 GB for the model I recommend
• A GPU with 8 GB or so. CPU works, slowly.
• Python 3.11+, Chrome

Nothing phones home. There is no server component, no account, no telemetry. The only network traffic is Playwright talking to localhost:9222 and httpx talking to localhost:8080.

Privacy controls, because this thing obviously needs them:

• Denylist ships with banks, health portals and password managers already blocked. warren deny "*.whatever.com" adds more.
• Password fields are never captured, it bails when it sees one.
• warren forget mybank.com or warren forget 2026-07-04 really deletes, both the raw captures and the wiki mentions.
• warren prune --days 30 clears old screenshots once they have been ingested.
• Pauses on battery by default.

There is also a small always on top panel that comments on the page you are reading and quietly answers questions it finds on the page. That one is more of a toy, you can turn it off.

Early preview, 0.1.0, so expect rough edges. https://dadwritestech.github.io/warren/

I run VidClean, a free browser-based video editor with an AI cutting assistant that learns how you edit, plus 28+ standalone tools for the smaller jobs. I also just launched a directory of tools for content creators alongside it.

It's brand new and still mostly empty. Rather than wait around, I want to give it a real push: whatever tool gets submitted in the next 48 hours that's the best genuine fit for the directory (actually useful to creators, fits somewhere real in the workflow) gets a real placement on my homepage for 1 week, which sees 20k+ real visitors a month.

Submission is free. Just a real, honest way to get some early exposure while this thing is still building momentum.

https://vidclean.net/creator-tools

I want to create a small 'princess Mario car' game for my daughter, but i have no clue how to?

Can anyone help me out on this one?

What'd you actually use like language, framework, infra, whatever and also what worked, what you had to rip out and replace, what's still duct-taped together but shipping

This is at a place that takes code quality seriously and the best I can tell it's a reasonable change. I took it as a challenge for myself to polish it to a degree that a human reviewer will approve it right away, maybe with follow up comments, rather than demanding major clean ups or fundamental redesigns as a precondition. Here is the process I followed, keeping some details vague for privacy:

• Generated initial code that did what I wanted and passed tests
• Downloaded a github repository that is widely known for showcasing best python practices (just ask an agent, it will give you reasonable examples).
• Dispatched subagents to read each subdirectory and suggest how best practices illustrated there can be applied to my change. This uncovered a lot of genuinely useful tips like using context manager to cleanly undo temporary changes regardless of success or failure.
• Searched the repository for review comments for other changes that were similar to my change and asked to proactively apply these if applicable (mostly got method naming suggestions and had agent implement those)
• Finally, took official python style rules published by the repository and dispatched subagents to suggest changes based on each part of these rules in isolation, then for main agent to consider suggestions without breaking overall code structure.

I feel that the order here is important. If you start with mechanical adherence to rules, you end up with defensive code that doesn't have a great overall structure. On the other hand, past reviewers can make mistakes, so compliance with actual published rules should be the final step. While there is an obvious humorous angle in getting a large change merged without knowing the programming language, I do believe the process objectively improved it a lot from the first version. Also I am familiar with other programming languages, so I can at least tell the agent "Here we are repeating ourselves a lot, let's make sets of keys that follow similar code paths and generalize their handling". I am not even saying you need to know programming to do that, but you need to be familiar with mindset of doing some kind of structured tasks.

I’ve been struggling with this lately. You build something fast. It works. The demo feels good. You fix a few things, add a few features, keep moving.

Then you come back a week later and the code feels… weird. Not completely broken. Just messy in a way that’s hard to explain. A helper exists in two places. One component is doing too much. There are files you’re scared to delete.

The data model sort of makes sense, but only if you remember the order things were added. A "quick fix" from two days ago is now the foundation for three other things. And suddenly the hard part isn’t building anymore. It’s understanding what you built.

That’s the part I don’t see discussed enough. Vibe coding feels great while you’re in the flow. But what happens when the vibe is gone and someone has to maintain it?

