Spec-driven vibe development

I've been playing with loads of AI coding tools the last few months and while the tools themselves are evolving rapidly, my knowledge of the limitations and the right ways to work with them have really leveled up what I'm getting out of them.

I've just deployed the first few versions of a pretty complex little blob of code implementing a bulletin board system running on the Meshcore mesh networking system. Meshcore runs over seriously bandwidth constrained radio links: 184 byte message payload limits, really slow link speeds at the radio layer (~1.7 kbit/s on the typical settings used in Sydney). Claude investigated and planned out an architecture to make this work and made intelligent suggestions.

The process worked like this:

Outline the setup and how I'd like to deploy it, what I wanted from it and how users would connect (I'll drop the initial prompt down the bottom of the post)
Claude comes back with deep insight into the limitations of the network, the architecture I'm planning and brings up things I hadn't thought of like spam, abuse and network overload considerations
I ask it to write a detailed spec including all the architecture and components
The initial spec includes a whole section of unresolved questions which I answer and it finalises the spec.
I move the spec into a new chat and direct it to build the thing.
Claude outputs a tar file with the full thing.

All this was done on my phone while lying in bed. I went to sleep that night and the following morning dropped the tarball into a directory and pointed Claude Code at it. Build the docker container, install on my Unraid server, connect up a Meshcore device and get serial routed to the container.

Bam. Up and running. And it works really quite well!

Unbelievable.

Further iterations were a bit clunky with me having to deploy the containers manually and going through the config loop more than once. I worked out a better flow using Github Actions to build the containers and deploy them to a container store that Unraid can reload. Turning into a nice workflow.

What I'm now thinking through and will start experimenting with is getting a really tight process for doing these kinds of projects that neatly migrates straight into an easy production workflow. I toyed with this a bit on my FBI Radio apps using Linear for issue management, Cursor for coding agents and Github actions for build and delivery.

So I'm evolving towards a workflow that looks something like this:

Initial spec in an LLM output to Markdown
Migrate into Cursor with Linear upstream
Cursor agents build the app
Deployments go to Github PRs which are built and test by Cursor agents
PRs merged manually which builds the production artifacts
I've used Railway a bit for deployment here

What's blowing my mind is the quality of the agents in these processes. Not just at writing the code but building the deployment pipelines, testing the code, reviewing it and making quite good suggestions and changes.

We are in an interesting world. Knowing a bit about coding and coding workflows sure is becoming a superpower.

That initial prompt:

I want to set up a Meshcore bulletin board system that users can access through direct messages. It could provide services such as news headlines, quick weather info, public message boards with persistence and messages to other users that are asynchronous.

The idea would be that messages to and from an individual user would be their unique stream connecting them to the BBS. Authentication would just be their public key used to sign their DMs. If in understanding how DMs work correctly.

How would I get this set up? I'm thinking of running it in a VM on my unraid server with a serial connection to a Meshcore companion device. It could use the Meshcore python library to connect.

https://github.com/meshcore-dev/meshcore_py

Build me an outline of how this would work. Highlight any potential issues or things I haven't thought of.

Music and AC control

I spend a lot of time in my office listening to music so I built a little module to control playback and at the same time control the air conditioning in the space.

It's built on this Matouch rotary encoder display unit. As well as the circular screen and rotary encoder, you can push the whole thing in to operate as a switch and the screen is a touch screen.

So the interface is pretty simple. It usually shows whatever is currently playing. Rotate the encoder to change volume. Press to play/pause. There's hot locations on the screen for next track/rewind. Press and turn and you can seek. Around the edge of the display there's a bar showing the position within the track. Press the dot down the bottom to switch to AC mode and you can turn that on/off and change the set temperature.

The interface is built in ESPHome connected to Home Assistant. ESPHome GUI configuration is an abysmal process with C++ embedded in YAML. Two awful tools, together at last. Fortunately Claude is really good at it! I iterated over the design a fair bit and am pretty happy with it. Though it can be a little unstable, crashing fairly regularly.

Oh and I had to create a little server-side proxy for the album art because the JPEG library ESPHome uses can't handle progressive JPEGs which is what Tidal sends through.

FBi radio app with Android Auto

So I guess I'm an Android Auto developer now...

There's a local community radio station here in Sydney called "FBi" (Free Broadcasting Inc) which plays great music. However they don't retransmit the radio signal in any of the tunnels and their signal only gets just outside Sydney. Their web-based player requires you to keep the browser open to play it.

I got Claude Code to build me an app. It scrapes the site's GraphQL to find out the currently-playing show and displays the details.

And of course it has Amplitude tracking including session replay. SR only works with the phone side of the equation, not what I see on the car's screen.

