Blog
Practical writing on software engineering, AI, careers, SaaS, and building a better life through technology.
Top 10 Claude Skills You Should Actually Be Using
Ten free, open-source Claude Code skills — from grill-me to code-review to wayfinder — each one built to fix a specific, recurring failure mode. Full install steps included.
On-Device AI: Why Running Models Locally Is Becoming a Selling Point
On-device models used to mean a worse experience by default. As the gap closed, running locally flipped from compromise to advertised feature.
Open Source vs. Closed AI Models: What the Divide Actually Means for Builders
Not an ideological debate — a practical trade-off between control and customization on one side, and convenience and raw capability on the other.
AI Note-Taking and Meeting Assistants: What's Worth Paying For
Transcription accuracy is table stakes now. The actual competition — and the thing worth paying for — is what happens to a transcript after it is captured.
AI Browser Extensions: The Quiet Category Nobody's Talking About
No launch buzz, no demo video — just a small icon that summarizes, drafts, and extracts information directly on the page you are already looking at.
Vertical AI SaaS: Why Narrow Beats General in 2026
A general assistant has to be good at everything. A vertical tool built for one industry can bake in every domain-specific rule a general tool would never prioritize.
What Is an AI Agent, Really? Cutting Through the Marketing
A working definition specific enough to exclude a relabeled chatbot: it has to act, observe the result, and decide the next step in a loop, without approval at every step.
AI Writing Assistants Beyond ChatGPT: What People Are Actually Switching To
The quiet trend is away from one general chat window and toward narrower tools built for a specific kind of writing, embedded directly where the writing already happens.
AI Video Generation Tools Compared: Where the Technology Actually Stands
Short clips with simple motion are genuinely strong today. Longer sequences, consistency, and precise camera control are where every current tool still breaks down.
The AI Image Generator Landscape: Who's Winning and Why
Output quality got good enough across the board that control — consistent characters, precise edits, exact composition — became the actual thing people search for.
AI Coding Assistants in 2026: What's Actually Different Between Them
Autocomplete, chat, and agentic tools all get called "AI coding assistants" and compete on entirely different axes. The comparison worth making is which job you are hiring for.
I Let Claude Grill Me About My Own Startup Idea. It Was Brutal — and Right.
I was confident enough in an idea to almost skip validating it. Twenty minutes of grill-me later, half my assumptions were gone — and the plan that survived was worth building.
What Nobody Tells You About Claude's Context Window
The context window isn't just about how much fits — response quality degrades gradually as a conversation fills with content that stopped being relevant.
The 10-Minute Claude Habit That Saves Me Hours Every Week
Writing down what "done" means before the first prompt goes out costs ten minutes flat. Skipping it costs a variable, usually larger amount, hidden as corrections.
How to Get Claude to Stop Agreeing With Everything You Say
An agreeable assistant is the right default for most requests and the wrong one for code review and plans. Here's the instruction that actually changes the behavior.
Claude Code vs. Claude the Chatbot: What's Actually Different
They share a model but not a job. The chatbot talks; Claude Code has hands — access to your actual files, shell, and tests. Confusing the two causes most of the frustration.
grill-me and grill-with-docs: How to Actually Install and Run Them
A step-by-step walkthrough of Matt Pocock's open-source grill-me and grill-with-docs skills — install, setup, when to use which one, and what a real session looks like.
Why Claude Keeps Misunderstanding Your Instructions (It's Not Claude)
Almost every misread instruction traces back to an ambiguity a human would have also resolved incorrectly — pronouns, missing context, and silent contradictions.
I Stopped Arguing With Claude About My Plans — Here's What I Do Instead
Matt Pocock's open-source /grill-me skill interviews you about your own plan until every branch is actually resolved, instead of just mentioned and quietly assumed away.
The One Claude Prompting Habit That Changes Everything
Put the goal and the hard constraint first in your prompt, not buried in paragraph three. The reorder matters more than the extra detail.