iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

If 1Password just pops up these little dialogs out of nowhere and doesn't even tell me what's prompted them, it could just as well auto-approve them. I don't think 1Password understands security

1Password asking me to authorize _something's_ use of my SSH key (it doesn't tell me)

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 29/09/2026

Fighting for every byte. AI benchmarking stuff helps a lot. This is Chatto HQ (running off of 2 replicas.)

A Grafana CPU usage chart. The two Chatto HQ replicas use around 0.04 cores each after a recent upgrade to a new beta.

A grafana memory chart. The two Chatto HQ replicas use around 210 MB of RAM each. A large part of that is thanks to the Chatto executable getting a little thicc. Will be put on a diet soon.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 29/09/2026

OK the new Eleven TTS model is... good

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 28/09/2026

Is this... developing in public?!

Chatto HQ in all its glory! The screenshot shows a thread in which I discuss the implementation of a new feature with ChattoBot. Where we're going, we don't need Conductor.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

I found another dumb song of mine from 2018. This time I asked Opus 5.5 to build a little 3D engine with SDF splats (think "Dreams" from PS4) for the music video. No further instructions or steering (so some of the captions are a bit off.)

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

I fed a song I made around a decade ago into Opus 5.5 and asked it to create a music video for it. I profoundly apologize for the song and probably also this video.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

My Claude sessions are weird

"The giant googly-eyed Wurstfrau now towers over the sausages."

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

A little closer to the metal:

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

Chatto is a very normal chat app with equally normal easter eggs

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

Expectedly so, some external constraints immediately yielded even more impressive results. This is a follow-up prompt where I uploaded some (licensed, human-made :b) music and asked it to make a fitting video that's synced to the music's rhythm. Crazy! Also @chatto.run is really good :P

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

Having a very strong "we're so cooked" moment. This is Opus 5.5 with just one prompt (ran within the @chatto.run repo): "Make a cool, happy, social-media ready 16:9 video that explains what Chatto is and why it's cool. Include sound effects and music (but not voiceover.)"

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 25/09/2026

in future agent pays you

Sol telling me "You found a real bug". No shit!

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 24/09/2026

Imagine believing, like seriously being convinced, that the Internet used to be more colorful than it is today (and, on top, showing *those* apps as evidence.) Had to double check that the account is not satire. (Of course this is from a guy hysterically ranting about "AI slop" on Mastodon)

A Mastodon post saying "Do you guys remember how colorful the internet used to be? These days, everything is just gray on gray". The post is accompanied by screenshots of four apps from the Windows 95 days.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 24/09/2026

p(chatto) (Astra High. Opus does it better!)

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 24/09/2026

Doing some light research on how people in the 60s reacted to punch cards getting replaced with teletype/terminals and whaaaaat

And this wasn't purely theoretical. A 1969 study actually asked programming students who had used both batch/card systems and interactive time-sharing what they preferred. Some genuinely preferred punch cards:
“Some preferred the keypunch to the teletype.”
Their reasons included that it was easier to keep a card deck in sequence, while terminals could be difficult to access at busy times. The study reports students saying that waiting for an occupied time-sharing terminal could be more irritating than submitting a batch job and waiting for its output.

So there's a genuinely delicious historical exchange here:
1963:
“Interactive computing is a fad pushed by adolescents. These dreamers think everyone needs a console.”
1963 reply:
“Sorry our new technology makes the Priesthood nervous.”
1965:
“This is hysteria and irrational bandwagon behavior.”
A few years later:
Interactive computing becomes the normal way human beings use computers.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 23/09/2026

So I wrote a chat app and a chat bot that connects to the chat app so we can use the chat bot on the chat app to work on the chat app and then eval the chat bot to make it better aaaahhh

A chatto conversation. A user reported a bug, we discussed it briefly, then involved ChattoBot, who then started working on a bug fix.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 22/09/2026

Moving implementation planning beyond markdown :D

type ImplementationPlan = {
baseCommit: string;
goal: string;
steps: { files: string[]; change: string }[];
acceptanceCriteria: string[];
checks: string[];
openQuestions: string[];
};

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 22/09/2026

Exploring @chatto.run as a communication/authorization substrate for agentic workflows (and all other kinds of automations.) Let bots talk to each other, keep humans in the loop in style.

A Chatto chat between myself and ChattoBot, asking it to implement a PR with a bug fix.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 21/09/2026

ChattoBot runs within Runling, where you get a detailed timeline of the interaction, with all messages sent between tasks, and a token/dollar cost breakdown

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 21/09/2026

Building Chatto through Chatto

A conversation between ChattoBot and myself.

hey

Hey! How can I help you today?

