1031: My Coding Skills Are Atrophying

Scott and Wes answer your questions about coding in the AI era, atrophying skills from too much autocomplete, whether it’s finally time to leave VS Code, chasing flow state with agents, and which single AI subscription is worth your money. Plus: AT Protocol vs Solid, making your AI config portable across tools, and bringing Shadcn-level UX to server-rendered frameworks. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:57 AI-Generated Code: Are My Skills Atrophying? 06:03 Is It Time to Move On from VS Code? 13:19 Hitting Flow State with AI Coding See Wes’ Post on X 19:15 AT Protocol vs Solid: Decentralized Web Approaches 24:55 Which AI Should You Subscribe To? 30:23 Making Your AI Setup Portable Across Tools 33:56 When to Drop a Tool That Still Works 40:12 UX Quality for Traditional Server-Side Frameworks FluxUI GraffitiUI 44:14 Using Hermes and Self-Hosted AI Assistants 49:27 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs Sick Picks Scott: ESP32-S3 Wes: Sharge ICEMAG3 Hit us up on Socials! Syntax: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Wes: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:00Wes Bos?

  Welcome to Syntax. Today we've got a Potluck episode for you today. You bring the questions, we bring the answers. Questions about, does anybody still use Hermes? What AI should I sub to? You got budget for one, which is the one that you're giving your 100 or 200 bucks a month to. Is it time to move on from VS Code? Somebody has asked, my coding skills are atrophying, and I feel like I'm falling behind. Do you ever hit flow state with AI coding? And some really good questions around how to know when to move on from a specific technology, and when it's working just fine. If you've got a question, please go to syntax.fm in the Potluck, in the nav, there's a Potluck button. You can ask a question there, or just leave the question

• 0:43Wes Bos?

  down below in the comments on Spotify, on YouTube, whatever it is. We'll see it. We'll answer it in an upcoming episode.

• 0:57Scott Tolinski?

  All right. The first question we have here is from the Fox Cost. It really hurts me to feel like I really feel left behind, because whenever I start a project, I always let AI make code in terms of autocomplete or code generation. So my codebase always has like 80 to 90% AI-generated code, which led me to forget about the most basic things. I couldn't even do an HTTP request with my own hands without AI. So tell me, please, how do I solve this issue? Should I relearn those things, or what? Yes. I think this is one of those things, and I'm going to talk about this

• 1:38Scott Tolinski?

  a lot more. And by the time this is out, you'll have seen my video, if you haven't, give it a watch, on mental health and AI coding. And the brain drain of letting AI do it for you is not just fake. It's not just something that we all feel. It's quite simply, by not doing those things in repetition, and by not allowing our brain to understand these processes, your brain is actually letting those neural pathways go away, or those pathways are becoming inaccessible. So it's not just like a feeling of brain drain. By not being actively involved, and an active

• 2:21Scott Tolinski?

  participant in your code, or the process by which things are doing things, your brain is, in fact, not using those skills anymore. Yeah, it's not brainin'. It's so funny. I know a lot of marketing around, like, brain training apps use the word neuroplasticity, but it's a real thing, and it is one of those things where you do need to use it, otherwise you will lose it.

• 2:46Wes Bos?

  I think it's kind of a tricky thing, because there's the syntax of it, which somebody tweeted the other day, like, will the name of this podcast become like something retro, when the syntax doesn't necessarily matter all that much? And forgetting like the syntax, like, if you're doing a reduce, what are the arguments to reduce callback? Knowing what that signature is, I don't think is as important as actually understanding how this stuff works. And if you are, I know a lot of people are just kind of glazing over the code, or don't necessarily care how it's happening. If you don't know how a request flows through your application, or how an API call is made,

• 3:31Wes Bos?

  then you're going to hit performance issues. You're going to not understand how it works from end to end. And I think that those are two separate things. Of understanding the syntax, of being able to code it by hand, because certainly there are things from 10 years ago, that I would not be able to code by hand. I do not know how to do the PNG fix from 20 years ago on IE, and that's fine, because it's totally changed. But understanding the fundamental, like, flow of your application, and the mechanisms, and how everything works together, that is super important. And I think as people become careless of not reading the code, because you don't necessarily have to, you also can get careless with actually understanding how

• 4:13Wes Bos?

  these things work, and just boop, boop, boop, type in the box, and you don't necessarily care what comes out the other end. And that not caring, I think, is kind of dangerous, because then all of a sudden, you start to just like, you don't get that from learning how things work, and understanding it all, and then it just, you round it off, and then you have no skills at the end of the day. So I think that it's very important that you keep up those things. And how do you do that? Well, understand how things work, solve problems. Like, that's the other thing, is that like, where it might not necessarily matter so much, that you understand how the code, like, is typed, it certainly does matter how these things work. And figuring out, solving

• 4:57Wes Bos?

  problems with how these things work, and not just accepting the first thing that comes out, because you asked it to do something, is really important.

• 5:06Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I think that's exactly about being an active participant, and understanding the process in which these things are happening. I think it will make a big impact.

• 5:14Wes Bos?

  Yeah, even if you look at, I think we have a question coming up on this. If you look at the people who are doing the best right now in building out harnesses, and like Junior from Sentry is one example, Kramer has like gone deep on understanding what is the best way to build some sort of AI assistant that we can throw in our Slack, and can do work for us. And it doesn't, I don't know if he certainly does care about the code, but I don't, understanding how it all works together, and what the best flow is, and like, really critical, critical thinking of how this stuff works, is how that's become a very good implementation versus somebody else

• 5:57Wes Bos?

  who just wants to vibe code their own assistant, and then two months later, they're like, eh, whatever, it's a mess, I don't care about it anymore.

• 6:03Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, right. Yeah, totally.

• 6:05Wes Bos?

