Loops adds starter kits. I’ve been poking around the Loops API to see if I should support this in the way we support Bluesky starter packs. Probably will wait to see what Mastodon does.

Loops Official Blog

Introducing Starter Kits

One of the hardest parts about joining a new social network is the cold start problem. You sign up, you follow nobody, your feed is empty, and you ...

Manton Reece

Trying to be better about cleaning up unused Git branches in a new project, before they get out of control. Micro.blog has hundreds of stale branches because I haven’t taken the time to sort out if there are a few I might want to keep, just in case.

NetNewsWire via AppleScript via MCP… I wonder what the future of scriptability is. We’ve got AppleScript, Shortcuts, App Intents, and MCP. But meanwhile you have agents which are fine just firing up command-line tools.

NetNewsWire - NetNewsWire User Creates MCP Support Via AppleScript

Jelly writes on the NetNewsWire Discourse forum: I’ve drafted a naive implementation of NNW MCP support through AppleScript. It supports listing...

Finished reading: To Shape a Dragon’s Breath by Moniquill Blackgoose. Starts with a girl discovering a dragon egg, but really a story about indigenous people, race, class, and colonialism. 📚

To Shape a Dragon's Breath

We are pretty much done clearing out my mom’s house. I’ve found many little memories, keepsakes, books, and other things. One surprise was this letter my mom wrote from Greece in 1980. Preserving it here on my blog as a snapshot in time.

Manton Reece - Mom's letter from Greece

I blogged briefly last year about feature creep when there is no cost to adding features with AI. Need to keep reminding myself of this. I’ve been adding podcast support to Inkwell, but it’s not intended to be a podcast player that can do everything… Just the right set of features.

Manton Reece - In addition to technical debt problems, ...

Nick Heer in a fediverse post: "Do I trust this computer?, my iPhone asks me for what has to be the thousandth time using the same computer logged into the same Apple ID. Enter your passcode, it demands once again, reflecting the hardware, software, and services working together in a way only Apple can deliver." Another one is charging my Apple Watch via the Mac and needing to confirm if I trust this accessory. Too secure! Only Apple could do this.

C.IM

Nick Heer (@nickheer@c.im)

Do I trust this computer?, my iPhone asks me for what has to be the thousandth time using the same computer logged into the same Apple ID. Enter yo...

This is my new favorite article from The Onion. Southwest Airlines Begins Assigning Chores: "For instance, everyone in row 18 might now be in charge of trash on this flight, while those in the fire exit rows will push the beverage cart. Chore assignments will be clearly printed on all boarding passes for ticketed travelers 2 years old and above. Those flying standby may refer to the chore wheels posted at fore and aft of the plane. Of course, you will have the option to pay extra if you want a more comfortable job."

The Onion

Southwest Airlines Begins Assigning Chores

DALLAS—Saying the decision had been reached following an extensive internal review of the company’s boarding procedures, Southwest Airlines con...

Amazon is working on a new phone: "According to people familiar with the new phone, “integrating artificial intelligence capabilities into the device” has been a central focus, which could mean “Transformer” may rely on mini apps like those available in ChatGPT, rather than a fully-fledged app store." This might work. Alexa and mini apps could be the core UI, while still allowing Android apps and the web where needed.

The Verge

Amazon is making an Alexa phone

The Fire Phone rises from the ashes… with AI?

OpenAI is planning to unify its apps into a single app. I don’t love this. Codex is excellent on its own, and Atlas already feels cluttered. From the WSJ: "OpenAI is planning to unify its ChatGPT app, coding platform Codex and browser into a desktop “superapp,” a step to simplify the user experience and continue with efforts to focus on engineering and business customers. Chief of Applications Fidji Simo will oversee the change and focus on helping the company’s sales team market the new product." https://www.wsj.com/tech/openai-plans-launch-of-desktop-superapp-to-refocus-simplify-user-experience-9e19931d

My NCAA bracket could’ve started off better, but caught the last couple minutes of Spurs/Suns, so good. Officially back in the playoffs. 🏀

Just realized today that we hadn’t released the Epilogue update for Android that improves book search. It has been done for a while. Finally out now! Lots of apps and versions to juggle right now.

Micro.blog Help Center

ℹ️ Epilogue for Android

Epilogue is our companion app for books. Keep track of what books you want to read and blog about books you’ve finished reading. You can also set...

Just released Inkwell for Mac 1.0.2, improving a few things and fixing bugs, especially a potential hang on launch. There’s also a help page with full release notes for each version.

Micro.blog Help Center

ℹ️ Inkwell for Mac

Inkwell is our feed reader for Micro.blog. Subscribe to RSS and JSON Feeds, view conversations from Micro.blog directly in Inkwell, make highlights...

AI coding transcript

Manton Reece - AI coding transcript

Wondering if I use AI-assisted coding differently than a lot of developers. I don’t chat with AI forever to come up with a perfect plan and then have it execute it. I use AI the same way I would code traditionally, iterating quickly with dozens of quick changes. Still feels like programming.

I’m testing GPT-5.4 via the API. The pricing is interesting. 5.4-mini and 5.4-nano are about 3x as expensive, but they are apparently much better, so I switched one call from 5-mini to 5.4-nano. Meanwhile for coding I use 5.4 high with /fast and can’t burn through tokens fast enough. Really good.

Marco Arment posted to Reddit with details on the first Overcast beta that includes transcripts. Very nicely done. The transcripts UI feels cleaner and less finicky than Apple Podcasts. https://www.reddit.com/r/overcast/comments/1rxf5br/testflight_build_1151_first_beta_with_transcripts/

That’s a lot of green Ws. Spurs have won their last 18 of 20 games. 🏀

Really cool set of upcoming Micro.blog plug-ins from @rscottjones for putting different kinds of travel maps on your blog. I bet this’ll work great for my attempt to visit all Texas state parks.

Preview of Maps, Tracks, Colormap, and Travelpath

I’ve been developing1 a suite of four full-featured plugins …

Micro.blog - @rscottjones

Manton Reece - Texas State Parks

Like the native Micro.blog client apps, Inkwell for web and macOS are open source. We aren’t great at incorporating contributions into the shipping versions, but it feels right. With AI-assisted development, the code itself is not as valuable as the whole package — design, infrastructure, etc.