iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 02/10/2026

That's how Monospace works 👍

Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 01/10/2026

After quite some time in stealth, I'm very excited to finally announce Monospace! We've taken a decade of experience building Directus and created a governed data layer for apps and agents. See our PH launch for more :D www.producthunt.com/products/dir...

producthunt.com

Monospace from Directus - The governed API layer for every app, person, and agent | Product Hunt

Monospace sits between enterprise data and everyone who builds on it. Connect any data source, and your developers, business teams, and AI agents get live, read-write access to it. All under the same ...

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 30/09/2026

Hi Daniel, Noticed you are working on Bluesky posts about marketing emails. Wanted to share a way to get found by more customers already searching for a tool like this. Imagine your followers filling up with buyers who found you on their own. Curious to learn more? Best, Rijk

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 29/09/2026

OK bud, easy there. I'm not attacking your project or you personally. Just thinking aloud whether there's a world to properly embed PHP in a TS runtime coming from a guy who's embedding TS in a RS runtime.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 28/09/2026

I wonder if there's ever a way to evaluate and convert/execute the existing mountain of Wordpress themes and plugins out there. A big part of why folks keep using Wordpress is because there's already a vast ecosystem of themes and plugins available 🤔

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 28/09/2026

Use human communication to communicate with humans — aka don't send AI generated work verbatim

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 23/09/2026

Kindness and integrity goes a long way :)

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 16/09/2026

Right there with ya.. Also noticing that some of the benefits of working in public (PRs, security reports, bug reports) are eroding in waves lower quality contributions. Not a great time in (commercial) open source

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 19/08/2026

OK I need to stop overthinking it and just hit “post” a bit more liberally. With that in mind, here's a new little brain dump on applying “proper” vertical rhythm in CSS :) rijks.website/blog/260818...

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/08/2026

Finally did it: revamped my personal website and started blogging again. This is attempt 5 in 15 years, lets see if I can make it last this time 😇 rijks.website

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Reposted by Rijk van Zanten

Lea Verou, PhD @lea.verou.me · 06/08/2026

🔥 New blog post: Dark mode toggles that expose three states (system, light, dark) seem like the best option. Until you think about user goals, that is. Before rushing to disagree, hear me out. lea.verou.me/blog/2026/da... PS: As a data point, @jakearchibald.com was converted after reading this 😅

lea.verou.me

Dark mode toggles: two states are enough • Lea Verou

Yes, the underlying model must have three states, but one is always irrelevant to the actual user goal. Users do not seek out solutions to problems they don’t currently have. A lot of the hate towards...

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 05/08/2026

OK it's going to happen. Fifth time's the charm. Time to start blogging, for real this time.

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Reposted by Rijk van Zanten

Anil Dash @anildash.com · 04/08/2026

Terrible news, especially for their workers. Just a deeply disappointing ending for such a promising company. I hate this.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 05/08/2026

I wish there was such a thing as an ad blocker for within native apps.. pictured: Apple's App Store showing Facebook as the first result for the exact search "Bluesky"

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 04/08/2026

That being said, when I saw the announcement of Sleepbuds 2 it was an instant purchase for me. If they resolved these growing pains in the new product, this is an instant recommendation from me ❤️

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 04/08/2026

The original Sleepbuds were plagued with odd hardware issues. The amount of times I wanted to use them but found them out of battery because they either didn't charge or stayed on while in the case for some reason is infuriating.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 04/08/2026

Ozlo just launched the sequel to my most love/hate gadget of the last couple years: Sleepbuds. When they work, they're a game changer. Sleeping with white noise and having alarms just for me is amazing. However..

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 04/08/2026

And inb4 ”the why are you still on there then?“ question: I wish I wasn't. Network effect kept it as a big channel, so when trying to grow a startup it's self-sabotage not to engage at all :(

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 04/08/2026

I've admittedly spent an unhealthy amount on social media recently, and have to admit that X (fka Twitter) is wickedly more addictive than Bluesky. The constant barrage of (weird) hot takes and combativeness is pure nicotine. (Which don't get me wrong, is a bad thing)

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 20/07/2026

It's been brutal to a point where I've seriously considered dropping the public security forms/emails in favor of some other more gate-kept service that only allows some verified users to open reports, but that kinda goes against the public nature of this so I haven't yet..