  Next question from guitars and Dev. I still code most of my time in VS Code, and I have the plain GitHub Copilot license. I use and love the terminal a lot, especially for Git. Now that coding agents and CLI's are the main thing, I feel a bit awkward in my setup compared to the Claude code, Codex, Open Code users. I must say, with the V2 incoming, and the new TypeScript rewrite, and all of the good things VS Code has done around agents, I feel that I have everything that compares to other editors. And what bothers me is that with AI usage and configs, it depends on the editor, and there is no real standard. Yes, there is some work to standardize these things, but fortunately, not everybody agrees. VS Code is very hard to step away from, because I've used it now for more than five years. I've had this with Sublime Text,

• 6:49Wes Bos?

  and I've had a crazy amount of shortcuts and snippets. Is it time to step away from VS Code? Or not just yet? With all the GitHub code being leaked, I can imagine that VS Code also got leaked. What are your takes on this? It's kind of a couple of questions there. It's like, is it time to step away from the IDE itself? Certainly, a lot of people think so. And certainly, a lot of, like Cursor is trying to push people out of the IDE into this, like, this platform that everybody is building, right? Like, either it's going to be a TUI, or it's going to be, I think ideally, they want you in some sort of desktop application that will do all of your code, and all of your chats, and integrate with all of your work. Like, cowork is the new,

• 7:31Wes Bos?

  the new coding that they're trying to push everybody on to. So I, I don't know, I have a hard time. I still feel most comfortable doing most of my work in an editor, or if I'm doing it from a TUI, then I still have the editor open as well, so I'd be able to jump back and forth, simply just because it's, A, it's easier to understand what's coming in, not that I necessarily will read everything that's coming in, but it's faster. And B, like, it's way easier just to like, change stuff, and like, be able to make, design something to make it look like you want, because it's very frustrating when the CSS comes in, and it doesn't look very good. Like, what are you going to do? You're just going to make it look a little bit better, you know? It's so much easier for me just to jump in and actually write a little bit of code

• 8:15Wes Bos?

  there. So is it time to step away? I don't, I don't think so. I think, like, like you said, VS Code, they have all of the features. They're pushing in the direction of all of the other things that Codex, Claude Code, Open Code already have. Certainly, they have an advantage of being integrated. They're a little bit behind, and they got their lunch aid on quite a bit of this stuff. But I wouldn't say that. If, I'd say, like, if you're comfortable with this type of stuff, I don't think there's much that you're missing from it, from moving to another harness. What do you think?

• 8:46Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, no, I 100% agree. And I do love VS Code, absolutely. I think it's, I think a lot, not going to say the performance is perfect on it, but a lot of times, people complain about the performance are the same people who just installed whatever extension that someone on YouTube told them to install. And some of those extensions are not good. Like, people still install that Wix extension, which is like import cost, which is like a runaway process, or something like that. So, you know, a lot of times, what you're better off doing is paring down your VS Code setup, instead of just ditching it entirely. I do tend to use Zed primarily,

• 9:26Scott Tolinski?

  as my text editor of choice these days. And I, like you also agree, I like to have it open, and I like to have it open with the projects that I'm working on in AI for simple, quick fixes. And oftentimes, I still, like, I still really hate the output, like you said, CSS specifically. I really hate the CSS output. And many times, it's easier for me to just go in and fix it quickly, rather than have the AI try again, and try again, and not necessarily understand what I'm trying to get at, in terms of like, the way that I want it. And people, you know, they say, why does it matter? Well, you know, an unmaintainable codebase is still an unmaintainable

• 10:07Scott Tolinski?

  codebase with AI. AI can just like, additively continue to add things infinitely, and patch issues, rather than, rather than fix them in a correct way, or something like that. Yeah, I mean, you could definitely argue that it doesn't matter, you just prompt, and prompt, and prompt. But again, all that stuff costs money, costs tokens. Yeah, I'm smart. I can fix it.

• 10:29Wes Bos?

  I think with a lot of this stuff, people feel like... Am I falling behind because I'm not switching up my, my tool stack? And if you feel like that, I think it's worth switching to something else for a couple of weeks just to understand how other people are working. And you might come out of that on the other end and say, I don't necessarily like these bits, but you'll probably also come out of it being like, oh, I understand why people are doing things a little bit differently. I understand why they're approaching it in this way. So with, whenever these things change so quickly like this, it's always kind of scary. She's like, am I, am I, am I wrong? Am I old? Am I, am I like stubborn in what I'm doing? Yes.

• 11:12Wes Bos?

  Or are they just, are these people just chasing after what is exciting? And generally it's a little bit of both. And generally there are some good workflows that can, can be pulled out of that. So I would probably at least pick a side project and say, I'm going to try do this entirely in new tools and you're probably come out of that learning a few things. And then you can, you feel confident in making your decision of how you'd like to go forward.

• 11:38Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, yes, totally. So yeah, I mean, again, I still like using VS Code. I still like using Zed and in a big fan of Ben Vinegar and his hunk package, which shows you diffs, but I can't personally ride with just a diff in a term, you know? I need like having a diff that you can edit via Zed is something that I prefer to work in. There are times when I do just want to track the, the diff to see exactly what's going on and keep an eye on things. But if I want to have a hand in it, which sometimes I do, depends on the software that I'm building, I will have a VS Code open as or.

• 12:18Wes Bos?

  I think the biggest problem that, that Cursor and VS Code have is that the fricking sidebar is, is too small for people. And a lot of people just have a tiny little sidebar and they're used to that. And then a majority of your work has now moved into the sidebar and the ergonomics of that is really frustrating. It's hard to get uptake. So what a lot of they're doing is they're trying to push you into more of this, like you get your chat in the middle, you got your project on the left and you got your, like your diffs on the right, you know, like that's, that's the app that everybody is building right now. And, and that's a little bit of more of an ergonomic view for that. And that's not to say that like you can't get that set up with VS Code. It's just that I think a lot of people don't get that set up. And then it's hard to push them into this new set of features when you're working in

• 13:03Wes Bos?

  this tiny little sidebar.

• 13:05Scott Tolinski?

  I like the diff view in Zed because they're all just buffers and you can edit directly from the diff view and it's like nice and it feels like a good experience there. So maybe give Zed a try if that's something that you are missing. All right. Next question here from Nick. Hey dudes, I have been getting more into AI dev recently. I find it very difficult to get into the flow state that I usually get into when coding by hand, like a caveman. When I am coding by hand and face to face with a problem, that's when I'm able to get in that flow state of deep thought, which makes coding fun and even therapeutic. I'm curious about your guys thoughts on this. Do you have the same issue? If not, what are some things that you have done to be able to get into the flow state of AI?

• 13:48Scott Tolinski?

