Software Engineer & AI Enthusiast
For decades, 'free software' and 'open source' were nearly synonymous — because building something worth sharing required a community. AI has dissolved that constraint. But the story isn't that open source is dying. It's that open source used to do five jobs at once, and AI is separating those threads. Some become less necessary. Others become more critical than ever.
Read more →Polyphon is a desktop app I shipped this week for orchestrating multiple AI models in a single conversation. Instead of tab-juggling between Claude, GPT, and Gemini, you run all of them as voices in one shared session where they can actually read and respond to each other. Here's why I built it, what technical bets I made, and what I learned on launch day.
Read more →This blog runs on a custom automation pipeline where AI agents compete, critique, and synthesize every post. Here's how the /create-blog-post command, a DALL-E 3 image generation script, pre-commit image enforcement, and WebP optimization all compose into a content system that behaves like production software.
Read more →AI agents can write code, fix bugs, and ship features — but who can be trusted to ship production software when most implementation is delegated? Meet the Agent Wrangler: the engineer who decomposes work, directs multiple agents, validates output, and owns the outcome. Deep technical foundations matter more than ever. The keyboard gets less important. Judgment gets everything.
Read more →After refusing to pay for yet another AI subscription I couldn't customize, I switched from Notion to Obsidian and discovered there was no way to use my existing AI services inside it. So I built one — an open source AI Agent Sidebar plugin developed with agentic engineering and the dark factory method.
Read more →The first version of agent-config tried to impose uniform rules on Claude, Codex, Copilot, and Gemini — and it broke. The fix wasn't better engineering up front. It was accepting failure fast, letting AI handle per-agent format conversion, and shipping a v2 that actually works. Here's what the failure taught about human instinct, AI-assisted iteration, and why failing cheaper is a skill worth building.
Read more →Between Claude Pro, ChatGPT Plus, GitHub Copilot, Cursor, and a handful of specialty tools, a serious AI stack can run $100 or more per month. This post explores a practical closed-loop strategy: give every subscription a job, pick one small revenue experiment, and use the tools themselves to generate enough income to cover the bill.
Read more →As AI features proliferate across SaaS products, customers are waking up to a frustrating reality: they're paying for the same AI capabilities multiple times. The Bring Your Own Key (BYOK) model — letting users connect their own Anthropic, OpenAI, or Gemini API keys — is the market's answer. This post unpacks the real tradeoffs on both sides and maps out which model fits which kind of user.
Read more →Attractor is a DOT-based AI pipeline orchestration engine that borrows its name and philosophy from dynamical systems theory. Define your workflow as a Graphviz directed graph, and Attractor pulls multi-LLM execution toward your desired outcome — through conditional branches, retries, human gates, and failure recovery. The entire codebase is AI-generated, making it a live proof of the Software Factory paradigm it embodies.
Read more →Understanding how large language models actually work under the hood removes some of the wonder — but it also replaces irrational fear with informed clarity. AI isn't magic, it isn't plotting against us, and knowing why might just change how you think about your own brain.
Read more →Discover how to manage Claude, Codex, and GitHub Copilot configurations from a single source of truth. The coreydaley/agent-config GitHub repository provides a centralized home for agent instructions, reusable skills, custom commands, subagents, and prompts—with a simple Makefile-based setup that symlinks everything into place across your AI tools.
Read more →Accessibility is something every website owner should care about, yet it's easy to deprioritize. I asked Claude Code to audit my Hugo blog for screen reader compatibility and was amazed at both the depth of its findings and how quickly it fixed every issue — from missing skip-navigation links to unlabeled SVG icons to dynamic search results that screen readers couldn't detect.
Read more →There's a special kind of frustration that comes from watching a product you love ship a hidden dinosaur game or a secret disco mode while a bug you reported two years ago collects digital dust. But is that frustration always warranted? Let's unpack why companies build these things, who actually builds them, and whether they really steal time from the work that matters.
Read more →As AI coding agents become mainstream, the traditional coding interview is evolving. Explore how live AI-assisted problem-solving, collaborative workflows with planning modes, and practical project management may replace LeetCode-style assessments, while examining the ethical implications of this transformation.
Read more →Announcing the release of coreydaley-dev, a fun and functional Hugo theme now available on GitHub under the MIT license. This post explores why I'm open sourcing the theme, its standout features including special date avatar swapping, the collaborative AI-assisted development process, and how you can use it for your own projects. Discover a Hugo theme that balances personality with performance, built through human-AI collaboration and designed to make static sites more engaging and distinctive.
Read more →As AI tools become more powerful and accessible, they're creating a new kind of digital divide. This post explores how financial resources increasingly determine who can harness AI's full potential, examining the implications for creators, businesses, and society while maintaining a balanced perspective on this complex issue.
