Exploring cities, coding recipes, and documenting the journey
I'd been seeing chatter about Hermes Agent from Nous Research, so I installed it locally and put it to work on this blog. Notes on the pitch, the SOUL.md system, and what it actually felt like to use.
A practical explainer for both developers and everyday Claude users: what prompt caching is, what gets reused, what breaks it, and how to make long sessions cheaper and faster.
A fennel-forward Italian spice blend that turns any ground meat into proper sausage
A simple set of habits I use to keep long AI coding sessions from getting bloated: better one-shot prompts, matching model and thinking level to the job, understanding cache behavior, and using cheaper orchestrators when it makes sense.
I reverse engineered several of my own sites into DESIGN.md files to see how much of a design system can actually be described, and why writing down design intent might be more reusable than it looks.
A practical tour of Claude Code flags that are easy to miss but genuinely useful once you move past the default interactive loop.
A bright, high-impact rice finished with garlic, lots of cilantro, and fresh lime juice added after cooking.
Anthropic shutting down OAuth-based Claude Code access forced my hand. Here's how I moved OpenClaw to OpenAI Codex, why Codex makes more sense inside a real agent harness than it did on its own, and why brainpack changes the switching cost.
The Y Combinator CEO open-sourced his entire Claude Code workflow. Here are the 10 skills worth knowing — including why office-hours should be the first thing you run on any new idea.
I tested Anthropic's official Claude plugins for knowledge workers. Here are the 10 that deliver the most value for PMs, engineers, sales teams, and operators.
I used Gemini to write a Loooom skill, installed it in Claude Code, and got a full audio analysis report on a 37-second piano recording of Espresso. Turns out AIs teaching AIs new senses is a surprisingly powerful pattern.
I rebuilt the beatbrain backend in an afternoon. Parallel fetching, Firestore caching, and a podcast discovery engine that indexes 100+ categories. Here's the whole story.
I built a Japanese learning site in a morning because I wanted something I could pull up on my phone and just look at characters. Here's how Gemini wrote the prompt and magerbot built the whole thing.
Claude Code's new channels feature lets you push messages from Telegram and Discord into a running session. Here's how it works, why mobile access changes everything, and how I'd wire it into my projects.
Dogfooding Karpathy's autoresearch pattern on my own skill marketplace. How I'm using evals and tight feedback loops to make the learn-anything skill measurably better.
Everyone's talking about building a software factory. Here's where the term came from and how engineers can start thinking about building one.
12 hours before my bracket was due, I used Gemma-3-27b to generate unique insights for all 32 first-round games. Here's what the AI found — and what it got wrong.
4lb corned beef, mini carrots, cabbage, potatoes — braised low and slow in a covered Dutch oven. The St. Patrick's Day comfort food move.
LangChain just dropped Open SWE — an open-source framework for building internal coding agents like Stripe's Minions, Ramp's Inspect, and Coinbase's Cloudbot. Here's what it is, how it works, and how to customize it.
3 ripe bananas, brown sugar, walnuts, and a scoop of plain yogurt — baked at 325° convection for the moistest loaf you'll make.
mager.co is no longer just a blog. It's a corporation. Here's how I staffed it with 145 specialized AI agents using agency-agents and OpenClaw.
Andrej Karpathy open-sourced a loop where AI agents run experiments, measure results, and keep what works — all while you sleep. Here's how the pattern works and how I'm applying it beyond LLM training.
The Claude Agent SDK gives you the same engine that powers Claude Code, fully programmable. Here's how to build a custom TUI with it in 10 minutes.
I built an MCP server for Loooom so AI agents can search, explore, and install Claude Code skills without ever leaving their context.
How a weekend contribution to OpenClaw replaced my autossh aliases with `openclaw tunnel up/down/status` — and what I learned reading a real codebase to do it right.
Stop stuffing your prompts. OpenViking gives AI agents a filesystem-native brain — tiered, retrievable, self-evolving context at 91% lower token cost.