  My gosh, this is something that I have not solved. Let me tell you, the flow state for me has been completely decimated. And I am somebody who is maybe the equivalent of the dog in that movie. Man, which movie is that where they go squirrel? And they're like looking at something else. Which movie?

• 14:08Wes Bos?

  Air Bud.

• 14:08Scott Tolinski?

  Air Bud, yes, of course. The famous, uh, the, the famous, uh, high flying dog of Air Bud. Who, uh, golden, golden receiver. How many Air Bud movies are there? Just a billion of Air Bud movies.

• 14:22Wes Bos?

  Masterpieces, yeah.

• 14:23Scott Tolinski?

  One of my favorite Instagrams of all time is an Air Bud who's, who transforms into basically like Kobe Bryant doing a slam dunk on a guy. It's just like, it's great. Okay. Either way, sorry, Air Bud. Flow state. I was just talking about how distracted I am.

• 14:45Wes Bos?

  Not getting into the flow state.

• 14:46Scott Tolinski?

  Can I talk about how distracted I am by then getting completely derailed talking about Air Bud? How apt was that? Folks, that was not made up. That was, uh, true to my form. And so working with AI to me has become this, where I am working on project, I'm typing something and that latency in the time at which I get a response back from the AI is long enough that I go to Air Bud mode and I look at something else. And then I go to this and I go to something else and I look at Air Bud and I go to something else and then. And so what happens to me is man, Wes, I got in my herder right now.

• 15:27Scott Tolinski?

  One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13 projects open. And not all of those projects have AI agents actively on there, but they are open. And my attention has been absolutely decimated. One thing that I, I can't, I'm going to, I'm going to keep plugging this video, guys. The video is on syntax right now, on the mental health coding video. I touch on all of this stuff. It's so interesting that these questions are coming in like this.

• 16:05Scott Tolinski?

  So the people that I talk to who do the best job of maintaining a flow state or a non-scattered viewpoint, don't work on 13 different things at once. They work on one thing at a time. And like, so that is certainly part of the thing that I think needs to be a part of your workflow if you're looking to regain that flow state. Because it is so easy for somebody whose attention can get pulled here or there to be like, well, I, now that I'm waiting for this thing to finish, well, I can start something else or go somewhere else or do something else or whatever.

• 16:47Scott Tolinski?

  When like, that becomes, that turns you into a non-active participant in the code. I think a lot of the answer that we have for the last one, where you're able to stay in the code and whatever, if you are looking for that flow state still, and you're looking to have that much of a handle, yeah. I'm not saying you got too many things going on at once, but I do. And that can help you stay into the code a bit more, stay, become an active participant in the code.

• 17:16Wes Bos?

  I think the, the skill of being able to focus on what it is that you're doing and not just because you simply can not just try to chase every single squirrel is, is going to be a very high skill that people are going to, you're going to need to get better at these types of things. Cause it's, it's way too easy to just fire up a thousand things at a time. And, and generally you, you kind of do have to have more than one thing cooking at once. I guess it really depends on what you're doing here. Because like, if you're working on, like, if I'm working on like a small little feature of like, like a UI element, I don't really find that the back and forth with the LLM takes that long that I need to simply just wait, you know?

• 18:01Wes Bos?

  Like if you're firing up something that is such a massive project where you're like 15 minutes, you gotta wait for the agent to come back. Yeah, maybe you have to switch back and forth, but the nitty gritty of getting into something, that's, that's where I feel my most flow state is where you're just like in the like small little bits and really focusing in on how something works.

• 18:23Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 18:23Wes Bos?

  For me, I quite a bit of trouble as well, hitting that flow state like I used to in the coding. And I think like where, where I do hit it the best is where I'm like in the research, I'm figuring out problems. I don't hit it when I'm just like doing the same old, making input box and updating a database, you know? Like that type of stuff, that crud, that, that's over, you know? Like that type of stuff is not exciting to me because it's such low stakes. But where it is, it's, it's maybe a little layer peeled back as to like, how do I architect this thing? How do I, how do I drive it? What are the technologies that I should choose? How does this thing work? Trying to dip into areas that maybe I have not even necessarily hit before and, and figure those things out with AI.

• 19:06Wes Bos?

  That's where I hit my sort of flow state and that's where I get that oof and that excitement again.

• 19:11Scott Tolinski?

  That oof.

• 19:14Scott Tolinski?

  Oomph, there it is. Yeah.

• 19:17Wes Bos?

  All right. Next question from Dr. Fuzzface, and I intentionally hid this question from Scott. I'm curious what his thoughts are, just like on a first glance, as given what you have heard about at Protocol from Dan Abramov. So a couple of episodes ago, we had Dan Abramov come on, and he talked about how at Protocol is not just for weeners that are on Blue Sky, but it's actually kind of an exciting thing for publishing content. So the question goes on to say, how do you think it stands up against Solid, which is the Tim Berners-Lee backed one? They are clearly taking different approaches, but I like what Dan is saying and taking a scrape first mentality. Pods, which is the Solid, which is not Solid JS, Solid, this just seems to be another approach

• 20:00Wes Bos?

  from Tim Berners-Lee. They have this thing called Pods. They seem to be technical hurdles for end users, and he links to solidproject.org. So I have intentionally hidden this question from Scott, and I'm, I just landed Scott on this website, and I'm gonna ask him, hey, Scott, what is Solid? From doing a quick glance at the website.

• 20:22Scott Tolinski?

  Solid, get involved, help shape the future, Solid, Solid, your data, your choice. Advancing the web to empower people and communities. Okay, so far, a big old nothing here.

• 20:33Wes Bos?

  Get a solid pod.

• 20:34Scott Tolinski?

  And then a quote from Tim. Okay, read about Solid. Solid is an evolution of the web by its creator. Okay, interested in getting your own solid, develop with Solid. Okay. So what is it? You know what, Wes? It's funny. I see now why you gave this to me, but I,

• 20:55Scott Tolinski?

  I've all, like, in the past, I've like, always like, really prided myself when I visit a project, looking at a homepage and being like, they need somebody to just come up with a one sentence, what the heck this thing is? Because there's so many things like this, that their creators just don't tell you what the hell it is. All right, I'm on the about Solid page. Imagine having your own online storage. Okay, so is it a database? Is it a bucket? You store information once and decide who can access once. When you need services like a mortgage applications or medical care, this is what Solid can do. It's a bit like carrying your data in a rucksack. Okay. And then they have backpack in parentheses. Okay.