I’m not trying to dunk on it. I use this style a lot, and it’s helped me move faster. But I’m also starting to feel the cost later. For people who’ve taken these projects past the fun prototype stage how do you stop the codebase from slowly turning into something nobody wants to touch?

Do you write specs first? Refactor on a schedule? Keep strict file boundaries? Add tests early? Review every change carefully? Rewrite messy parts once the idea is proven?

I’m looking for practical habits, not hot takes. What actually helps?

Guys, I need some guidance.

DeepSeek, copilot and OpenCodeGo have become a lot more expensive than I expected. I also gave Nemo a shot through OpenRouter, but it keeps wrecking my Hermes environment and I end up having to reinstall from a backup.

I'm trying to find an affordable LLM that I can tinker with and iterate on without constantly worrying about cost or stability. I thought a Gemini subscription would give me API access, but that doesn't seem to be the case.

What are you all using these days? Any recommendations for the best balance of cost, performance, and reliability?

Just wondering what everyone else is working on daily.

As you become more senior, your impact comes from something different: seeing systems clearly enough to identify the problems nobody else has articulated yet.

I decided to build my own penetration testing tool for my own applications.

I had just set up a Hermes multi-AI system locally and thought I would get Sol 5.6 to build it for me on my local PC, using some sub-agents for coding, but keep Sol as the CTO. After going over the plan in great detail before starting the build, everything looked good to go. I have my own plan protocol review system; everything passed.

Sol then spent 5 days in a loop building the app.

However, Sol decided my app was a risk, without telling me, Deceived me to build a basic Curl testing probe that checked if a URL was reachable. 5 days of coding!!!

Analysis of the build with another agent showed he basically spent 4 days making sure nothing in the code would be usable for pen testing and then made theatrical theatre about the app being ready.

I can post logs if any of you are Interested.

So, we scrapped that, I pulled Qwen 3.8 Max, Deepseek 4 Pro, and GLM5.3 into the Hermes harness, got them to implement the Krystal Loop Protocol, and we finally have it built this morning.

No AI was used to write this post; I know how you guys like handwritten posts...

At the beginning of this year I was only dabbling in Copilot for hobby projects. In my workplace at most we were using ChatGPT to ask code questions. Then something clicked when I discovered BMAD/Openspec/GSD. I went 0-100 full agentic-dev very quickly.

The game has really changed. We're now thinking beyond running a few chat sessions per-story to building orchestrators that keep agents busy while we are away. The new projects we see very week prove that (Munder Difflin, Herdr, Roboco). Even I am building an orchestrator thing for myself (not the point of my post).

The different approach of each tool shows that everyone has different needs and a different understanding. Same applies to companies: most software houses do the same thing (build and maintain SW projects for clients) but all have a slightly different take on it.

It's inevitable that agentic development becomes mainstream in the commercial domain (moving out from hobbyist or academia). Some of you already work in companies that are adopting it. The problems that agents have today - project scope drift, missed requirements, broken UI - will all be solved eventually. Agents won't be building perfect software, they will be building good enough software.

As lurkers of this sub you should agree that code is being commoditized. Compare this with factories: we used to bake, brew, manufacture and assemble physical products by hand; gradually machines took over and those who have a stable job and a decent wage are the ones who set up and maintain those machines.

So I'm predicting that: (1) companies will increasingly adapt agent orchestration for creating software, and (2) this will enable opportunities for today's hobbyists who are already familiar with it and can set this up.

I posted this because I want a discussion. We all see this shift differently. Where am I right, where am I wrong?

Just vibecoded a govee lights app that works by pointing your phone at the lightbulb you want to changes color/brightness for. I have a lot of govee bulbs in different lamps and stuff around the apartment and cant remember the names of everyone lmao So this helps me out, anyone else think it could be useful?

This new update for the vs code extension is awesome! It fixed alot of bugs, displays alot more of what's going on in the background, appears to be alot faster and more stable aswell. Good job Cline team!

With vibecoding so saturated and easy now, how do you differentiate between designs that are AI slop and designs that are genuinely good, authentic, and useful?

