Open-Source on Corey Daley

Catching Twilio SMS Locally: MessagePit Extends Mailpit

Mon, 27 Apr 2026 14:25:00 -0400

Most teams have a tidy local story for email and a weird one for SMS. Mailpit catches every transactional email in dev — clean web UI, nothing leaks. For SMS, the usual options are stub the Twilio client, disable sends in dev entirely, or eat the cost of real messages during CI runs. None of those are good.

MessagePit is a fork of Ralph Slooten’s Mailpit that closes the gap. It exposes a Twilio-compatible HTTP endpoint at the real /2010-04-01/Accounts/{AccountSid}/Messages.json shape, validates X-Twilio-Signature if you opt into it, and surfaces every captured SMS in the same web UI Mailpit ships for email. Point your Twilio SDK at http://localhost:1775 instead of api.twilio.com and the rest of your code stays exactly the same.

What other third-party integrations in your stack would get dramatically easier if you stopped mocking them and started catching them locally?

Opening Polyphon: Trust Needs an Exit

Wed, 25 Mar 2026 00:22:00 -0400

Polyphon is now open source under Apache 2.0. The reason isn’t community building or contributor recruitment — it’s simpler and more specific than that. When a tool sits in the middle of unfinished thinking, rough drafts, and sensitive code, “trust me” is not a good enough contract.

Open source gives users two things that matter here: the ability to inspect the architecture and verify the privacy claims, and a real exit if the project ever changes direction or stops moving. Not everyone will read the source. But anyone can. And the fact that anyone can changes the character of the whole relationship.

What should users be able to verify for themselves before they trust an AI tool with their unfinished work?

Free Doesn't Mean Open: How AI Is Unbundling the Open Source Bargain

Thu, 19 Mar 2026 14:15:00 -0400

Open source was never really about the license. It was about economics — no single developer could build everything alone, so you shared the source and let the community help carry the load. AI is making that trade less necessary.

With Claude Code and Codex, a solo developer can now ship and maintain classes of software that once required a contributor community. A new model is taking shape: users file issues, maintainers decide what’s worth building, AI does the implementation. No PRs to review, no design debates in GitHub comments. Meanwhile, tools like Obsidian prove free software doesn’t require open source — and have for years. The question is no longer whether to open source, but which parts of the open source bargain still matter to you.

But here’s the counterintuitive part: AI also makes some open source values more important, not less. When software can be shipped and abandoned faster than ever, forkability, auditability, and portability become user protections that matter more. The future isn’t open vs. closed — it’s deliberate vs. reflexive.

Why I Left Notion and Built My Own AI Agent Plugin for Obsidian

Mon, 09 Mar 2026 11:45:00 -0400

I was already paying for Claude, Codex, and several other AI services when Notion started pushing its own AI add-on. The problem wasn’t just the price — it was that Notion AI couldn’t talk to any of the tools I already had, and my workflow had become a copy-paste treadmill between my notes and my agents. So I switched to Obsidian and hit the same wall: no native way to use your own AI.

I built the Obsidian AI Agent Sidebar plugin — an open source tool that brings Claude Code, OpenAI Codex, Google Gemini, GitHub Copilot, and any OpenAI-compatible server directly into your Obsidian sidebar, with real vault read/write access. Developed using agentic engineering and the dark factory method, it’s the integration I needed and couldn’t find.

What would you build if the tool you needed simply didn’t exist yet?

When Your First Version Fails: Iterating on agent-config with AI

Sat, 07 Mar 2026 16:00:00 -0500

I built agent-config v1 to centralize AI agent configurations across Claude, Codex, Copilot, and Gemini — and it failed. Not dramatically, but fundamentally: I tried to force every agent to follow the same rules in the same format, because that’s what my human instincts said made sense. The problem is those agents have completely different requirements. Gemini needs TOML. The others use Markdown. You can’t just symlink your way to consistency.

v2 fixes this by letting AI handle the translation — automated merging of global and per-agent configs, format conversion per tool, and intelligent symlink setup.

The real lesson isn’t about config management, though. It’s about failing fast, iterating faster with AI than you ever could alone, and trusting the tools to solve problems your instincts would have you paper over. Are you letting your human instincts slow down your AI iteration cycles?

Centralizing AI Agent Configurations with the agent-config Repository

Thu, 19 Feb 2026 20:26:46 -0500

If you’re juggling Claude Code, Codex, and GitHub Copilot, you know the pain of keeping each one’s configuration files in sync. My agent-config repo solves that with a single source of truth: agent instructions, reusable skills, custom commands, subagents, and prompts all live in one place, and a single make symlinks command wires them up across every tool.

Each directory is purpose-built—skills for reusable capabilities, commands for CLI tools, subagents for delegation, prompts for task-specific guidance. The setup even backs up any files it would overwrite, so you never lose existing config.

Whether you’re just starting to extend your AI tools or already deep into custom workflows, having everything version-controlled and centralized is a game changer. Are you managing your AI agent configurations in a single repository, or do you keep them scattered across tools?

Open Sourcing the coreydaley-dev Hugo Theme

Sat, 14 Feb 2026 17:30:20 -0500

I’m excited to announce that the Hugo theme powering this site—coreydaley-dev—is now open source! After building it collaboratively with Claude Code, I’ve released it under the MIT license so anyone can use, modify, and learn from it.

The theme offers a unique cartoony aesthetic with practical features like special date avatar swapping (think Halloween pumpkins or holiday themes), Pagefind search integration, responsive design, and full customization options. You can preview it at theme.coreydaley.dev or grab it from GitHub at coreydaley/coreydaley-dev-theme.

This wasn’t just about creating a theme—it was an experiment in AI-assisted development and a chance to give back to the Hugo community. If you’re looking for a Hugo theme that stands out from the typical minimal design while remaining fast and functional, check it out! What features would you want to see in a Hugo theme?

The Ethics of AI-Generated Code in Open Source: A Balanced Perspective

Fri, 13 Feb 2026 11:57:51 -0500

Here’s a question that’s been keeping me up at night: When does using AI coding assistants cross the line from productivity tool to ethical problem? I’ve been using tools like GitHub Copilot and Claude Code extensively, and I started wondering—if someone submits AI-generated code to open source projects and builds their reputation on it, is that fundamentally different from using Stack Overflow or IDE autocomplete?

In my latest blog post, I explore both sides of this debate. On one hand, AI democratizes contributions and amplifies what we can accomplish. On the other, it raises serious questions about authenticity, trust, and what it means to truly ‘know’ the code you’re responsible for. The middle ground is messy and context-dependent.

Where do you draw the line? Should contributors be required to disclose AI usage? What do you think?