Notes from the cursor.
Occasional, opinionated, no listicles. What I actually use on a Tuesday.
Write less code, on purpose
My best PR last quarter deleted 800 lines and added 40. Nobody clapped. Production got faster. In an era where AI can spit out a thousand lines in 90 seconds, the new craft is writing fewer lines than you could have. Four habits that keep me honest.
Boring tech wins again in 2026
My current production stack is Postgres, Go, server-rendered HTML, a sprinkle of HTMX, and one AI call when something genuinely needs it. It is not exciting on Twitter. It is a delight to maintain. Here is why boring keeps winning in 2026.
How I evaluate AI features in my CMS
Every AI feature I ship in Squilla goes through a 3-question gate before it ships. Specificity, an eval set, and a real week with friendly users. Here is how each gate works, what passed, what died, and the small Go binary I use to keep the bar honest.
Hallucinations are a UX problem
I've stopped trying to eliminate hallucinations. I design around them. Three concrete patterns that turn a wrong model answer into a useful conversation, with a closing argument that the bad day, not the demo, is what reveals your product.
The AI features users actually liked
Every SaaS dashboard in 2024 had a chat-with-your-data button. Most are gone now. Here are three small products I watched, the AI features that died, the ones that stuck, and the pattern that decides which is which.
Designing prompts you can debug
My app started giving weird answers on Tuesday and I had no idea why, because the prompt was a 4,000-character soup of instructions. Here are five patterns that turned that wish into a system I can actually instrument.
Local vs cloud LLMs, mid-2026
I keep one frontier model in the cloud and one open model running on my Mac. Both earn their keep. Here is an honest snapshot of where local LLMs stand in June 2026, four real use cases, and why the question is not local vs cloud.
Prompt caching is the new prompt engineering
I cut my monthly Anthropic API bill 64% by moving one comma in a system prompt. Here is the mental model for prompt caching in 2026, three real wins from production apps, and the one gotcha that will silently invalidate your cache.
Long contexts are a trap (sometimes)
I have a million-token context window and I'm still hand-picking which files to share. Long context is a tool, not a strategy. Here is when it earns its keep, when it quietly costs you, and why curated beats comprehensive almost every time.
Claude 4.7 in one workday
A diary-style look at one ordinary workday on Claude 4.7. Five vignettes, a few honest annoyances, and the real verdict on how much it actually changes the way I ship.
A11y audit your theme in 30 minutes
I just bumped a client site from Lighthouse 78 to 100 in half an hour. Most a11y wins are cheap. Here is the 30-minute checklist I run on any WordPress, PHP, or static theme, with the tool to spot each issue and the fix in plain language.
WooCommerce vs Shopify, calmly
I run on both. Here is how I decide. A boring, honest WooCommerce vs Shopify comparison across six axes, with a simple decision rule at the end and one chart you can actually use.
Picking a host in 2026 without going broke or going crazy
A friendly, honest walkthrough of the four hosting tiers in 2026, what they actually cost, and which one fits your site without overpaying.
WordPress meets MCP: editing your site by talking to Claude
I built a small MCP server that wraps WP-CLI and the WP REST API so I can edit my WordPress site by talking to Claude. Eight tools, one Go binary, and suddenly the admin panel is optional.
The plugin you do not need
I just audited a WordPress site with 67 active plugins. The site does what a small theme and 6 plugins could do. Here is a friendly tour of the plugins most sites in 2026 do not actually need, and the six-month audit that keeps things lean.
Headless WordPress without the regret
I built two headless WordPress sites in 2022. One was perfect for the use case. The other was an expensive lesson. Here is how to tell which one you are about to build, before you commit to six months of regret.
WP-CLI tricks I use every week
WP-Admin is for clients. WP-CLI is for me. Eight commands I reach for almost every week, what each one saves, and why I install WP-CLI on every server I touch.
The Gutenberg endgame
I hated Gutenberg in 2018. Most devs did. In 2026 I quietly admit it won. Here is the arc, the three patterns that actually paid off, and why WordPress's seven-year bet on blocks is now ahead of most CMSes' editors.
WordPress is fine, actually
I build my own CMS for a living. I also still recommend WordPress to half my clients. Here is the honest case for why WordPress in 2026 is still the right answer more often than the internet wants to admit.
Migrating a WordPress site to Squilla: what worked, what hurt
I migrated a client's mid-sized WordPress site to Squilla as a real-world test. Around 500 posts, 4 custom post types, a few hundred media items. Here is the honest retrospective: 6 hours of scripting, 40 minutes of runtime, 12 manual fixes, and a clear verdict on why migration is hard.