• 21:40Scott Tolinski?

  Just put backpack. Everybody knows that. Okay. With lots of pockets access to data. Okay, so is it a database? Or is it a bucket? Solid lets you take control of the data, combine it with the new, okay, okay. Solid is a file system for the web. Brother, just put that up front, in the same way that you can store PDF on your laptop. Okay, so is it cloud hosting? What is it? Solid lets you put documents in an online file system where you have control. Okay, yeah. That, that starts to make sense a little bit more. Yeah.

• 22:11Wes Bos?

  Your data remains yours, even when you change providers, change new services, applications or AI agents. Okay, that kind of makes sense.

• 22:19Scott Tolinski?

  Yes. Okay. All data stored in Solid Pods is stored in standard, open, interoperable, interoperable. Why can't I say that? Data formats and protocols. We are investing in the open source. Okay. So what do I do with this thing? Do I, I get a solid pod? Do I get, I get a pod?

• 22:39Wes Bos?

  You get a pod, you put your data in it?

• 22:42Scott Tolinski?

  From one of these various providers, I put my data in it. And then I have solid apps. There's kind of a lot of solid apps here. I'm kind of surprised. No, there's not that many, but still. Okay.

• 22:56Wes Bos?

  This, okay, this seems like an awesome idea, but I just, I always go back to like the normie usage. Like, you're gonna give normal people, and I, this is probably not ready for normal people just yet, right? But I just can't see regular people who think Facebook is the internet and ask on Facebook groups, is the, is the store open right now? I just can't see them doing something like this, and there's just this, it just makes so much sense. You have your own data, you control it all, but like, and people aren't gonna be able to manage their own data. People lose everything all the time. People can't even manage their own passwords. Even like, I was.

• 23:40Scott Tolinski?

  You should see my Google Drive, and I'm, I'm a tech guy.

• 23:42Wes Bos?

  Yeah, see? And like, even, I was watching a TikTok on, somebody made a funny TikTok about, like, how I don't wanna think about, remember a single password. And all the comments were like, what the hell is a passkey? I hate passkeys. No chance. Passkeys never work. And it's just all normal people being like, passkeys suck. I hate passkeys. No, no, no. And it's like, I was so sad, because like, that was our chance. That was our chance. Our final chance. The passkeys are awesome. We fumbled it. We fumbled it. And like, now regular people just don't understand what a passkey is, and they hate it, and it doesn't work very well. And it's too confusing to them. They just want to be able to

• 24:21Wes Bos?

  log into their thing, and they don't care about security. So I don't think that, it's, it's exciting. It's interesting, and I, I love it from like a, like a holistic techie point of view. But I just don't see something like this having major uptake, unfortunately, as much as it pains me to say that.

• 24:37Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, and also you gotta make it look good. I'm sorry. You gotta make it look good. You gotta make it be easy to use. You know, I think too oftentimes, like techie people, they, they have techie good ideas, and then they just like, don't focus on the usability of things, you know?

• 24:54Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 24:55Scott Tolinski?

  Okay, Tim Smith, if you only have a budget to subscribe to one AI, which AI would you choose? Oh, ah. You know what, Tim? This is the worst possible question for me, because I like to change my stuff all the time. I like to change, I'm like, oh, let me try this, let me try that, let me try this, let me try that. If I had to pick one right now, I would probably pick OpenAI Codex Plan. Because I can do design and CSS, and even though Claude is so much endlessly better at that than, than ChatGPT, the ChatGPT models I found have just been more reliable, getting me the code I want,

• 25:40Scott Tolinski?

  that works the way I want it, and just, that's just how it is for me right now at this very second. But guess what, Tim? That could change any single day. That could change any day, and it could change depending on which harness you're using. And so that's, that's one of them that I, I feel like, it depends on how much you're spending too, because some of those plans, they just don't make sense unless you're paying the big boy 200 buck, or 200 bucks a month plan to get access to the best models, the biggest baddest boys in the yard, and have them doing the work, right? Because I, I like the biggest baddest boys in the yard doing the work. If I'm gonna have somebody doing the work, that's not me. It's gonna be the biggest baddest boys in the yard. And so, Tim, I, I think that the GPT subscription at that cost will get you there. But still, man, I don't, I don't know. Oh, you know, like, if you subscribe to OpenRouter,

• 26:25Scott Tolinski?

  you're gonna be burning a crazy amount of tokens just trying to.

• 26:28Wes Bos?

  Yeah, yeah, we're talking about like, pure cost here. The like, 100 or 200 dollar a month plan from Anthropic or OpenAI is probably the best deal around right now. They're, they're, I don't know, we always say, oh, they're losing money on this type of thing. But like, that's, it's probably your best deal right now. And then between those two, I'm probably leaning towards Codex right now, because you can use it with alternative harnesses, like you can use it with OpenCode. Whereas with Anthropic, they're trying to push everybody into just straight up using Claude code for the subscriptions. You can, of course, you can use it with OpenRouter, you can use it with the API tokens, et cetera, et cetera.

• 27:10Wes Bos?

  But it's a really interesting space right now, where some of these providers are trying to push you into their thing, because they wanna lock you into that ecosystem, because the switching costs of these are so low right now. Like, the, the switching, like, the, the one thing that you have that's bad, which is, oh, I was on OpenAI, and my chats are now no longer in there, right? And I think that that's probably a good way that these companies are going to try to lock you in, where like, oh, you, you can't switch to one, because all of your chats are locked up. Like, can you even like, export and import your chats from one to another? I don't even know, but.

• 27:49Scott Tolinski?

  That's somebody, something, somebody should build.

• 27:52Wes Bos?

  I don't, I mean, maybe.

• 27:53Scott Tolinski?

  But if you're looking at like, coding right now. I start so many new chats constantly. I'm, like, I do not hold my chats holy, and I do not continue to use them, because they get worse over time, obviously.

• 28:02Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 28:04Wes Bos?