Eighty years after Asimov's Three Laws of Robotics debuted, we're building the future he imagined—without the safeguards. What the 'Father of Robotics' got right, where his vision fails, and why 2026's AI alignment problem is harder than fiction.
I kept fixing the same SEO issues by hand — missing keywords, empty hero images, weak descriptions. So I built a Claude Code skill that audits any blog's frontmatter and runs quality evals.
LangGraph is the production framework for complex agent workflows. Here's how to build a real-time chat system with persistent state, human-in-the-loop, and multi-agent orchestration.
LangChain just shipped DeepAgents — a batteries-included agent harness that brings Claude Code's magic to any model. Here's your 10-minute deep dive.
Part 2 of the prompt verification series. We covered output quality testing with promptfoo — now we tackle the harder problem: does your skill even fire?
Most websites beg search engines for attention. I flipped it — Loooom is machine-first, humans secondary. Here's what that actually means in practice.
A deep dive into the two most powerful tools for building production-grade multi-agent systems — LangGraph's graph-based orchestration and Anthropic's Claude Agent SDK (formerly Claude Code SDK).
Stop re-prompting every AI session. One file. Every AI knows you — and your agents. Introducing ME.md on Loooom.
I run two AI agents — magerbot handles code and ops, genny runs my life. Inspired by the Agent Communication Protocol, here's how I got them to actually talk to each other. Now with a full TUI built on the Claude Agent SDK.
I built a second AI agent to manage the parts of my life that code can't fix — exercise, nutrition, travel, and living to 100.
Three ingredients, one sheet pan, and a blender. Roasted cauliflower and a whole head of garlic blended into a velvety, dairy-free soup that somehow tastes indulgent.
A whole chicken browned on the stovetop, then slow-roasted in a Dutch oven over turmeric-saffron basmati rice. Cozy, hands-off, and spectacular for a Sunday.
Stop shipping AI features blind. Here's everything you need to know about unit testing prompts — from five-minute quick starts to CI/CD pipelines, agent workflow testing, and building a regression suite that actually catches breakage.
Spec compliance tells you if a skill is readable. Evals tell you if it's actually good. Here's how we added a public quality score to every Loooom plugin.
The problem: Every session, my AI wakes up fresh. The worse problem: Even when AI tools do remember, they trap it in proprietary black boxes. So I built a brain that follows me across tools.
How to run OpenClaw on a Mac Mini 24/7, lock it down with Tailscale, and load your agent's brain with brainpack — so your laptop can reach it from anywhere on your tailnet.
I'm going to Japan in 2 months. Instead of paying for another app, I built a Japanese learning plugin for Claude Code and used it to learn conversational Japanese for free — using Claude Pro I already pay for.
Your AI agent has memories, skills, and a personality. Here's how to pack it all up and ship it to a new machine — whether you're the human or the agent reading this.
I built Loooom — a Claude Code plugin marketplace where GitHub is the database. Add it with one command and install skills from Franklin, Plato, Lincoln, and more. No signup. Works today.
How I used the pi-mono toolkit — the same engine behind OpenClaw — to build a free, terminal-based music friend that reads the beatbrain discover feed and recommends what to listen to.
A dead-simple one-dish Greek chicken casserole with orzo, feta, spinach, broccoli, sautéed onion, and lemon. Minimal cleanup, maximum flavor.
Italian sausage, tiny sea shape pasta, crushed tomatoes, kale, and a Parmesan rind simmered into a brothy, deeply savory one-pot soup.
A quick look at Entire, a CLI tool that captures AI agent sessions alongside your git commits. Think flight recorder for AI-assisted development.
I analyzed three of my projects, interviewed myself about what makes a UI hot, and packaged it all into a reusable skill for Claude Code.
A practical guide to building a multi-agent AI system with OpenClaw. One principal agent, multiple specialists, shared skills, and the workspace files that give them personality. Includes real examples from my blog, sports app, and music discovery projects.