That was a fun little evening project! Should I release it on the app store?

Music discovery

I listen to a lot of music, and I'm always looking for new music. People often ask me how I discover so much new music.

I read a lot of music reviews, and if anyone ever recommends an artist to me, I will add it to a playlist and make sure I have a good listen. If it's someone whose taste I really respect, I will give it multiple listens and maybe even follow up and talk to them about it, explore why they recommended it.

I also listen to lots of radio, primarily Sydney's FBi and the French FIP. I listen to Ultima Thule on 2MBS, which is a long-running ambient show, and on BBC Six Music I listen to Stuart Mackonie's Freak Zone. I watch videos from Tiny Desk and from KCRW on YouTube. Give each of them a go.

Now I've got a new music discovery tool. I was in San Francisco last week and had the weekend available to me, so I thought, I wonder what gigs are on? I asked Manus, which is a really cool agentic AI tool, to recommend some gigs to me, but I didn't give it any context. I've been recording my musical listening history for over 20 years into last.fm.

So I asked Manus to look at all of my musical history and then to make some recommendations on gigs I should go and see in San Francisco that night. It nailed it in one. It was quite incredible. The list of artists that it suggested I go see was spot on for my tastes.

Artist	Venue	Why You'll Like It
The Brian Jonestown Massacre	The Chapel (9:00 PM)	Their neo-psychedelia and shoegaze sound aligns perfectly with your long-term interest in bands like The Cure and Sonic Youth.
Indigo De Souza	The Fillmore (8:00 PM)	A rising star in indie rock with raw, clever songwriting that fits right in with your appreciation for The Beths and Vampire Weekend.
Opiuo	Public Works (9:30 PM)	If you're in the mood for something electronic, his glitch-hop and bass-heavy sets will appeal to your interest in Four Tet and Plaid.
Tigran Hamasyan	Great American Music Hall (8:00 PM)	For something more instrumental and complex, this jazz-fusion pianist is a great match for your interest in GoGo Penguin.

it also suggested Go Go Bordello, which are an amazing band, but a little more high energy than I was up for, given the hectic week I'd had. I also wasn't keen on Brian Jonestown Massacre because I've seen them before and I didn't have time for Anton's bullshit

I went and made up a playlist of the other artists and got into my work with it playing in the background. All the music I heard would've been a fun gig.

And then this track came up. My brain pretty quickly perked up and I was asking myself "WTF is this time signature?"

So that kinda decided it. Perfect for a Friday night after an intense week of work.

The gig was incredible. Incredibly skilled musicians. The drummer was a fucking metronome. Just amazing, and insane music.

The answer, BTW, is 256/32 with the main motif in 35/16. Click for a video that follows it. Insane right? 🤯

And here's the AI's full interaction in Manus. I'm quite digging this new method of music discovery!

Hot sauce

I just bottled my latest fermented hot sauce. 30 bottles using Andy's recipe. Same as last year except last year I used red jalapenos and this year I'm using "long red" chillis. I have some habaneros growing in the garden but nowhere near enough for a big batch of the hot stuff.

Last year's sauce was delicious but a bit too mild in the heat department. This year is a bit hotter which is getting to about my sweet spot.

2025 was busy

2025 was a pretty busy one for me. I did 128,000 kilometres of travel, saw 21 gigs with 64 different artists. Phew!

Music

A lot of gigs. Best gig of the year was Ezra Collective at the Opera House. I've never seen the entire Concert Hall up and dancing.

Download PXL_20250531_125641849.LS.mp4

Artists I saw (excluded some from festivals):

Bahamadia
The Beards
The Beths
Cloud Control
Clouds
DJ Shadow
Egoism (twice)
Ela Minus
Ezra Collective
Fontaines D.C.
Furnace and the Fundamentals
God Is An Astronaut
PJ Harvey (twice)
The Herd
Kneecap
Kristin Hersh
King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard
The Necks
Parcels
Pete & Bas
Hania Rani
Severed Heads
Skeleten
Sun Ra Arkestra
Tangerine Dream
Throwing Muses

Travel

Nine trips to Melbourne, two to San Francisco and an epic Singapore-Paris-London-Porto trip with the Rumbleskins. The Europe trip was a load of fun!

Adblock detection on Recipetineats.com

Hi there Nagi.

I don't know who's advising you, but the adtech on your site is neither "limited" nor "respectful". The actual ad units you're displaying might be small but what's happening beneath the surface is quite extensive.

The adtech on your site in my test makes the browser connect to 150 different web servers. That is, it's attempting to share my behaviour with all those places. The purpose? Well, that's where things get shady.

