iiinova — where your digital self keeps evolving

Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 12/07/2026

I've been seeing some, uh, shall we say, *misguided* decision making on the part of some in the industry who decide, for whatever reason, to put an LLM behind an MCP server. I discuss the reasons why this is a bad idea, and what to do instead, in my latest post. www.spletzer.com/2026/07/dont...

Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo's 18th-century painting of the giant wooden Trojan horse being hauled through a breach in the walls of Troy by a straining crowd, with citizens celebrating around it beneath a cloudy sky. Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giovanni_Domenico_Tiepolo_-_The_Procession_of_the_Trojan_Horse_in_Troy_-_WGA22382.jpg

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 05/07/2026

AI coding tools have gotten remarkably good at a great many things. Producing tidy Markdown is not one of them. My latest post covers how I tame it: a linter as the source of truth, semantic line breaks, and teaching the agent to clean up after itself. www.spletzer.com/2026/07/the-...

A colorful 19th-century chromolithograph of a lion tamer standing calmly inside a circus cage, surrounded by two lions, a lioness, and two tigers posed on pedestals around him. Gibson & Co., publisher, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Lion_tamer_(LOC_pga.03749).jpg

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 29/06/2026

"Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel" — "Roadhouse Blues" by The Doors I can think of no better advice when it comes to vibe coding, and I don't mean the throwaway kind; I mean the serious kind with real rigor and engineering practices around it. www.spletzer.com/2026/06/its-...

A colorized 1920s postcard photograph of an automobile perched on a narrow ridge road in Los Angeles County, with a wooden guardrail along the precipitous edge; a caption at the bottom reads "Guard rails sometimes save careless drivers." Cassowary Colorizations, CC BY 2.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0>, via Wikimedia Commons https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Car_accident_in_the_1920s_(38083620606).png

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 11/04/2026

I've owed this post to some security friends of mine for a while. I've been really into GPG commit signing with a YubiKey for many years, and I finally delivered on my promise to write an in-depth guide about it. www.spletzer.com/2026/04/a-no...

Delegates seated at a long table in the Hall of Mirrors at Versailles, signing the Treaty of Versailles in 1919, with tall arched mirrors and ornate chandeliers reflected behind them. William Orpen, The Signing of Peace in the Hall of Mirrors, 1919. Imperial War Museum, London. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 04/04/2026

Humans make mistakes, and not only can we learn from them, but we can learn how to put AI agents to work in ways that prevent them from making the same mistakes as we would. In my latest post I delve into a mistake I made when I accidentally dropped a database. www.spletzer.com/2026/04/the-...

A pastoral landscape with a farmer plowing in the foreground, a shepherd gazing upward, and ships in a harbor, while in the lower right corner a pair of legs disappears into the sea — the fall of Icarus, unnoticed by all. "Landscape with the Fall of Icarus," after Pieter Bruegel the Elder, c. 1560s. Royal Museums of Fine Arts of Belgium. Via Wikimedia Commons.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 28/03/2026

When things get cheaper, in many scenarios we often use more of them, not less. A Victorian era economist figured this out about coal in 1865, the cloud proved him right again, and I (and others) think AI is next. www.spletzer.com/2026/03/jevo...

Portrait of William Stanley Jevons, via University of Manchester Libraries, CC BY-SA 4.0, Wikimedia Commons.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 21/03/2026

I wrote a follow-up to my post on information diet, and this time I got specific. I use RSS with Feedbin and NetNewsWire, subscribe to about 125 feeds, and don't have any social media apps on my phone, giving me more time for writing, thinking, and building. www.spletzer.com/2026/03/cura...

An impressionist oil painting of a woman in a black hat and dark dress reading a newspaper in a sunlit garden. Woman Reading — Édouard Manet, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 14/03/2026

I opened a fresh Claude Code session, typed one prompt, and 40% of my context window was already gone. I call this "dead context," and if you're running AI coding tools, you probably have the same problem without realizing it. www.spletzer.com/2026/03/shed...