  But like. It's so, the switching costs are so low. Like you could, you just go to the model selector and you can even continue on your same chat on a totally different provider in a lot of these types of things. And like, I don't think they, they want that because then as soon as one gets really more expensive, then you just, you flip to the next one that's losing money. But I would say, what, August 11th, 2026, Codex is probably that right now. But we'll see what that switches. I bet Google is gonna, gonna have something or Meta, Grok, like these things are gonna all be better. That's the other thing is like, the Grok, if you pay for like premium Twitter, premium plus,

• 28:46Wes Bos?

  just weird, that's a cracker in Canada, you get like a certain amount of Grok available. So then there's all these like weird things where like, oh, well, I get it for free with my X, Y, and Z. You know, my, my cell phone plan comes with $40 a month of, of this. So then I'll use that first. And then, uh, we bought a car and at Costco, they gave us like free Grok or something, you know, it's gonna be, you're gonna be seeing that type of stuff where people just like, you bundle it in. It comes with your cable subscription.

• 29:18Scott Tolinski?

  I got 20 tokens for free when I bought a, uh, a chicken wrap at, what do they call it? A chicken, a chicken bake at Costco. Yes. I, I gotta use my Costco tokens because I bought a chicken bake. I, uh, I agree. You know, I, I think the one thing that you can do, Tim, that is beneficial to you is get a setup going where you can make your stuff portable. Because let's say I want to do Claude code for a month and Claude code makes us the worst out of things, but you can just sim link everything up, all your skills and all your agents, files and whatever. You, you can set up systems to do that. And then if you do, then like, you can try Claude code for

• 29:58Scott Tolinski?

  a month. And even though Claude code sucks because the Claude code to be sucks, but it also tries to keep you in it. As long as you can make your stuff portable and your processes portable, then you can move from one harness to another harness, from one agent to another agent, model, whatever. And to me, that is like the major unlock rather than, uh, like really investing all of my time into one harness and one model.

• 30:24Wes Bos?

  One tool I'm taking a look at, and I haven't tried this just yet, but it's from Ry Sullivan. He's the guy that built Answer Overflow. We've talked about him many times on the podcast, but he's, he's building executor.sh, which is essentially connect all of your tools to everything. Cause this is one problem I have is that I use all of the tools and I have to like, they're all slightly different. Sometimes they'll discover all of the skills and the MCP servers, but sometimes they won't. But like I have VS Code, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Pi, you know, I use them all. So I can talk about them. And it's so frustrating to have to, to set them all up somewhat differently and make sure they're all properly, you know, like the one I use a lot is the, the CloudFlare MCP.

• 31:08Wes Bos?

  And I have to like login with all of them and whatnot. So this is supposed to solve that pain. They got Claude Code, Cursor and Codex going into the big E. And then you've got what Sentry? You get your Sentry set up with, with that and you can use them with any tools, GitHub, Linear, all of those types of things. I'm gonna set this up after it because I've just sold it to myself. But this is exactly what I need.

• 31:30Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. I, I mean, I, I've seen this. I've taken a look at it. I agree. Like I think the hardest thing for me, making things transferable is the MCP stuff. I think the MCP stuff is the hardest because everybody has their own MCP config style. And that's annoying to have to move that stuff over. And once I get my MCP set up, I tend to just like, I don't know if I'm like adding more MCPs and I tend to be adding more CLIs. Some MCPs are very good still for me, but I have been doing more just straight up CLIs and then either having like a skill or something.

• 32:08Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Because once it's a CLI, they're, they're signed in and, and everything has access to that then, right? That's, that works well.

• 32:15Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. One, I'll, I'll actually share something too. And this is not like, this is not, this is not the same thing. Something that I've been using, Wes, is this Swamp Club. Swamp Club is, the Swamp Club does a great job of telling you exactly what it is upfront. Deterministic automation for AI agents. And so you set up your, your processes here to reach for things that can be automated in a way. So like, yes, this is a different problem, Tim, but if, if like, one thing I've been doing is putting more of my stuff into Swamp. And then now what I have to do is just

• 32:54Scott Tolinski?

  simply use Swamp on my things. And then it's like, okay, I want to provision a domain on CloudFlare. Okay, Swamp has my automation, which is one, not AI based, by the way, it is code based. So it just runs that automation that is code based to set up and provision a domain on CloudFlare. Okay, I want to set up and provision a local domain so that way I can access this across my network. It's in Swamp. So whether that's Claude Code hitting it in Swamp or, or Pi or anything hitting in a Swamp, it does it and it does it the same way every time because it's code and not the AI doing it. So I've been really, really loving this tool to do, uh, make things more portable.

• 33:37Wes Bos?

  Awesome. I'm gonna check that out. That's great. I, I just love this whole like, get your setup as movable as possible. And then you're, as we go through all these crazy changes and, and rug pulls or whatever, you're so easy to switch to something else.

• 33:52Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. Get your go bag.

• 33:53Wes Bos?

  Doing what you're doing. Yeah.

• 33:55Scott Tolinski?

  Yes.

• 33:56Wes Bos?

  All right. Jimbo Wesper says, hey, Scott Weston CJ, longtime listener from Sweden. I bounce between embedded C, Postgres and a bit of front end. That's, that is quite the stack. Um, I keep running into the same thing. When do you actually drop a tool that still works and is still maintained? My question is where the pressure really comes from? Is it the tool itself getting worse? Or is it everything around it? Hiring, libraries drying up, CI integration, the, can someone else pick this up in two years problem? Has this, there been a specific moment where you realize something perfectly functional has quietly become too expensive to keep? And as a bonus question, he

• 34:36Wes Bos?

  says, any migration you regretted? Um, what did you think you'd gained versus what you actually got? Yes, this is really interesting question because there is a sweet spot in between hanging on to the good old trusty faithful thing that works well, is well supported, has, has been doing you well. And then it starts to creak, starts to get older and you start to say, I can't hire for it. A lot of the examples don't work as well as, as they thought. Um, a lot of the new libraries that, that come out are integrated. Perfect example I've had in this one is, is Express, you know? I hung on to Express for probably three or four years longer than, than most people did.

• 35:20Wes Bos?