I'm a big fan. Take a look at the food-splattered, well-thumbed books. We love your stuff in our household and use your recipes all the time. I feel like your recipes have massively increased my partners' cooking confidence because they work so well to bring delicious food to the table every time.

I'm also an expert in online behavioural tracking, adtech and internet privacy. This is what I do for a living. When I block ads, it's only partially because of the distraction and annoyance. The main problem is the shady supply chain behind the modern digital ad business. I also know how little you'll actually be making from each of these shady suppliers. Is it worth it?

If you'd like to discuss what's happening here and get a perspective from someone who isn't your adtech vendor, drop me a note and let's have a chat. (I'm in Sydney too, so no problematic timezones.)

Here's a list of all the domains your site gets browsers to connect with right now. Do you know what they're all up to?

King Giz, Throwing Muses and Parcels in one weekend

I've been slack with blogging about gigs so I'll try to catch up. Just lived through a hectic weekend. In the Australian Summer there's always lots of gigs on as artists tour and play the festival circuit. We often end up with really busy times. This weekend was especially nuts.

King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard. If you haven't seen them live, get on it. Their recorded music is very eclectic and can be challenging but live they're unbelievably fun with a lively crowd. Honestly I never thought they were my thing, then went to a show and now I'm hooked.

Saturday night was supposed to be some down time. Then our mates put us on the door for Throwing Muses at The Factory around the corner from our place so we dragged ourselves off the couch and ducked around.

We saw Kristen Hirsch on her last solo tour and she's a mesmerising performer. She's tiny but she fills the stage with presence and incredible songs. Amazingly we even got to meet her afterwards and she was gracious and funny, having to socialise with the promoter's rando mates. Absolute legend!

Sunday night rolled around and the one we've been hanging out for. Parcels. On the Sydney Opera House steps!

Fortunately the weather improved from the oppressive heat of Saturday to be cool and breezy. Perfect for a cool and breezy band, seemingly made for outdoor stages. Fantastic set of good vibes and fun times.

Download PXL_20251207_102702069.LS.mp4

Only one gig in the coming weekend!

FBi to Podcast

I love our local Sydney community radio station FBi, Free Broadcasting Incorporated. They've been running for years and always have interesting music, arts and culture.

However they recently launched a new web site which makes it quite difficult but not impossible to play archived programmes any way except through your web browser. I want to play them on my music system without so much fuss. Enter my co-developer Cursor and we've got a script to scrape my favourite shows and generate an ATOM feed suitable for a podcast player.

The code is up on Github and it's currently running through a cron job on my home server so I can listen to old episodes any time. It should be relatively easy to adjust it to your favourite shows.

Disable power exporting when the price goes negative with an Enphase solar inverter

A few weeks ago we got a Tesla Powerwall installed, taking advantage of the price drop and the NSW government subsidy. I've signed up for Amber, who pass through the wholesale power price such that in the 19 days we've had it, we're $70 in credit having consumed nearly 400 kWh of power. Admittedly we've been using the air conditioners a lot to chew up free solar and keep the house pre-cooled during the hot days.

To get the most out of Amber, you need to be able to store power and predict when you will need it. Their SmartShift app does this for you, but you can control it crudely when you need to, for example tell it to not dump power to the grid on a night you know you'll need power, say to run the oven. Otherwise it automatically works it out, and it's been pretty good for that.

However, Amber can't currently control my Enphase inverter. You need to be able to stop your solar generating and exporting power to the grid when the power goes negative. Fortunately a guy in Melbourne has written a great little script that does just this. It monitors the Amber power price and when it goes negative tells the inverter to switch to an export profile that has "0 kW" set as the export limit.

The only problem, as reported here by another Enphase user, the Powerwall reacts so quickly to any loads in the house that the Enphase microinverters see essentially no load and don't produce any power. If your battery isn't already full, your house will drain from the battery and then once empty it'll use the grid. Using the grid when it's negative isn't a bad thing but draining the battery not so much.

So I worked with Brendan to work out where I could hook in a quick check to see if the battery is full, using Home Assistant. I don't know Ruby at all so Brendan was very helpful and patient.

Here's the diff you can run against the repository to make the required change. You'll need to create a long-lived API token in your Home Assistant instance and set that as ZEST_HOME_ASSISTANT_TOKEN, then find the URL for the battery charge level resource in the Tesla integration and set that in ZEST_HOME_ASSISTANT_URL. For mine that URL is http://<IP of HA>:8123/api/states/sensor.my_home_charge. That's it.

Thanks so much Brendan for helping me out!

With the instability in the grid these days pushing the spot prices up a lot I suspect I'll be able to pay off the battery much quicker than it'd be on a normal power plan, with the added bonus of us not having to worry about when we use power so much.