A crowd of ghostly, pale-faced figures in dark clothing and top hats walk along a pier against a turbulent, swirling sky of deep blues and oranges, their hollow expressions conveying collective dread and unease. Art from Edvard Munch, Anxiety, 1894. Munch Museum, Oslo. Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 07/03/2026

In 2024 setting up Python needed pyenv, pip, pipx, shell init scripts, and pain on Windows. In 2026 it needs one tool: uv. Same commands on every OS, 10-100x faster installs, and way simpler. A new no-nonsense guide to setting up Python environments: www.spletzer.com/2026/03/a-ne...

An oil painting of a lone farmer seen from behind, harvesting golden wheat with a scythe in a sunlit field, with his discarded Union Army jacket and canteen visible in the lower right corner. The painting is Winslow Homer, "The Veteran in a New Field," 1865. Oil on canvas. The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York. Public domain.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 28/02/2026

A Tale of Acceleration and Compound Engineering www.spletzer.com/2026/02/a-ta...

A hand-colored print of a gentleman in a top hat and tailcoat riding an early two-wheeled hobbyhorse, with another rider visible in the distance.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 22/02/2026

Software has always felt like sculpture to me: you start with a block of possibility and chip away until the shape reveals itself. AI coding tools are the fastest chisels (and the best shop assistants) I’ve ever had—but they don’t replace taste. They amplify it. www.spletzer.com/2026/02/the-...

Close-up of a marble angel statue by Michelangelo Buonarroti with a calm, expressionless face and curly hair, warmly lit, with one textured wing visible behind its shoulder.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 16/02/2026

Skeletons are in your closets. Bats will fly out of your caves. The question is whether you let them out now, or wait until your competitors do it themselves and find the hidden treasure on the other side before you do. www.spletzer.com/2026/02/fear...

A landscape, movie-poster-style illustration inspired by 1980s adventure films. On the left, a rocky cave opening frames a bright moon as dozens of bats fly outward into the night sky. On the right, inside a dusty wooden closet, a grinning pirate skeleton wearing a hat and medallion holds a cutlass beside scattered gold coins and an old lantern. Bold retro lettering across the top reads "Fear, Paranoia, and Vibe Risk Management."

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 08/02/2026

I spent a little bit of time with Claude Code this weekend and refactored something that had been on my backlog for a long time: my website. www.spletzer.com/2026/02/one-...

Minimalist infographic comparing a website before and after a refactor. Left side ("Before") shows a generic webpage labeled Bootstrap 3.2.0 with a large "143 KB CSS" file. Right side ("After") shows an HTML5-based page labeled WCAG 2.0 AA with a much smaller "10.7 KB CSS" file and checklist icons indicating accessibility improvements. Title at top reads: "One Day, Nine Phases, 93% Less CSS."

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 01/02/2026

The laziest strategy in fast food may be the smartest strategy in AI. In my latest post, I spend 1,500 words on a burger metaphor that probably could've been a tweet. www.spletzer.com/2026/02/mcdo...

Ronald McDonald and the Burger King sit side by side at a shared desk in a modern office, each wearing headphones and smiling while coding on laptops. Ronald, in his yellow-and-red striped outfit and clown makeup, works on a laptop labeled “Claude Code,” while the Burger King, dressed in a crown and fur-trimmed robe, uses a laptop labeled “GitHub Copilot.” Code is visible on both screens, with coffee cups and monitors in the background, creating a playful contrast between fast-food mascots and serious software development.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 31/01/2026

Well this is a ChatGPT first for me.

Dark-mode chat interface showing a message that reads, “I installed LazyVim for Neovim but I can't remember how.” Beneath it, a reply says, “lol, extremely relatable.” followed by a smiling emoji.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 18/01/2026

New Blog Post: Tidying Your Home for Your AI Guests www.spletzer.com/2026/01/tidy...

A digital illustration of a cluttered living room with piles of papers, books on crowded shelves, and tools scattered on the floor. Two friendly, futuristic AI robots stand just inside the open front door holding suitcases, looking into the disorganized space as sunlight streams in from outside, suggesting AI arriving as a guest in an untidy home.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 14/12/2025

Is it safe to write a blog post that isn’t about AI? In this slightly humorous and irreverent reflection, I look at AI hype, technological amnesia, and why we keep pretending the rest of technology doesn’t exist. (No agents were harmed in the writing of this.) www.spletzer.com/2025/12/is-i...

