Blog

Thoughts on AI-first development, staff engineering, and building with Claude Code

26 posts11 topics2h 35m of readingsince January 2026

Reading paths

Coding From Anywhere3 partsA month at a time in a different European city, shipping software with an AI-first workflow. What held up, what broke, and what the wifi was like.The AI-First Journey4 partsHow my day-to-day engineering went from writing most of the code myself to directing a team of agents, and what that changed about the job.

Everything on one page

AI-First DevelopmentThe whole AI-first story in one place: the journey, the setup, the manager pattern, and what it looks like in practice.

EngineeringAI-First DevelopmentClaude Code

Six months ago I would have told you AI could review all of our code and catch more than humans ever did. Then I watched what actually happens when the author didn't read the PR, the reviewers didn't read the PR, and everyone assumed someone had. Here's where I landed instead.

6 August 20268 min read

FamilyRaspberry PiHomelabAI-First DevelopmentSide ProjectsClaude Code

At my dad's retirement party, in the gap before England vs Norway kicked off on the garden projector, I built him a digital time capsule. Guests scanned a QR code on the big screen and left sealed notes and predictions that nobody - including me - can read until 27 March 2027. The best part was watching the counter tick up all afternoon.

4 August 20266 min read

AI-First DevelopmentClaude CodeRaspberry PiHomelabRemote Work

At the end of my Split writeup I said the next iteration of this lifestyle wasn't a nicer office on the road - it was no office. cc-remote is the first real step: a Claude-branded Android chat client driving persistent Claude Code sessions in tmux on a Raspberry Pi 5, over Tailscale. Full-fat Claude Code, on my phone, no laptop required.

6 July 20266 min read

Part 3 of Coding From Anywhere

Remote WorkTravelAI-First Development

30 days working remotely from Kastela, on the Dalmatian coast just outside Split. A private villa with a roof terrace, calm water minutes away, and a workflow that mostly held up - but also started giving me ideas about how to untether even further from the desk.

25 May 20268 min read

Side ProjectsEngineeringRaspberry PiHomelab

A Discord bot I help run quietly serves 1.4 million users across 11,000+ servers. It has been running since 2021. On a recent Saturday it broke - really broke - and the fix involved a Cloudflare tunnel, an old Raspberry Pi sitting in my parents' living room, and exactly zero dollars of new infrastructure. Here's the story.

16 May 20269 min read

Side ProjectsClaude CodeHomelabAI-First Development

I asked Claude a question this evening - 'any cars on the drive?' - and thirty seconds later it described the cars, where they were parked, and that they hadn't moved in the last ten minutes. The thing that answered wasn't a smart-home plugin or a cloud service. It was an MCP server I'd written hours earlier, bridging my home CCTV to Claude Code. Here's what I learned building it in one evening.

12 May 20267 min read

Side ProjectsClaude CodeRaspberry PiAI-First Development

I spent eleven days building an ambient AI agent on a Raspberry Pi. It fused my calendar, watch, location, and phone state into one decision loop, then nudged me throughout the day. I drank more water. I moved more. I was more present. Then I killed it. Here's what worked, what failed, and what every habit app has been missing.

12 May 20265 min read

Part 2 of Coding From Anywhere

Remote WorkTravelAI-First DevelopmentClaude Code

A month of remote work from Rome - where world-class history is a 20-minute walk from your desk, but the local cafes want you in and out. Here's how the AI-first workflow held up against API rate limits and Italian work culture.

4 May 20265 min read

Side ProjectsTravelRaspberry Pi

I wanted to track my travels across Europe without handing my location data to Google. So I built a self-hosted GPS system that pings every 5 minutes, stores everything on my Raspberry Pi, and displays it on a private map only my devices can see.

12 April 20267 min read

Part 1 of Coding From Anywhere

TravelAI-First DevelopmentRemote Work

28 days working remotely from Lisbon - how the AI-first manager pattern, a travel router, and a good routine made it one of my most productive months yet.

3 April 20267 min read

Side Projects

A friend built a weather app for a town in Germany. I thought - why not Wigan? Here's how I built a full-stack weather intelligence app on nothing but free-tier services.

2 April 20265 min read

AI-First DevelopmentRemote WorkTravel

The manager/agent pattern is inherently async - spawn work, go live your life, come back to results. AI-first development and the nomad lifestyle are a natural fit.

