Migrating To Astro
A short, fast rollercoaster
I've run Thought Eddies as a more dynamic, experimental blog since the beginning of this year. I'd heard about Astro and wanted to put a more personal touch on my web presence.
Posts
Find the Groove
Using Checkpoints with Coding Agents
Working with Cursor was my first experience with the UX pattern of checkpoints when working with a coding agent. If you're not familiar, it works like this. The user types a message into an agent-based IDE tool like Cursor, Windsurf, or Cline and submits it to the agent. The agent reads files,...
State Of Code Agents - July 2025
Agents can make progress independently, but they also make messes
I use code agents to help me code in various capacities. Everything from fully "vibe coded" tools to scripts to specific, well described tasks.
Gemini Hidden Reasoning
The performance costs of thinking and provider defaults
While building Tomo and several prototypes using LLMs, I've experimented with several popular language models. It's generally easier to prototype using the OpenAI chat responses API because most providers support this early API spec (mostly). This approach makes it pretty simple to switch between...
A few strategies to make LLMs useful for you
I was reading your blog and had a question about this: "I noticed that my coworker was prompting for specific technical implementations, and Claude was struggling, pulling in too much context and taking an unfocused approach, whereas I would have been much more vague and general to start and...
Agent Coding Strategies
If you've read any of my writing in the past year, you're probably aware I've heavily adopted agents to build much of the software I write now. What I've done less of is write about the strategies I've used to do this.
Who Finds LLMs Useful and Why
Who is finding LLMs useful and who is not? And why is this the case?
Create a Link Blog
RSS feeds for blogs and things you write or create are great. If you read a lot, you probably also have a lot of articles you've read that you share with others and occasionally revisit.
LLM Chat UI Concepts
A few concepts for LLM chat UIs
To write this post, I was going to take myself through some of the history of different chat interfaces. This is not that post. I was too impatient and decided to go in without any appreciation for prior art (beyond what I'm already aware of), because it seemed more fun at the time.
Models as Force Multipliers and their Limits in Software Development
You need to use models to build software to really understand their limits
I'm on a flight and wanted to write code to work on an idea. After a few moments of shifting mental gears, I popped open Zed, which allows me to code with a local LLM using ollama. My default impulse when writing code is to prompt a model. At first, I felt somewhat negative about this but with...