I used AI. It worked. I hated it. I used Claude Code to build a tool I needed. It worked great, but I was miserable. I need to reckon with what it means.

As a research project, I built a needed tool with Claude Code. I though it would be a disaster, but It wasn't. I have some complicated feelings about it.

the npmx landing page with a Transgender Pride Flag based kawaii logo built on March 31, 2026

today and always ./🏳️‍⚧️

the very first correct ai overview in modern history, i fear

Everyone has a right to exist.

If your title is "designer" & you keep using AI gen'd images for your articles & posts, all you're telling me is that you're too lazy to do the thing you claim to be an expert at.

If I said I'm an expert chef & brought a microwave dinner to our pitch meeting, you'd laugh me out of the building.

> "I'm not sure "we're actually not trying to provide a good experience" is a good excuse for not doing *something*."

Had I said that, then I'd argue with myself too.

> "System-wide a11y is objectively bad"

EAA in Europe and Section 508 in the US disagree with that stance.

prefers-color-scheme - CSS | MDN The prefers-color-scheme CSS media feature is used to detect if a user has requested light or dark color themes. A user indicates their preference through an operating system setting (e.g., light or d...

MDN, W3C, & caniuse all confirm prefers-color-scheme support form all modern browsers. The issue you linked to is marked as fixed, and was merged in Chrome 76. Linux is still finicky apparently, but that's a bug rather than a missing feature.

MDN
developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/W...

That's my point - the current preference setting is *not* for single site preferences. It's for system wide a11y, that that is handled well with some OSes doing better than others.

That's not true. Open something like Youtube or some other site using prefers-color-scheme. Change that setting in Chrome, refresh the page and see for yourself.

From an accessibility perspective - not a per-site cosmetic perspective - it's handled fairly well. Some OSes are better than others when it comes to a11y at a system level, which of course affects sites.

Chrome (like FF) has that setting in preferences. Safari doesn't, it follows the OS setting.

I think that inconsistency + OS differences you mention are all good arguments against adding a presentation control feature to the browser.

I think that's a good point, for sure. I use an extension for some per-site preferences but it's far from ideal.

I'm glad it bombed, but also 100% expect they (and competitor LLMs) are working on another version and devising new ways to weasel it into our lives. So it's far from over.

Nice post.
I'm not sure a presentation control like that is something the browser UI should be responsible for. Could argue it's for accessibility, but that's already handled (& handled more comprehensively) with browser & OS preferences, and augmented by extensions and OS level accessibility apps.

Local-First Software: Taking Back Control of Our Data | a mini-doc YouTube video by CultRepo

"How much of this can be local" should be the default question every dev asks. Most have gotten too comfortable with defaulting to remote hosting even the tiniest services. Glad to see a growing pushback for local-first.

A nice mini-doc from @cultrepo.bsky.social

www.youtube.com/watch?v=10d8...

Why do so many modern SaaS sites look the same? First, Tailwind. Second, agentic tools using it by default.

From @jim-nielsen.com :

"When you offload your thinking, you might be on-loading someone else’s you’d never agree to — personally or collectively."

blog.jim-nielsen.com/2026/opacity...

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Welcome to hell!
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It's fine to work with and there are some really nice things, but also some pretty major points of over-complexity for no apparent reason.

Considering some of the architectural choices within, I'm beginning to think Sanity[dot]io is ironically named.

Thanks. Nothing but smooth sailing!

Gitea Official Website Gitea - Git with a cup of tea! Painless self-hosted all-in-one software development service, including Git hosting, code review, team collaboration, package registry and CI/CD

I finally installed my own self-hosted instance of Gitea (about.gitea.com) and it's so good and so fast. I should have done this a long time ago. I really like Gitlab for a lot of reasons, but for 90% of my projects and especially solo work Gitea is fantastic.

Nothing is illegal on stolen I.P.

Good.

Why Am I Doing the Thinking for You? ‘What do you think?’ without a position isn’t a question — it’s a task assignment. State your opinion first. Let people react to something concrete.

Provide context, tell them where your head is, what you're leaning toward or considering, and where your gaps are. Then ask "What do you think?"

terriblesoftware.org/2026/02/02/w...

It's like going to a realtor and saying "I want a house. What do you think?" That's not enough.

You need to provide some context and parameters. Where? How many bedrooms? Is it okay if it's bright orange and next to a landfill?

If you, as a leader or colleague, can't articulate the kind of feedback you're actually looking for then you're not ready to ask for it. If you don't know what you want, don't ask someone else to figure it out for you.

I've worked for CEOs with a habit of saying "give me something to react to" and "what do you think" without providing any other direction.

It's not a helpful or productive approach because, at best, it demands wasted cycles as your team tries to guess what you're really asking for.

Screenshot of text: What’s this message is actually saying is: “I haven’t figured this out yet and I’d like you to do the thinking for me.” That sounds harsh, but it’s true. When you ask someone “what do you think?” without sharing what you think, you’re not collaborating, but more like outsourcing? You’re taking all the work you should have done (reading and understanding the doc, weighing the trade-offs, forming an opinion) and dumping it on someone else’s lap.

Food for thought from Terrible Software (which I found via @stefanjudis.com 's excellent newsletter):

Stop asking "What do you think?" without including your own thinking and context first. You're just offloading your work to someone else.

It's fine to say today's web is better for some things than the early web - it is. But it's also a lot worse for many things.
Enshittification has so much juice because people are tired of quantity over quality while corps scrape your own efforts & sell them back to you. It's not about nostalgia.

In '95 I could search AltaVista for a research paper & get the actual thing with accurate sources etc.

Today I can search for it on Google & get an AI summary that's wildly incorrect beside promoted slop & ads, w/ the paper behind a paywall.

That's enshittification. It's not a mythical golden era.