Read more →Is it ethical to use AI coding agents like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code to write open source contributions? This post explores both sides of the debate—from democratizing contributions and amplifying productivity to concerns about misrepresenting skills and undermining community trust. We examine when AI assistance crosses the line, what transparency means in practice, and what consequences, if any, should apply when developers build their reputation on AI-generated code they don't fully understand.
Read more →Explore how different AI tools are finding their unique niches in modern development workflows. From Codex, Claude Code, and GitHub Copilot CLI for terminal-based coding tasks, to ChatGPT web for image creation, GitHub Copilot in VSCode for code completion, and Claude Code/Desktop for blog writing with Notion integration. Learn how each AI assistant excels in specific domains, the importance of specialization over choosing a single 'best' tool, and strategies for leveraging multiple AI tools effectively across different aspects of development and content creation.
Read more →Build a self-sustaining blog workflow where ideas become published posts automatically. This comprehensive guide shows how to use Notion to-do lists as your content queue, integrate AI assistants like Claude Code and ChatGPT via Model Context Protocol (MCP), and create a seamless pipeline from idea capture to publication. Learn the technical setup including Notion API configuration, Hugo integration, and how AI reads your ideas, generates complete blog posts with proper formatting, and marks tasks complete—turning content creation from a manual chore into an automated system.
Read more →Learn how to build a custom search experience using Pagefind's API instead of its default UI. This technical deep-dive covers loading Pagefind as a JavaScript module, querying for JSON results, and rendering search results with custom HTML that matches your site's design system. Discover how to maintain visual consistency across post lists and search results, including proper date formatting, taxonomy chips, and seamless Hugo integration. Perfect for developers who want full control over their static site search UI while leveraging Pagefind's powerful indexing capabilities.
Read more →Explore the advantages and limitations of AI-led interviews compared to traditional human interviews. This balanced analysis examines how AI provides consistency across questions, reduces unconscious bias based on protected classes, eliminates the 'vibe' penalty that favors similar backgrounds, and maintains neutrality regardless of interviewer mood. Learn where AI excels at structured evaluation while understanding what human interviewers still do better—reading body language, adapting questions dynamically, building rapport, and making nuanced judgment calls. A must-read for candidates and hiring teams navigating the future of recruitment.
Read more →A behind-the-scenes look at the collaborative process of designing and building the coreydaley-dev Hugo theme using Claude Code. This post explores the iterative development cycle, key technical decisions including Pagefind search integration and responsive design, and how rapid feedback loops enabled fearless experimentation. Learn how AI-assisted development can transform theme creation from a daunting task into an engaging, educational experience that balances creativity with functionality.
Read more →Discover why AI-assisted development thrives on iteration rather than one-shot solutions. This post explores how to work effectively with GitHub Copilot and Claude by embracing refinement cycles, providing better context, and treating AI like a smart junior developer who needs guidance. Learn practical strategies for iterative prompting, understanding when the first response is good enough versus when to refine, and how to build better results through continuous collaboration rather than expecting perfection from initial attempts.
Read more →Transform your blogging workflow by integrating GitHub Copilot with GitHub Issues and Projects. This guide shows how to automate blog post creation, track progress from idea to publication, and eliminate context switching between multiple tools. Learn how GitHub Copilot can read issue descriptions, generate complete posts with proper frontmatter, automatically close issues when publishing, and create a seamless content management system where ideas become published posts with minimal manual intervention and maximum efficiency.
Read more →Discover how GitKraken transformed development workflows with its interactive commit graph that visualizes complex branch structures instantly. This comprehensive review explores GitKraken's visual interface, powerful merge conflict resolution, built-in code review tools, and seamless integrations with GitHub, GitLab, and Bitbucket. Learn why this cross-platform Git GUI client makes version control more intuitive and productive for both beginners and experienced developers, turning Git from an intimidating command-line tool into an accessible, visual workflow enhancer.
Read more →Discover how Claude and GitHub Copilot work together to streamline website development. Claude handles architectural decisions and structural changes like creating custom Hugo layouts and navigation systems, while GitHub Copilot excels at code completion and routine tasks. This post explores the division of labor between these AI tools, their complementary strengths, and how their collaboration creates a powerful development workflow that balances high-level planning with efficient implementation for building and maintaining this Hugo-powered blog.
Read more →Welcome to my new blog built with Hugo and GitHub Pages! This introductory post explores why I chose Hugo as my static site generator for its speed and developer experience, how the github-style theme provides a clean and responsive design, and how automated deployments through GitHub Actions make publishing effortless. Learn about the technical decisions behind this site and what you can expect in future posts covering development, AI tools, productivity workflows, and more insights from my software engineering journey.
Read more →