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/07/2026

So far, it seems like running with "just" regular 5.6 Sol on Medium reasoning is the sweet spot. It seems on par if not slightly better than 5.5 on High, and the subagent coordination is workable through skills and a bit of intentional prompting

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/07/2026

I do like the idea of it coordinating it's own subagents — as subagents do make the reliability and output quality a lot higher — but not at this insane cost. I kinda wish there was a way to run the "ultra" coordination of subagents against a medium or even low reasoning level

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/07/2026

Had a little /goal Codex experiment running over the weekend and am.. a bit underwhelmed. I gave it a relatively simple rename refactoring project, but it didn't get anywhere close to completion without blowing through my limits multiple times (on the Pro plan no less)

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 10/07/2026

This year @directus.io has gotten 6× as many security reports as we did over the whole of 2025. This spike started in February, which is when Opus 4.6 launched (surprised? no) AI is great for improving security research, but the value has to be quality over quantity of reports.

directus.com

AI is straining vulnerability disclosure for maintainers. | Directus

Security reports to Directus jumped 6x in 2026, but only 5% were valid vulnerabilities.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 08/07/2026

😄 suitable for any occasion. Best paired with a 2" heel blue suede shoe ✨

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 03/06/2026

Sleeper Mac app that I've been loving recently: Mole. Utility for cleanup, software uninstall, etc

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Reposted by Rijk van Zanten

Lars Hanisch @flensrocker.de · 02/06/2026

Watched the "Rust inspired TS" talk by @rijk.nyc I haven't looked at #Rust yet but I do use these patterns in #TS and #CSharp (for some years), so I can confirm that they are really helpful. youtu.be/WDCVGaF4IGo

youtu.be

Rijk van Zanten - Rust-Inspired Typescript

YouTube video by Devworld Conference

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 20/05/2026

Another conf keynote in the books. Come say hi if you're in ATL! ( 📷 by Chris D on X x.com/saltnburnem/...)

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 15/05/2026

OK! Had codex cleanup a copy of my zshrc and export a new version to gist that should include all the keyboard stuff :) gist.github.com/rijkvanzante...

gist.github.com

macOS text selection

macOS text selection. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 15/05/2026

Regular arrow? Or did I miss that in my snippet export? 😁 Just quickly copy pasted the relevant bits from my full zshrc, so might've missed a couple

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 15/05/2026

It's actually not a terminal setting thing at all! It's a couple of functions and settings in zsh directly. Perk of that is that it works in integrated terminals in Zed / VSCode etc as well gist.github.com/rijkvanzante...

gist.github.com

macOS text selection

macOS text selection. GitHub Gist: instantly share code, notes, and snippets.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 15/05/2026

All the extra bells and whistles are stuff I don't need and get in the way. Ghostty is the right level of features and performance for what I need out of a terminal these days :)

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 15/05/2026

Making my terminal behave like regular text editing (eg use ⌥+delete to delete a whole word, ⇧+arrow to select etc) has been such a tiny but meaningful productivity unlock 👀

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

So to resolve that, I've setup a new set of skills and agents to make the AI agents work a bit closer to how I do software development. The rough loop is: shape the project once up front, then loop over a prepare→implement→review→complete flow for each slice.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

This also meant that by the time I got to the end of the project, the project is fully shaped and reviewed, as the spec gets formed as the project goes on. Now when using AI, I don't want to spend hours up front coming up with the perfect spec, as it's not how I work best.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

When starting the first "slice" of the project, I'd build that slice out in full detail, realize I forgot or have to reshape some of the project requirements, and then review and finish that one slice before moving on to the next.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

My own coding style is a lot more "on the fly". I rough in the project spec, knowing what the requirements and acceptance criteria are at the end, but don't plan out any of the implementation details out until I start working on the first slice.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

The agent gets all bits of the project to abt 90% of the way there, but then I'm left with having to cleanup/review/tweak the last 10% of every step simultaneously across the whole project in a spec that might be completely wrong for what the project actually needs.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

A lot of existing workflows are optimized around scoping the whole project up front, then having the agent execute across the full breath of that project. That can work surprisingly well for some, but it didn't work for me at all:

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 13/05/2026

Recently, I've been experimenting with a "rolling wave engineering" setup in codex. Instead of speccing out the whole project up front, I only spec out the broad strokes of the project, and then only go into detail one slice at a time.

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 25/03/2026

Tough watch, but a must listen. It's so telling how he switches from "our" and "grammerly" to "them" and the "product team" when the questions get tough.. you're the boss, you're responsible, that's the deal youtu.be/Y5eC5wdQPZs

youtube.com

Confronting the CEO of the AI company that impersonated me | Decoder

Our guest today is Shishir Mehrotra, the CEO of Superhuman, the company formerly known as Grammarly, which is still its flagship product. Back in August, Gra...

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Rijk van Zanten @rijk.nyc · 24/03/2026

Dear Spotlight, if I type "1Pass" I'd like to open 1Password, not the calculator to learn that 1Pa equals 0.0003 inHg. Thanks

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Reposted by Rijk van Zanten

Tyler McBrien @tylermcbrien.com · 10/03/2026

The Singularity is upon us: Apple's AI summarized a text message that read "I'm still down to clown if you are" to.... "clown event still possible."

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