ComfyUI - local image generation

Great for local image generation. I had a lot of fun with Flux Schnell and Z-Image-Turbo, both of which can generate an image on my RTX 3060 12GB in about 30-60 seconds. I usually generate a low-resolution image first, then use Upscayl to increase its resolution.

Z-Image-Turbo example Z-Image-Turbo — click for full-size upscaled version

Flux Schnell example Flux Schnell — click for full-size upscaled version

ComfyUI Flux Schnell workflow Z-Image-Turbo

David Fowler on AI code duplication

There’s a really high cost of duplicating code and we’re all relearning that everyday with these coding agents. Until they get better at generating reusable code, bugs will run rampant. You can’t “abstract it away” with more agents. You just get crappy software.

I am relearning this also - recently refactored a three-way duplicated DTO in the same project.

David Fowler on LinkedIn

See also this tweet - we are all coming to terms with the good and bad with coding agents, Fowler a bit earlier than most I think (the Aspire team were and are front runners in real-world application).

Coding Agent Skills as programs

Skill metadata -> Skill body -> What the skill references

What You’re Actually Writing When

Modularity Skills

Applying architecture as skills - I am experimenting with this as well, would not say it is going great though.

Modularity

The two souls of AI

The deterministic harness and the probabilistic frontier model.

AI Agents Have Two Souls. You Control Only One

Is AI profitable yet?

No (except NVIDIA) and the huge capex is built on expected productivity gains that might have a hard time materializing soon enough to keep the companies afloat. Unless you own stock in the respective companies you are of course not directly exposed (good or bad), but I wonder how much of that capex is backed by loans that might affect the market in general?

Is AI Profitable?

Waza - coding agent skill evaluation

One way to move from current “my gut feeling tells me this skill helps” to something measurable - but probably at high token cost (I have not tried the tool yet).

Waza

The Orchestration Tax

The coding agents might be great multi-taskers - you are not. I am feeling this, juggling 3-4 agents is exhausting, and I urgently need better tools to manage my CLI sessions (options exist, but I have not found one I liked yet).

Addy Osmani on X

Towards Dark Factories

Work with the agents on code that cannot be automatically verified or is critical (“Cobot modules”), leave the rest for the coding agents (“Dark factory modules”).

Dark Factories, Cobots, and the Potential Future of PR

Copy HTML with CSS

Great Chrome extension for getting a snippet to the coding agent from a running browser.

Copy HTML with CSS

Minimalist Phone App Launcher (Android)

I wish I was as self-disciplined as DHH in this regard - I want to give it a try. At least I have night mode black-and-white theme on already, that helps a bit.

Minimalist Launcher

llmfit

Find the open-weight model/quant that will run on your hardware. Had trouble installing on raw Windows, but runs fine in WSL.

llmfit

ASUS ZenScreen Color ePaper MP13UC

I always liked E-Ink - with color, a somewhat larger screen and high-ish refresh rate, this looks quite interesting.

ASUS ZenScreen Color ePaper Monitor Has an E Ink Screen

ModularPipelines

NUKE Build is dead, someone recommended this. Then again, someone also recommended going pure pwsh, worth considering. I need builds sharing most of their implementation to migrate my work workloads, and while I was excited for Dagger at one point, I no longer think that is a great direction.

ModularPipelines

Android Terminal

If you own a Pixel phone (and precious few others; I sadly do not own a compatible device) you can get a more or less full blown Linux terminal running. As I understand it, unlike Termux, you are able to run more standard Linux software directly on the phone.

Android Terminal Wiki

AI-assisted engineers are burning out, is this fine?

Some of this resonates, however I believe I have now learned how to apply the coding agents in a good (maybe not great, but always improving) and sustainable way for my work situation.

AI-Assisted Engineers Are Burning Out. Is This Fine?