A cropped version of Michelangelo's The Creation of Adam. On the right, God reaches out from a cluster of figures, labeled "AI" in bold white Impact-style text. On the left, Adam reclines on the ground, reaching back, labeled "THE REST OF TECHNOLOGY." The two hands nearly touch, parodying the original scene to suggest AI as a dominant, godlike force eclipsing all other technology.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 09/11/2025

The repo: github.com/ryanspletzer...

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 07/09/2025

We’re living in the age of "vibe coding"—where it’s easier than ever to generate something that looks real. But just because Pinocchio can sing and dance doesn’t mean he’s a real boy... www.spletzer.com/2025/09/pino...

A wooden marionette with a long nose sits at a developer’s desk, strings tied to floating "PROMPT" and code icons, facing a monitor where a flow diagram ends at a glowing "DEPLOY" button; a loose cable and a shelf labeled "TOYS" underscore the fragile, toy-like nature of the build.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 18/08/2025

I wrote a post about applying CQRS (Command Query Responsibility Segregation) principles to AI agents. www.spletzer.com/2025/08/ask-...

A conceptual diagram titled "Ask vs Act: Applying CQRS Principles to AI Agents." The diagram has two halves. On the left, a blue bubble labeled "Reading" connects downward to a smaller bubble labeled "RAG," which points to an icon representing documents and a database. On the right, an orange bubble labeled "Writing" connects downward to a smaller bubble labeled "Actions," which points to icons of a checkmark in a speech bubble and a gear. The two halves are connected side by side, visually contrasting how AI agents handle reading (retrieval) versus writing (actions).

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 04/08/2025

I wrote a blog post to try to disambiguate what MCP can and can't do, and what it is and is not. www.spletzer.com/2025/08/mcp-...

A minimalist graphic with the phrase “MCP is a USB port, not a hard drive” in bold black text on a light blue gradient background. Below the text are two black icons: a USB port on the left and a hard drive on the right, separated by a “not equal to” (≠) symbol, emphasizing the conceptual difference.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 23/07/2025

I wrote a post about your information diet in the age of AI. www.spletzer.com/2025/07/your...

A stylized illustration of an 'Information Diet' pyramid. The pyramid is divided into four layers from bottom to top: books, speech bubbles, and newspapers at the base; social media icons and short-form content in the middle; the Twitter bird icon in the upper tier; and a microchip labeled 'AI' at the top. The design uses muted shades of beige, blue, and orange to convey different types of information sources.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 01/06/2025

I wrote about the hidden complexities of running Model Context Protocol (MCP) servers locally vs remotely, and why deployment context shapes everything from auth to architecture. 👉 www.spletzer.com/2025/05/the-...

A digital illustration titled "The Many Contexts of Model Context Protocol" shows a central AI model icon connected by
lines to four surrounding icons: a desktop computer (local context), a cloud server (remote/server context), an office
building (enterprise or multi-tenant context), and a person (user context). Each icon is enclosed in a circle with
colorful backgrounds, symbolizing different deployment and usage contexts of MCP servers.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 20/05/2025

I wrote a post about the area of enterprise search, where I spent a great deal of time over a decade ago in my career, and whose lessons I’m realizing are more relevant than ever today in the age of AI, RAG, and agents. www.spletzer.com/2025/05/ente...

Illustration for a blog post titled "Enterprise Search and the Myth of the Silver Bullet." The image features a large magnifying glass pointing from a search interface on the left to a silver bullet on the right. Abstract clouds and dots decorate the beige background, and the title is written in bold dark blue text.

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 27/03/2025

I wrote a post about the SPIFFE standard and its accompanying open-source implementation SPIRE. www.spletzer.com/2025/03/zero... (Image courtesy of ChatGPT)

A generated image of turtles all the way down, courtesy of ChatGPT

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Ryan Spletzer @ryan.spletzer.com · 05/07/2023

Since I get asked frequently, I wrote a post on how I set up my themed terminal. www.spletzer.com/2023/07/my-themed-…

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