  And I finally got to a point where the TypeScript story for it sucked. Um, the integration of everything modern sucked. A lot of the new stuff that I wanted to use were not based on like the middleware. So I had to write these like conversion middlewares to go from Express middleware to web request and web response middleware. And I finally got to a point where I'm like, this is more of a pain than it being old faithful that just works and is battle tested and whatever I need to move over to. I moved to Hanno. Um, so that is a, a perfect example of something where, where I have that. And even like, I don't know, you're gonna hire a young gun to work on something? They would

• 36:02Wes Bos?

  have no idea what this thing is. It hasn't been around for, it's obviously well used, but it's, it's not the like, the, the tool that people pick out of the box these days. So that, and not to mention like speed and all of that type of stuff. So I'm curious what Scott has to say about this because Scott is maybe the opposite where he loves to switch and migrate to things. Have you ever regretted any of those moves?

• 36:27Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah, I would probably say I regretted moving, uh, I probably regretted moving to GraphQL. And I probably regretted moving a lot of things, you know? This is gonna seem kind of crazy because Meteor, um, even when I migrated off of Meteor, it was definitely kind of past its time in which people were really deeply using it. But the moment that I moved off of Meteor to a React based custom stack and then to GraphQL and then to this and then to that and whatever for LevelUp

• 37:05Scott Tolinski?

  tutorials, it did, it never felt as good as the Meteor site did until I moved to SvelteKit.

• 37:15Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 37:16Scott Tolinski?

  That was the only time that it ever felt as good as the Meteor based site. And even then it didn't feel as good to work in because I had to roll my own custom off for it. And I had to maintain so much more code and the Meteor version of the site, honestly, probably would still be working just fine today. Um, and as far as I know, like Meteor continues to update and continues to improve itself. So like, I, I probably should have just stayed on that. Um, that's one thing there. And, and even to take that further, because the Meteor version of it was great. The probably the, the, you know, the, the biggest update there that I had done, but the original version of the LevelUp tutorial site was done in Drupal. And I should have kept it on Drupal. I, I would have

• 38:00Scott Tolinski?

  been fine to have it on Drupal years and years and years later. I was still would have been happy to have it fine on Drupal, e- even today, just giving it a, a modern, uh, paint sheen or even like just a custom UI instead of moving the data, moving the database, moving it to Meteor and then moving it to this. And then now, okay, oh, it's on MongoDB still and blah, blah, blah. Like, I am the worst person for this stuff because I, you know, the, the old heads were right that you, you should have just stayed on what you, you know, there's no sense in changing stuff that isn't, you know, the, for a marginal improvement and sometimes

• 38:39Wes Bos?

  Yeah.

• 38:40Scott Tolinski?

  a detriment to the code base. And, oh, I understand the gray beards as my beard gets gray.

• 38:46Wes Bos?

  In most cases, you can stick around until the thing that you want to jump to is very clearly the thing that you want to move to and not the thing that is being hyped up or not the thing that is exciting and, and people are, are trying to patch it all together. But, and once it's at a point where we're like, yeah, lots of people are using this. I think it is, it's maybe like, I would say that's probably three years past the first time you hear people say something is dead. You know, SaaS is another good example where lots of websites still running on SaaS for their CSS. It's probably fine, but probably, but we had the show probably three years ago, says, is SaaS dead?

• 39:30Wes Bos?

  If you're still on it, I think now's the time to switch to just using modern CSS. We have everything, pretty much everything that you can do in SaaS, and there is new stuff in CSS that is not compatible with SaaS.

• 39:45Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, yes. I, we used to say like, don't switch to something until you've heard us talk about it like four or five times. And yeah, maybe that's not necessarily as true in the, in the modern sense here, now that we just have AI go, go fix it, make, write it in Rust for me this week. AI actually really feeling like I'm in a Rust mood this week. So rewrite my whole stack in Rust. So, I don't know, things change.

• 40:07Wes Bos?

  Switching costs are much lower these days.

• 40:11Scott Tolinski?

  Yes, word. Cool. Next one here from Luhan. Most of the UX quality we see today in React-based component libraries and design systems come from primitive tooling libraries, packages like Base UI, React Aria, Radix, Floating UI, et cetera. That pushes the bar and made Shad CN the success it is today. As a Django developer with heavy, heavy leaning on UI and UX, traditional SSR and MPA sites, multi-page application sites, and software will always be built using good old template and HTML rendered by the backend. With all that said, how could we achieve the same level of UX quality for traditional frameworks?

• 40:53Scott Tolinski?

  I'm doing something close to a component library internally at my job, using Floating UI, gets close, but never 100%, either due to weirdness in the browsers or just not having enough time and deep pockets to dedicate to building good old HTML, CSS and JS component library that gets close to what Shad CN has. Have I been missing a magical library that could fix dropdown, tooltip, positioning, hover, focus, state helpers and all that jazz? Takes hours and hours to get done. Well, my gosh, Luhan, I would say web components, web components. Hey, web components. Web Awesome, I think is a good, a good thing there to,

• 41:33Scott Tolinski?

  to give a check, a try. Part of the reason why traditional multi-page applications don't feel well is because you're missing some of the stuff that you, you get by just swapping out one little part of the page or one little tiny island of interaction without having to wire up unique JavaScript for each things. And things like the page transitions API can now do multi-page applications in some browsers could give you a level of like polish that you're not getting. But in terms of organizing and things like that, if I were you, I would look at web component frameworks that exist, we're using web standards, web components. That's the answer for me.

• 42:13Wes Bos?

  Yeah, I agree with this as well, where it's like, you don't have the time to do it all from scratch. You don't maybe haven't found everything. That's why people reach for a lot of these libraries or like lower level things that will help you build something like a Shad CN, because it's, it's all done for you. I think, we've said this probably for years, the, the web is slowly getting to a spot where you don't necessarily need a lot of these things because the primitives are getting so good. But along with that, you just like, you gotta look at like, what are people that are doing what you're doing, which is traditional server-side rendered React JavaScript sprinkles on top? What are they using? A really good example of something to look for is Caleb Porzio, we've had him

• 42:54Wes Bos?

  on the show in the past. He's the author of Alpine JS, which is the ability to like, it's like JavaScript sprinkles on top. A lot of your interaction is done simply in your HTML template rendering, right? He has a component library called Flux UI that has most of the things that you're talking about here, right? Tool tip, pop up, breadcrumbs, all of the things that you're used to, and it's all built with Alpine JS. So I would probably take a look at what is the, probably what's the Laravel community doing with a lot of the stuff? And they're all reaching for LiveWire, Ruby communities on Hotwire, Alpine JS, and that Flux UI is the component library for that.