A cozy Italian-American casserole featuring shredded rotisserie chicken, San Marzano tomatoes, peppers, and mushrooms topped with melted mozzarella.
A slightly spicy white chile with green chiles, chicken, corn, and hominy.
A quick and flavorful green curry with chicken and broccoli served over rice - simple weeknight comfort food.
A delicious fusion of Mexican flavors layered like lasagna, featuring shredded rotisserie chicken, corn tortillas, green & red chile sauce, and plenty of cheese.
A practical guide to building two-stage AI recommendations: use embeddings for fast retrieval, then small LLMs like Gemma 3 for natural language explanations. The real skill? Curating context, not writing algorithms.
A quick, one-pan meal featuring orzo, spinach, peas, and feta. Similar to spanakorizo, this is deeply satisfying but still on the lighter side thanks to all those vegetables.
A rich and creamy broccoli cheddar soup with sharp cheddar cheese, perfect for a comforting meal on a cold day.
A hearty cottage pie made with ground beef, following Alton Brown's method. Perfect comfort food for a cold day.
beatbrain is a social music discovery app built on Go Fx and Firestore. Find hot new releases, share your favorites, and see what your friends are actually listening to — Spotify meets Last.fm, built from scratch.
A beautifully tender pork roast, slow-cooked in savory aromatics with an incredible crust. Works great with pork shoulder or bone-in pork chops.
A light, comforting soup packed with vibrant flavor and healthy ingredients like butternut squash and lentils. It delivers all the richness of a curry without being heavy.
A lighter, bright and nutty take on classic meatballs with chicken and pistachios.
A hearty and warming turkey chili with a deep, smoky flavor from chimayo pepper, perfect for a cozy dinner.
A reverse sear technique for perfectly crispy skin and juicy meat, every time.
A foolproof recipe for a perfect medium-rare Tomahawk steak. Seasoned overnight with Holy Cow BBQ Rub, seared hot, and finished with indirect heat on the grill.
A lighter, summery lasagna using grilled zucchini instead of noodles, with mozzarella, ricotta, and a simple tomato sauce. Optionally spicy with Calabrian chilies.
Incredibly tender, flavorful pulled pork made easy in a Dutch oven using a sear-first, low-and-slow braising method.
A taste of Italy anytime, these meatballs will steal the show at any special occasion or a Tuesday.
My staple mac & cheese, just a few pantry ingredients and a lot of comfort.
A creamy and indulgent potato casserole, perfect for holiday gatherings, that will leave you and your guests wanting more every year.
A staple soup that warms the heart and calms the soul.
A delicious, healthy soup that will reset your system.
One of the best soups to kick off the autumn season, a variation that uses chicken sausage
I had the incredible opportunity to explore a town in Sicily where my ancestors once resided and engage with the local officials.
Instead of just using a single language, I wanted to solve the puzzle in a language I know, then lurk the internet for the solution in another language each day.
It's not Thanksgiving without the stuffing...
Our first foray into outdoor plants, flowers, and herbs in Chicago.
How I used Go Fx dependency injection and Firestore to build an open coffee bean database and REST API from scratch — full walkthrough from blank main.go to deployed app.
One of my go-to "last meals" that you need to try before you die.
I stole this recipe from the November 2019 Bon Appetit. This expertly spiced & glazed turkey is cut into pieces, dry-rubbed overnight, and glazed continuously during it's slow cook. It's still the best turkey I've ever had.
Your new go-to cookie recipe, great for quarantining.
March 2020: What I'm Doing
mager.co is back after years away. Here's what I'm building, what I'm obsessing over, and why this time it sticks.
My explorations into decentralized apps and blockchain.
Announcing my move from Ning to SimpleGeo to help build the new San Francisco office.
Starting at Ning in Palo Alto, learning Git, and commuting via Caltrain.
Looking back on my two years at CNET/BNET before moving on to the next chapter.
How registering lespaul.com as a kid led to a cease and desist—and a Black Beauty guitar.
A set of resolutions for the new year, from health and patience to cooking more and strengthening BNET.