iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

In 2024 I redesigned the Rails Guides for the Rails Foundation. Code review came from Carlos, DHH, and other core team members. What I didn't expect: the community showed up to make it better, not to tear it apart. That's how open source is supposed to work. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 30/09/2026

This completely changes the nature of doing as-builts for redesigns and even minor design steps forward. These were built with Fable 5.1 FWIW. What kind of new things are you doing in your design pipeline?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 30/09/2026

youtu.be/amHG16-84l4 I've been using Figma Console MCP from Southleft, LLC and this is one thing I wasn't aware I could do until I tried and... well, it worked. Screengrabs from an iOS app in development, and then having it build those static images into editable Figma frames.

youtu.be

Automatically Generate Editable Figma Files from Screenshots with Figma Console MCP + Claude

I've been using Figma Console MCP from Southleft, LLC, and this is one thing I wasn't aware I could do until I tried and... well, it worked. Screengrabs from an iOS app in development, and then…

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 30/09/2026

This is why you gotta read the code when you're working on an app. Yeah LLMs do cool stuff, but then they randomly inject emoji into your app that has a design system with icons. Naughty Claude.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 22/09/2026

Specialization gets a lot of attention. Curiosity matters more. The engineers who keep getting better are the ones who keep asking questions, not the ones who already know the most. Curiosity compounds. www.indierails.com/72

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Reposted by John Athayde

Sung Kim @sungkim.bsky.social · 18/09/2026

PrismML's Ternary Bonsai 2 27B Based on Qwen3.8 27B, Bonsai 2 27B is 9x smaller than its full-precision counterpart while retaining 98.2% of its aggregate benchmark performance.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/09/2026

... (View Component, Lookbook, et al), AI, and more. I'll be in my blue conference blazer, so say hello! I'll also be giving a lightning talk on my static analysis tool for finding first level issues and identifying possible components during dev and CI: UI-Guardrails lnkd.in/ep-wN-be

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/09/2026

I'll be at Rails World Austin next week. Do you have a design or UX problem that's frustrating you? I'll have my roll of architectural trace and we can sketch through it together. Looking forward to talking with everyone on UX, Rails View, Frontend, Design Systems...

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 15/09/2026

"AI is the end of programming." "Nothing is going to change." Both miss what's happening. AI gets us to 80% in 20% of the time. The remaining 20% is where the work still lives. It's the next abstraction layer, not the end. www.indierails.com/72 `#AI`

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 04/09/2026

This has gotten me to the point where I'm now able to knock things out in a matter of hours. Case in point: this email system. Not quite MailChimp, but it gets done what I need to get done and sends out via Resend's API. Built in an afternoon.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 04/09/2026

I've been building PatchVault in Rails since 2013, and the build speed has gone pretty fast since the Opus release right before Christmas last year. A good process of PRD + tickets reviewed by Aaron Francis' "counselors" library and a lot of bin/ci coverage.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 03/09/2026

If your app is vanilla Tailwind UI with the default purple, that's not a brand. Tailwind is a toolkit, a starting point, not a finishing point. Brand has to show up somewhere beyond the logo in the corner. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 01/09/2026

Most Rails apps get built data-model-first. The shift is to start with the user's story: who shows up, what they're trying to do, how easily they can do it. The data model follows. Not the other way around. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 14/07/2026

Nice! Might need some UX love as well after 9 years. Lol

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Reposted by John Athayde

Waldo Jaquith @waldo.net · 14/07/2026

After a few months of evening and weekend work, I've published v1.1 of my open source software that turns a raw legal code into a lovely, deeply interconnected website. It's been nine years since the last release! cc: @krusynth.bsky.social, @johnathayde.com

github.com

Release v1.1 · statedecoded/statedecoded

Modernized the entire codebase from PHP 5 to PHP 8, fixing hundreds of incompatibilities so that the software runs on currently supported versions of PHP and MySQL 8. Added a Docker-based developme...

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 07/07/2026

In 2014, Sam Crigman caught me on the escalator at RailsConf Chicago. He wanted to talk Procore UX. That conversation turned into setting the operating model for design embedded in scrum teams. Domain knowledge mattered. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 30/06/2026

Engineers tell me "I can't design." I push back. Route structure, response payload, field naming. All of it shapes the user's experience. You're designing in code whether you call it that or not. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 23/06/2026

Users don't read. They scan. The squint test takes 5 seconds: squint at your screen, see what jumps out, that's what the user notices first. If your CTA has the same visual weight as everything else, it's invisible. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 16/06/2026

The most common Rails UI problem is key-value pair dumping. Half the labels in any Rails app are doing zero work, because a dollar sign already tells you it's a price. Cut the labels the data speaks for. www.indierails.com/72

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 05/06/2026

I’m still mad you met Bono and he handed you the platter of deserts. (Not really. That was an awesome trip)

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 21/05/2026

Watching the storms over Afton from Stony Point.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 12/05/2026

Need to take more pictures. Been a crazy spring.