• 43:38Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. And hey, I'm gonna throw my hat in the ring here and say Graffiti UI. Graffiti- hyphen UI dot com is a standards-based CSS-only library for this stuff. Now, it will get you in that we don't prioritize older browser support. So that's one thing, but it, it is like a, the base layer for a lot of these components and the idea, if it is like an HTML-based version of something like Shad CN, however, there's no JavaScript. You can obviously augment this with JavaScript, but hey, it's a, that's where it's at. Check it out. Random Cat says, are you using Hermes or a similar tool? What are you using for? What model are you using? How much does it cost you per month? Are you happy with it?

• 44:23Scott Tolinski?

  Random Cat, I am using Hermes and I'm primarily using as an agent interface that my wife can use instead of ChatGPT. She fires up a custom UI that I built and she chats with it and I control the models and stuff like that. Currently just on Codex, I use Sol because we're not using it that often. I have been thinking about replacing that and ripping it out though. Not because I don't like Hermes, I like Hermes, but I went a little too maximalist with it. And I made like eight different profiles that all have different specialties and I just realized.

• 44:53Wes Bos?

  Yeah, you had like, like trip planning features.

• 44:56Scott Tolinski?

  It has so much stuff in it and it doesn't need that. Not that it's like a problem, it's just like, it doesn't need it. It doesn't need it. Um, yeah. Cause we are using it for trip planning and we're using it for different things and those, but like, I think I went too maximalist on the actual process of it all. So I've been like thinking about just ripping that out and having like, maybe even like Pi-based agents that accept requests when they come in and whatever. Um, yeah. Going more minimal with that. And so, yeah, I am using Hermes. I do like Hermes for lots of things. It is a context hog. It loves context. Uh, so that's something to keep in mind, but overall as a harness and as a

• 45:40Scott Tolinski?

  thing, like I just used Hermes a moment ago before we started this show because I have my NAS on my TailScale network and my VPN that the NAS is on and my TailScale network were like not working after a power surge. So I just go into my thing. I'd say, hey, I can't get into my NAS via TailScale right now. Uh, can you figure out why? It looks fine from the UI. And it was like, yes, this happened and then fixed it for me. Just SSH'd in and fixed it. What did it do? I don't know. I'll check it out after this show, but,

• 46:12Scott Tolinski?

  so that's what I use. I use Hermes for just kind of personal assistant stuff and investigating things like that for me and my systems. Yeah.

• 46:19Wes Bos?

  I, a lot of this stuff where like, we had OpenClaw or like your own personal assistant, a lot of this stuff is just simply just folding into the tools that we, we use to code, right? Like my, I'll use Cloud Code or Open Code or Cursor or whatever for all these things. And you saw that also with like ChatGPT and the Codex app have now merged. And now they're, they're just one app, right? And it doesn't matter. Like you don't have to do this whole thing where, am I asking a question? Do I go to ChatGPT app? Or am I coding something? Do I go to the, the Codex app or whatever? It's simply just like one app, you go to it and it can do whatever it is that you want. And like one kind of cool thing is you can turn a chat into a project. If you're like, hmm, this is kind

• 47:01Wes Bos?

  of interesting. Let's, let's go down that route. So I'm not using any self-hosted stuff at the moment. I've certainly tried it all, but I'm, I'm just using my agent harness, whatever the one it is of the day. Again, I'm using them all as my, my assistant thing.

• 47:20Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah. I think for me, Wes, the reason why is like, I, so I gave it to Courtney and she can like prompt it to build little apps and stuff. And then, yeah, by all accounts does on the network and gives them to her on her phone or creates.

• 47:32Wes Bos?

  Pretty sweet.

• 47:33Scott Tolinski?

  PDFs and she can use it as an agent rather than having to like be locked into just like ChatGPT doing everything, you know? And, and it's like, it's totally different when the process is all writing files on your, your local system.

• 47:48Wes Bos?

  Yeah. Well, see, I, I do kind of have that itch. And I think as we get into the spot where you can run these things locally, or you can run them significantly cheaper, I think I'll probably dip into that as well. And maybe even dip into like something, we, we talked about like giving kids access to this type of thing, you know, like what does that start to look like once you have six people doing this? I'm not paying for a six person license to one of these things for everyone to use, you know, that's going to be way too expensive.

• 48:16Scott Tolinski?

  Yeah.

• 48:17Wes Bos?

  I already got screwed by Netflix, you know? Netflix used to be 12 bucks. And what is it now? I don't know. Like $300 a month, something crazy like that?

• 48:25Scott Tolinski?

  And I've never been one of those people that complains about the quality of the stuff on Netflix, but come on, it's gotten just, it's bad. It's bad. I'm not happy with any of the new stuff on Netflix. I, you know, I am, yeah, I'm turning into that person. Like what, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, why do they gotta put podcasts on Netflix? Who's sitting down and being like, let me put on a podcast on Netflix? Come on, who cares? Games? Who's playing games on Netflix?

• 48:53Wes Bos?

  Amy Poehler on, on the TV. She does, she does it on YouTube, but like if, again, we talk about normies. My wife will put up like Amy Poehler podcast on the TV while she's doing something, you know, sewing or, or running around the house and just kind of have something on. So I get it. I get it. Maybe people aren't doing that with coding podcasts, but they are doing it with, with celebrities.

• 49:18Scott Tolinski?

  I just don't care about that. No, I don't care about that. And I want, I want every app to be finely tuned for the things that I care about specifically.

• 49:26Wes Bos?

  Yes. All right. Let's move into sick picks. This is a section of the show where we pick things that are sick and I am going to sick pick this amazing battery bank. This is the SHARGE, S-H-A-R-G-E. And Scott, I know you have one of these as well because I have the Charge 2 and I now recently got the Charge Ice Mag 3. And this is an awesome power bank because let me tell you what it does. It's mag safe. So you just like clip it on to your phone and it will automatically just start charging. The version three has a built-in USB C cord, which I absolutely love because when I'm usually using a power

• 50:09Wes Bos?

  bank is when I'm like traveling. And what I like to do is I like to throw it in my pocket or throw it in my bag. And then like, you have to make sure you also have like a cable. And I just love having a tiny little cable built in. And then of course it has a USB C on it. It also has a fan in it and it does like, I turn the, the colors off because they're kind of obnoxious, but it has like LEDs in it. There we go. You can, maybe you can see this.

