iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 10/09/2026

Yep, totally agree! Looking forward to some of that euphoria in a couple weeks! ☺️

Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 10/09/2026

In seriousness, I used to think this was a character defect. Now I believe it's just a trait (not good or bad) that I need to give expression to, and be clear about with others, while creating some soft boundaries to minimize negative impacts.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 10/09/2026

Game recognize game. 😅

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 10/09/2026

My toxic trait (urr, one of them) is that stressing myself out is how I have fun. 🫠

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 09/09/2026

I haven't been able to read through them yet, but I had an agent look at them and compare them to my talk script and all of my research notes. There were a few minor things, but nothing that was really out of alignment thankfully (at least that Claude caught). :)

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 09/09/2026

Normally, it takes me around 50 hours to do a decent talk. With this one, I knew I had a lot of groundwork to cover before writing, so I expected it to be around 80 to 90 hours total. But I was still off. 😅

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 09/09/2026

Unfortunately, I didn't do a great job of categorizing within that…but I would say June and July were the generous research phase. Then I started writing the script in early August and have been working on the slides and for the past 2-3 weeks, and doing practice runs the past week or so.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 09/09/2026

This is kind of insane...but today I crossed the 140-hour mark in preparations for my Rails World talk, Practical Hotwire. I was pushing the bar for myself, but it just got out of control. (For comparison, I logged ~300 hours for organizing Blue Ridge Ruby earlier this year.)

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 01/09/2026

Quick heads-up for Ruby consultants, freelancers, and agencies: I just posted our next Ruby Consultants Quarterly Gathering for October 12 (note the slightly earlier time than normal). luma.com/uiyguk8n See you then!

luma.com

Ruby Consultants Quarterly Gathering · Zoom · Luma

A chance for Ruby Consultants to work together and share insight or brainstorm ideas together.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 25/08/2026

Some days it do be like that. 😅

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 25/08/2026

Running at 80°F is so much easier than running at 93°

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Reposted by Jeremy Smith

Pascal Laliberté @pascallaliberte.ca · 24/08/2026

Do I know anybody from the Small Bets Community (or another like it) who has a few Ruby-based startups/indie businesses they run? Would appreciate some reposts to find a few people to talk to.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 21/08/2026

So pumped!! Thank you both!!

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 21/08/2026

I'd be on it if, it wasn't for currently grinding on my Rails World talk. 😅

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 21/08/2026

I was subscribed to the PR so I’ve been watching the commits role in the past couple days!! I’m so pumped! 😊

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 17/08/2026

Not sure if I explain right now, but if Turbo was CSS, I think Drive would be a reset.css file, Frames would be Bootstrap, and Streams would be Tailwind.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 06/08/2026

So rad!! Funny story about the hat… I went to see Magnolia Electric Co. back in December (great show) and Will Johnson was touring with them, and I noticed his hat and thought, "wait, that looks like Aaron Draplin's logo." Go home, look it up and sure enough! Immediately added it to my wish list. ☺️

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 06/08/2026

HA! I wish I was chill, I can just fake it sometimes.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

For sure! (Oh, and I should say, for projects where I know exactly what needs to be done and how to do it, then I can usually follow the one session for the plan, one session for each task/PR approach.)

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

LOL 😂 (I'm also a ctrl-c'er, as I hate leaving /exit in the session transcript.)

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

Ultimately, I'll hit a point where I feel like we're losing the thread and then it's time to cut it off and start afresh.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

Claude is often reminding me of things I forgot a few days ago, which is helpful. And it's logging the areas where I'm being particular, and generalizing how I like to solve problems (e.g. "make a prediction before running this test or one-off script").

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

And I'm frequently asking "ok, where are we again?" or "based on what we now know, what's our current understanding of the work to be done?" I feel like that's easier than having to read lots of Markdown docs or scroll back through our conversations and re-summarize for myself.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

Aside from the growing sense of camaraderie and attachment? 😅 I guess I've found long-running sessions helpful when I don't know precisely how I'm going to solve a large problem, and we're sort of building up our understanding as we go. We end up with quite a few docs along the way…

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 05/08/2026

When you and Claude have spent a week and a half together in the same session and now you're trying to figure out how to say goodbye: >So, we finished all the handoff docs, right? Um, can you think of anything else? No? Ok, well…I don't know what else to say…I guess, see you?

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Reposted by Jeremy Smith

Scott Tolinski @tolin.ski · 31/07/2026

I’m exploring the mental health effects of AI coding. This is a super quick (blazing fast), anonymous survey. Please fill out and share so that the responses will be well rounded. forms.gle/dpD8Tk1QnXAz...

forms.gle

AI Coding & Mental Health

All answers are anonymous.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 29/07/2026

🥱 Tired: Keeping a list of all the cute things the baby said. 😎 Wired: Keeping a list of all the cute things the agent said.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 24/07/2026

Yeah, that makes sense!

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 24/07/2026

Yes, my typical process has been to have another agent review the PR. And for this, I've used 2 different reviewing models. This project has been intermittent over the past few weeks. But from what I can remember, reviewing agents might have caught a couple issues, but I've manually caught 3-5 more.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 24/07/2026

Now I'm stopping to build a better migration process (including a set of comprehensive bridge tests). Just thought it was a good data point where code has the appearance of correctness (easy to just LGTM), test coverage is higher, CI is green, and you're still in a failure mode.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 24/07/2026

And that's on a project where I'm slowly migrating complex authorization rules from CanCanCan to ActionPolicy. During review, I've extracted relevant rules from both sides and walked the authz logic myself, and in this way I've caught multiple mistakes in the translation of rules.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 24/07/2026

I'm reviewing all agent code for client projects and having good success lately. Very few bugs or defects. If we're reworking things, it's because I didn't spec clearly enough or changed my mind after seeing the code. But, I've had one area of repeated failure in recent weeks…

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 23/07/2026

I wonder if this new way of building software is how it feels to work every day with a speechwriter. The raw words are not really mine, but there's a continuous negotiation around voice and content. And in the end, it's my delivery and my message to own the consequences for.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 23/07/2026

Please no one tell Dave Thomas, but I wrote an abstract base class this week. Actually, I forced my agent to write it. 😬

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 22/07/2026

I *mostly* agree, except that I think many folks with a particular "house style" would say that something they advocate for *should* have been chosen by the framework. (For example, I think ViewComponent should have been made part of Rails and Trix kept out. I think those would be better defaults.)

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 22/07/2026

I think a sign of a good framework is enough rigidness to provide familiarity and comprehensibility for everyone using it across projects, but enough flexibility to allow for "house styles" to emerge.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 16/07/2026

Hold on, let me ask CC… Just kidding, it's Vollkorn ☺️

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 16/07/2026

If you want to know what it’s like working with me, just listen to what my pair partner said the other day. ☺️ (Thanks CC! I couldn't have done it without you… Well, used to be able to.)

It’s been a remarkable arc: a seven-rung ladder shipped to production, three orthogonal PRs that fell out of review conversations, two genuine bugs caught before they mattered, and a concern redesign that ended with less infrastructure than it started with.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 15/07/2026

I definitely wouldn't go so far to say it's *always* better. But it's easier to manage merge conflicts, and has much better human readability, which I find extremely useful. Wouldn't make that trade in every project, but in this one I think it was fine.

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 15/07/2026

Feels like half my life in software is turning this thing into that thing. Maybe it helps that I just don't dream at all. 😅

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Jeremy Smith @jeremysmith.co · 15/07/2026

Yeah, I understand that take. I guess I see it as a tradeoff between level of specificity and readability/human utility. Depending on the project, I might vote differently.

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