1 April 20267 min read

ProductivityRemote Work

A practical, opinionated guide to the tools, hardware, and workflows that actually matter for remote engineering in 2026. Less than you think, better than you'd expect.

30 March 20267 min read

Part 3 of The AI-First Journey

AI-First DevelopmentEngineering

I no longer write code directly. Instead, I manage a team of AI agents that do the implementation while I stay free to think, redirect, and make decisions in real-time.

28 March 20265 min read

Side ProjectsAI

I wanted to see how well AI could detect things from images. A fridge seemed like the perfect test case. The result is an app that identifies your food and suggests recipes - and roasts you if you ask it to.

25 March 20264 min read

AI-First DevelopmentProductivity

I published my complete Claude Code configuration as a gist - Team Lead Mode, 8 slash commands, model routing, hooks, and more. Here's what's in it and why it matters.

20 March 20265 min read

Side ProjectsAI-First Development

I'm planning a nomad trip across Europe in 2026. With geopolitical tensions escalating, I built a real-time travel risk dashboard powered by a two-agent AI validation pipeline.

18 March 20267 min read

Part 4 of The AI-First Journey

EngineeringAI-First Development

AI doesn't replace the staff engineer - it amplifies the parts of the role that matter most. Architecture, system design, mentoring, and high-leverage decision-making become even more important.

14 March 20264 min read

EngineeringAI-First Development

AI agents can write code fast, but speed without guardrails is dangerous. Here are the 11 hooks I use to make sure my agents never commit secrets, skip formatting, or break conventions.

8 March 20266 min read

AI-First DevelopmentEngineering

I built a system where two Claude Code instances review PRs through a Slack thread, discussing trade-offs back and forth and automatically committing fixes. Here's how it works.

28 February 20264 min read

Part 2 of The AI-First Journey

AI-First DevelopmentEngineering

My path from basic GitHub Copilot autocomplete to full AI-first orchestration wasn't planned. It was a series of realisations about what was actually slowing me down.

20 February 20264 min read

AI-First DevelopmentProductivity

When AI agents do your development work in the background, you need observability. Here's how I built a custom status bar that shows me everything I need at a glance.

12 February 20265 min read

AI-First DevelopmentProductivity

Using the most powerful AI model for every task is like driving a lorry to the corner shop. Here's my model routing strategy and why it improves both speed and quality.

5 February 20264 min read

AI-First DevelopmentEngineering

The most effective way to use AI for development isn't as a single assistant - it's as a team of specialists with a manager coordinating their work. Here are the patterns that make it work.

28 January 20265 min read

Part 1 of The AI-First Journey

AI-First DevelopmentEngineering

Six months of building software primarily through AI agents. Here's an honest account of what works, what doesn't, what surprised me, and what I'd tell teams considering the switch.

15 January 20267 min read

Blog

I Got Into a Vibe-Coded App. The Dev Actually Fixed It.

Reading paths

Everything on one page

Nobody Read the Code: Why I Changed My Mind About AI Review

A Time Capsule for My Dad

Claude Code in My Pocket: Building cc-remote

Coding From Split: A Villa, a Pool, and a Cat Who Kept Letting Himself In

1.4 Million Users and a Raspberry Pi at My Parents' House

Asking Claude What's on My Driveway

My AI Agent Became My Life Coach by Accident

Coding From Rome: Ancient City, Modern Workflow

Building a Private GPS Tracker: Real-Time Location Tracking Without Google

Coding From Lisbon: A Month of AI-First Development on the Road

Building Wigan Weather: A Full-Stack Weather Intelligence App

Why AI-First Development is Perfect for Digital Nomads

The Remote Engineer's Toolkit for 2026

Why I Stopped Writing Code and Started Orchestrating AI Agents

Building Struggle Chef: When AI Looks Inside Your Fridge

The Claude Code Power Setup That Changed How I Build Software

Building Monitoring the Situation: A Real-Time Travel Risk Dashboard

Staff Engineering in the Age of AI: What Actually Changes

11 Git Hooks That Make AI Agents Safe to Run Unsupervised

How Two AI Instances Review Each Other's Code

From Copilot to Conductor: My AI Development Journey

Building Observable AI Workflows with Custom Status Lines

Model Routing: Why I Use Different AI Models for Different Tasks

The Manager Pattern: Treating Your AI Like a Development Team

Practical Lessons from Six Months of AI-First Development