• 50:38Wes Bos?

  It's got some obnoxious LEDs you can turn off.

• 50:40Scott Tolinski?

  I know, and it looks cool.

• 50:42Wes Bos?

  It's, it's so good. Like, I bought a second one because I lost mine, and that's something that I do. But then I found it. Now I have two, and the, the magnet on it is so high quality. I absolutely love it. And I know battery banks is not something a lot of people are buying anymore because your phone will typically last all day. But it's so nice. Even the kids sometimes are like, oh, my iPad's dead and I don't want to sit near the plug. I'd just be like, oh, here, here's a, here's a battery, you know, you can, you can plug it in while you're watching it. So if you're looking for very nice, get the Charge Ice Mag 3. There's a little stand in it, too. It's so cool.

• 51:21Scott Tolinski?

  It is cool. It's a cool one. I like it. I like it. I like the stand. I use it while traveling. It's my, my favorite one to use while traveling. So yes, big fan of the Charge. Shout out to the folks at VS Code who hooked me up with one of them when I went there to the VS Code Summit. So that's where I got mine and I love it. I'm going to sick pick an ESP32 S3 1.6 4-inch AMOLED Touch Display Development Board, 2284 6560 resolution, 16.7M color, QSPI interface, Wi-Fi BLE5 support onboard, six access, IMU, TF card slot, USB, UR, I2C. This little guy, let's see if I can.

• 52:06Scott Tolinski?

  It is an ESP32, so it's, it's ESP32 and it has Wi-Fi, it has a gyroscope, it has accelerometer in it.

• 52:14Wes Bos?

  Bluetooth.

• 52:16Scott Tolinski?

  All that stuff, and it has a touchscreen out of the box. So if you're the type of person who wants to get into ESP stuff, building little computers or little interesting things like that. I had bought one ESP and I bought a gyroscope for it and I bought an accelerometer for it and I bought all this stuff for it. And then I was like, this one has all of it in here as well as a touchscreen and it is, this is tiny. It is so tiny. It is the coolest little thing and I haven't started working on it yet. I have a secret project that I'm going to be showing. It's for my, my Century Hack Week project. I am so stoked to have this little thing and I, guess how much this little thing was?

• 52:58Scott Tolinski?

  It's 30, 30 bucks and that's 30 bucks on Amazon. They're like $20 on Waveshare. So they are, they are very cheap.

• 53:06Wes Bos?

  What's that?

• 53:07Scott Tolinski?

  It's the manufacturer of the display. So you can get it for, you can get it for way, way, way cheaper. But I needed it faster, so I got it from Amazon for 34 bucks. Either way, super cool little device.

• 53:21Wes Bos?

  Super cool. I actually have a couple of those on order. I have a whole box of, this is my ESP32 box and it is, I just have dozens of them. I've got the little, the little docks for them and I have tons of little sensors, little buck converters,

• 53:40Wes Bos?

  external Bluetooth modules. I even have, look at this one. Look how small. That is a screen. It is the size of my thumb. I have an ESP32 with a screen that is the size of my thumbnail and it's unbelievable that computers can do this. And now they're, they're gaining popularity right now. Steve from Teal Draw has been like posting about them on his Twitter account. If you want to go look at some of the fun examples, go look at his Twitter account because he's, they're so easy to program now with AI. You don't have to know C or you don't have to load like MicroPython. That's a, that's something a lot of people would do. Or you don't have to load up this like Arduino, like crappy IDE for it, you know, you can just prompt away whatever it is that you want.

• 54:24Wes Bos?

  And it works super well.

• 54:27Scott Tolinski?

  I'm, I'm super excited to, to do my Hack Week project here, which involves all of these little components here, Wes. This little Adafruit microphone is so stinking tiny. I'm, I'm stoked. I'm very stoked. I got, I got a whole, like you said, I got a whole just bag full of, bags full of stuff.

• 54:45Wes Bos?

  Goodies.

• 54:45Scott Tolinski?

  Sitting around here. Goodies, yes. Look at this keyboard. Look at this little guy.

• 54:51Wes Bos?

  So you're building, can you tell us what you're building?

• 54:55Scott Tolinski?

  Well, this is going to be for a different project and I've decided to change focus for a little bit. So I, I'm going to do a Cyberdeck for myself, not for Hack Week. I'm doing something else for Hack Week now. But it's, it's hardware. But so, yeah, so my like Cyberdeck shell that I was working on is like basically, I, I had to change the screen so the dimensions don't quite fit.

• 55:19Wes Bos?

  Looks like a BlackBerry.

• 55:20Scott Tolinski?

  It, oh, it looks like a chunky BlackBerry. Yes. It looks like a chunky BlackBerry. It's going to be on a Raspberry Pi. But this thing is going to be really sick in general. It's going to be just a cool little, uh, full-on computer in a little Cyberdeck package. I'm going to do something fun with it. I got, I got a lot of devices going here, Wes. I got an E Ink screen over here that, I'm looking at for a different form factor of device.

• 55:47Wes Bos?

  This is another, well, let's just show random technology we have on our desk. I have the Terminal X, which is the new E Ink, super big display. And boy, oh, boy, this thing is so freaking cool. And the battery lasts, I was like looking at how long the battery lasts. Yeah, like if you have it refresh every 40 minutes, it lasts like six months or something crazy like that.

• 56:11Scott Tolinski?

  My Terminal X is in the kitchen. It's now a family device, but my terminal, my original terminal is just sitting on my desk. So this is the little one and it's got the cool, clear colorway. But the, uh, the, the one that I, the Terminal X is in my, my kitchen and the family loves it because I had been putting like daily Calvin and Hobbes and Far Side comics on it and the kids go up and check whatever the new comic is every day and stuff. And it's got the calendar, the family calendar and all that stuff. Man, the terminal devices are, are sick. They're great.

• 56:40Wes Bos?

  So much fun stuff. Cool. And that's all we have for you today. Let us know down below or syntax.fm, hit on the put lock button. Ask us your question and we'll answer in a future episode. Peace.