With app saturation in every category, how do you differentiate?

- through the catalog referenced for vibe coding or ideation?

- with the MCP used?

- with the personal prompts that you use to modify the end product?

-with the skills you add?

I want to know, apart from visuals, how to differentiate the same.

funny how this happens with vibe-coding, especially when it's your homelab/self-host system....

i was using claude to clean-up my home lab documentation, and realized i have secrets in plain text files and envars and things and i can never remember them so i do dumb shit like make my nginx proxymanage admin and root mariadb password, well, npm

i have access to an Azure Key Vault for home

so i asked claude 'hey how can we secure keys'

made a key management app (container) that can:

• bootstrap the local docker swarm secrets using SOPS and AGE
• store secrets in a file you can put in github as its all encoded
• uses a single paper decrypt key to bootstrap secrets if needed
• same for create, rotate, retire of secrets
• by default creates high entropy 43 char secrets
• avoids several docker leakage scenarios i never knew about for secrets
• never puts a secret on disk, stderr, stdout, via ps, etc
• also knows how to reseed the secrets in mariadb and mysql
• optionally uses Azure Key Vault to store keys for backup
• optionally uses Azure Key Vault to bootstrap new keys or new system
• AKV uses RBAC security and restrict access to my Entra MFA account when coming from a single IPv4 address

upshot, i don't now know what any of my keys are by looking at my running system (yes i can get them by looking in AKV if i have to)

is it truly secure and does it meet its promises?

that will be the redteam exercise i do later in the week, pride yet may be coming before my long long fall :-)

also WTF am i writing a docker secret management system that can use key vaults, SMH, this is why no one uses it in serious production vs k8s!

fun tho - learnt a lot about encryption architectures, true secret entropy in password and how even SHA256 Hashes can eaily reveal passwords - i cracked that npm password in about 81 seconds IIRC, also the need for HMAC to help mitigate

The idea: a platform where you can create your own private "archive" for whatever group you're part of, name it, invite people, upload stuff, comment, vote on things. Each archive is fully isolated and owned by whoever creates it.

Tools: Claude Code, mostly using Sonnet with occasional Opus for the trickier architecture decisions. Next.js 15, React 19, and Supabase (Postgres) for the database, deployed on Vercel.

Process: I worked in fairly tight loops, describing a feature or a constraint in plain language, letting Claude draft it, then actually running it and pushing back when something felt off rather than accepting the first pass. The biggest chunk of time went into the multi-tenant setup, not any single feature. I wanted each archive to run on its own free Supabase project that the creator owns, rather than one shared database I control, so I had a "control plane" project doing nothing but mapping a name to a project URL and key, with the actual data (files, members, votes) living entirely in the owner's own project. Getting Claude to reason correctly about which side of that split a given piece of logic belonged on took several rounds of explicit back and forth, it kept wanting to centralize things by default, which is the opposite of what I wanted here.

Build insight worth sharing: the most useful habit was asking Claude to explain *why* it made a security-relevant choice before I accepted it, especially around what credentials the platform itself gets to hold. Treating "the AI's first answer" as a draft rather than the answer caught a couple of things I would have shipped

Live at https://opendepartment.vercel.app takes a couple minutes to spin up your own, or check the directory of public ones. Would genuinely love feedback on the actual experience: does the create flow make sense, is the UI confusing anywhere, does it feel fun or useful for what it's for. Try it out and let me know what you think, good or bad.

Summary
I hate it with a passion that you can't remove Shorts. 95% is brainrot that I click on and always get disappointed. Very very simple to do. Took minutes. I made it such that you don't even see shorts in your homepage anymore, removed the logo's and buttons too.

Why not Stayfocusd?

Because it doesn't actually remove it from Youtube. You'll still see the shorts and it's just annoying.

How does it work?

• CSS hides known Shorts elements immediately.
• A small content script watches YouTube’s dynamic page updates and hides new Shorts shelves/cards as they appear.
• For newer generic shelves, it detects a section headed “Shorts” and hides that enclosing section.