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Kevin Murphy @kevinjm.bsky.social · 30/04/2026

John Athayde is starting things off at @blueridgeruby.com, stepping out of the garden and on to the stage. @johnathayde.com

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FastRuby.io @fastruby.io · 30/04/2026

Learning from permaculture by @johnathayde.com at @blueridgeruby.com A lot of lessons we can learn from permaculture and apply to sustainable software development and maintenance #blueridgeruby

Learning from permaculture: sustainable software development

John presenting his talk and the first slide

Observe and Interact.
Catch and Store Energy.
Obtain a Yield.
Apply Self-Regulation.
Use Renewable Resources.
Produce No Waste.
Principles
Design from Patterns to Details.
Integrate Rather Than Segregate.
Use Small and Slow Solutions.
Use and Value Diversity.
Use Edges and Value the Marginal.
Creatively Use and Respond to Change.

The different seasons at the farm. A slide showing the different seasons at the farm

EVERY CODEBASE YOU INHERIT IS SOMEONE ELSE'S
HORSE FARM.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 27/04/2026

This is a slide from my talk this week at Blue Ridge Ruby connecting Permaculture with Sustainable Software Development. Lots of cute animals and lots of fun concepts to help you shift frame on how we approach this work. I hope to see you there!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 09/04/2026

Couldn't happen to a nicer piece of software. Buh bye, Publisher!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 05/04/2026

Amen. And get a brass section in there for “Jesus Christ is Risen Today”

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 02/04/2026

I love chatting with @jeremysmith.co and I am really looking forward to both giving this talk and hanging out with everyone at Blue Ridge Ruby. Get your tickets asap!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 08/02/2026

Chris in fact got us in y the Bayou as an opener. We ended up playing there four times before it closed.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 06/02/2026

“I am keeper of the sacred modem, wielded of the flame of Flickr, the dark Twitter will not avail you! Go back to the shadowy 4chan from whence you came.”

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Patrick Brosset @patrickbrosset.com · 26/01/2026

Hundreds of HTML elements, anchored to each other randomly, by using the CSS anchor positioning feature. Because, why not? A new kind of popup hell. This, and other fun experiments at patrickbrosset.com/articles/202...

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Reposted by John Athayde

Benjamin Borowski 🍁 @typeoneerror.com · 25/01/2026

It's quite insane. As a firefighter, we have CISD (critical incident stress debriefing) any time there's an on-scene death. And this is dying of natural causes/accidents—watching state murder, live, is not good for you. Please talk to a professional. I would say "if impacted", but, you are.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 21/01/2026

I had so much fun in our wide ranging conversation with Jeremy and Jess. Check out the pod!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/12/2025

Portuguese/Italian and my wife is 17thc English/dutch/cherokee. A few others (Scot, Irish, French,Croat) mixed in. pretty much American mutt.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/12/2025

Well that’s the molds I have. I saw it on great British bake off years ago and that it was naturally gluten free an I’ve done it every year since.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 25/12/2025

Merry Christmas! Kransekake complete! Not as perfect as the formal bakers but I’m happy. Much better than last year’s!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 24/12/2025

So it begins! Stollen done, pies wrapped, (all gluten free!), smoker going with a ham from our friends farm and brisket from our own, and kransekake is up next!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 28/11/2025

Most of the world prompts AI, saying "build me a house" and then complains that it sucks when it's not the house they had in mind. Tools like this prompt generator help see the possibility of specificity that you can get to: f-stop.vercel.app

f-stop.vercel.app

f-stop.ai | Professional AI Scene & Prompt Director

Generate cinematic, photorealistic prompts with true camera physics.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 28/11/2025

Black Friday time! 50% off "Typography for Developers". Fix the basics of your application look and feel with good typography. learn.developerux.com/p/type-is-de...

learn.developerux.com

Typography for Developers

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 24/10/2025

Oh Editors was so good. I played those records a lot and did photo of them at their 930 club stops. Such a fun era musically.

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Tits McGee @scientits.bsky.social · 24/10/2025

The German company that makes the mechanical ladder used in the Louvre heist has used the image to advertise, with the text 'When you need to move fast' 10/10 response, no notes

Image of the mechanical ladder outside the Louvre

Text below says WENN'S MAL WIEDER SCHNELL GEHEN MUSS (When you need to move fast)

Underneath is more German text which translates as "The Böcker Agilo transports your treasures weighing up to 400kg at 42m/min - quiet as a whisper."

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 18/10/2025

Speaking at 10:30 this morning at NOVA Code Camp (novacodecamp.org ) today! (18 October). Come say hi!

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 04/09/2025

#RailsWorld Day 1 in the books. From our fun morning boat ride with the Baltic Ruby crew to DHH's keynote, the great hallway track in a beautiful space here in Amsterdam, and the random cat in the window spotted on the way through... Lots of great talks and new and old Ruby Friends.

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Erika Hall @erikahall.bsky.social · 03/09/2025

I’m a consultant. I’ve seen inside every kind of organization. Good managers/leaders doing important work don’t run their teams ragged, and especially don’t brag about it.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 20/08/2025

That’s a fun venue. We did a client conference there two years ago and it was nice.

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 01/08/2025

Hopefully better than the developer betas! How much did they change “glass”?

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John Athayde @johnathayde.com · 28/07/2025

Interesting. We did something like that back at LivingSocial with a precursor design system in a gem. The generator installed all the basic stuff. This was 2012, however, so a radically different era. We also had a Bower package for non-Rails apps.

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