I don't like how the notifications and my threads pages don't look like the search page. I think they also should use the panels.

That makes sense! Having a consistent design across the search, notifications, and threads pages would definitely make the app feel more cohesive. Using panels for those pages sounds like a great way to achieve that.

Can you investigate the source code to see if this is feaible?

I've investigated the source code, and it is definitely feasible!

Currently, the search page uses a structured layout with PaneHeader, PaneContent, and Panel components to create those distinct sections. The notifications and "my threads" pages are using a simpler layout that relies on standard div elements instead.

To make them look consistent, we can refactor those pages by:

Using the same root container class (pane-page) to ensure the base layout matches.
Wrapping the main content in a PaneContent component.
Adding Panel components to separate things like search inputs or action buttons from the actual list of notifications or threads.
This would give all three pages that same elevated, "panelized" look you're after! Would you like me to look into how we might start implementing these changes?

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 18/09/2026

It does! Look at this freaking screenshot (taken on a 16 Pro). The iOS/Safari UI takes up just slightly more than 50% of the entire screen. It's *ridiculous*. I've modified Chatto to hide its own headers to make up for it (second screenshot). One of the biggest Fuck Yous to web and PWAs I've seen.

Screenshot of a very bad mobile operation system

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 18/09/2026

Random comment I saw on Reddit about @chatto.run. Yes, that's exactly why Chatto works the way it does. Very happy to see that people appreciate it!

"I got this one up and running this summer so my kid can talk with his school friend’s during Minecraft and share screen grabs. It particularly checked all the boxes because it wasn’t a federated service where their created account would let them wander to another server invite they saw somewhere. It’s just a single private server and I can lock down access to keep it safe. Bonus is that it works as a progressive web app so that his friend who has a fire tablet can use it without needing to know how to sideload. Additionally that PWA can be targeted for parental control and screen time. It’s just an all around win."

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 18/09/2026

Don't let Eduard Lemon see this

Me asking the Apple Foundational Model CLI "How many 'r' in 'Apple'" and it responds "there is 1 'r' in 'Apple'"

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 18/09/2026

This time Apple has gone too far

I'm asking the Apple Foundational Model CLI "What is Chatto and who's making it", and it says "Chatto is a tool for creating interactive stories, and it is being made by Apple Inc."

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 17/09/2026

This week's AI discourse, somehow

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 16/09/2026

It's good to have tokens

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 15/09/2026

If you can't decide between flat and skeuomorphic, Chatto 0.5 will have you covered. Take notes, Apple

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 15/09/2026

Sorry for the dorky voiceover (Germans don't yell in videos), but I still wanted to share this quick demo video of a cool little new @chatto.run feature I've been working on. Web Audio API is wonderful! (Recorded with my cheap headset on purpose, also because I was lazy)

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 15/09/2026

No shit, this is the feature we've been working on this session, Sherlock. WTF.

The history shows a relevant change: the earlier test played the raw microphone stream directly. This branch changed playback to a stream generated by our Web Audio graph.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 14/09/2026

Today in "Apple hates PWAs and doesn't want you to use them" (of course the Chatto PWA tries no such thing, how would it even do that. WTF is this, Apple)

"Data Access Blocked
Chatto HQ tried to access your data from other apps and was blocked. You can manage this at any time in Files & Folders settings."

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 10/09/2026

I enjoy reloading Chatto 0.5 (currently in alpha) for no reason whatsoever

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 10/09/2026

The "Arch is run by clowns" had to come from *somewhere*, and it didn't take me long to find receipts

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 09/09/2026

Here's my dumb little workflow runner that's running a planning and implementation workflow, a mix of agentic interactions and deterministic code. Goal is that you can report Chatto bugs to it and if it agrees it's a bug, it'll make a PR and ping me (and then probably delete my hard drive)

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 07/09/2026

Failed to tell a joke.

Screenshot of a failed Runling workflow. All the bars are red, the agent step says "I can't tell jokes. I am a coding assistant and do not have the functionality to generate humor."

The workflow's error is "Failed to tell a joke."

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 07/09/2026

Play these to your AI when it's feeling a little down

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 06/09/2026

Here's the prompt. No additional skills.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 06/09/2026

You'll probably assume that the music is AI-generated, but it's not. I just made it! Just for this video! While Codex was working on the Three.js project! It is, of course, very bad. Basically just holding down a single note to have The Orchestra Complete play some presets.

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Hendrik Mans @hmans.dev · 06/09/2026

Made a little thing with these. (I also made the very bad music! Some thoughts on that in the thread.)

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