need end-to-end for my poor brain

too much time at the coalface

i was sick as a pig last week or so, i got bit by something and it “took me out” anything that messes with your blood and makes you go to the toilet multiple times a day is not fun let me tell you.

i honestly think it was my body telling me that things had to change.

just because we can make stuff does’nt always mean that we should right, also, my ideas of rapidly pushing out useful tools is not working right now.

i should be spending 3/4 hrs each time on these things and then push, wherever it is, it should be useful and functional and then i can come back around and do a code pass and improve against the bugs.

my context window is getting smaller

in any of these command line systems it’s often designed around how big the context window is of the llm before it starts to lose it’s mind about everything you said before you hit that context window, claude has a million, my brain does not.

i’ve been indirectly trying to hold all this context in my brain, while i build in failsafes like skills “remember everything” between sessions. using claude-mem for remember decisions and outcomes we have from vibecoding all day i had’nt noticed how fragmented my brain had gotten over all these little strands of projects — it’s grown passed experiments and apps.

i’ve been building stuff for my homelab and i literally have code snippits all over the place, it’s kinda dangerous really because those code bases are going to go stale and i really need to have something proactive that’s checking them out and improving them as i go.

sorting out the project folders

first thing i did to get some level of semblance over this madness was to build (i know right, the irony) a tool that i can load into a browser to “score” projects i’ve worked on.

what state they are in, what i need to finish off and just basically give me a frame of reference from things that have a log of git commits and a few other variables.

trust me, it’s got value, you can add categories too so you know what’s an experiment, app, tool or little hack for the homelab. highly recommend.

what happened to my flowstate

i was so locked in, motivated by the fact that a claude code max plan is $200 and having a plan for the year and in the hope that i’d get a bunch out to break into that monthly.

i’ve had a few dribs and drabs of income from fiverr but not much to get ahead, that has to change this month and i’m really considering (says with baited breath) potentially looking at taking some night work to cover the differences and start to actual build ahead.

i’ve got a few other irons in the fire but i just don’t feel my hardware is going to get me there right now, i need some tech upgrades before i can start trusting this stuff on a daily gig that’s multiple hours a day for not much funds.

the additional nightly work could make a big difference and i could get a lease plan for an up to date machine that would cover my plans and get me streaming again — just got to get the networking side of the situation locked down first so that means 10g networking into the office and into the other little space that we have.

adding weight and priority to finish

most of the stuff i’ve made for myself helps me day to day, the blogging stuff, the centralized platform location, it’s all a lot of the infrastructure that would come along as i was building.

i got a bit too locked into that and did’nt realise how much tinkering time that would take up, that being said it’s really opened up some “holes” in the thinking.

the first thing is that you always need an llm model that’s as good or better than the stuff you vibecoded with it. you are always going to need a subscription to maintain it.

sounds obvious but once you are hooked on this stuff it’s hard to really see yourself without it and that’s kind of a problem.

gone are the days of going on forums looking for an idea or patterns of a potential solution or “pointing in the right direction” from other people experimenting, now we have all that knowledge and reasoning in the mix. on demand information butler at the fingertips.

also i never realised how fast that typing would be going away, talking to the computer and not typing anymore is where it’s going to be at, that costs money as well, not as expensive as a subscription package but another credit amount to be aware of and watch.

strands of context left floating

one of the biggest things i’ve realised is the tech debt of the code that you built last week, last month can come back around and bite you in the ass. stuff moves fast, agents are going to be more valuable reporting back.

fixing bugs in real time, being aware of code changes or issues that influence your design decisions, that feels in flux now, around the clock.

how you delegate and how you maintain that is a reporting skill issue in itself but it’s getting easier, i’ve not really touched my homelab for instance for well over three months and the ai helper i’ve installed there as some scripts is doing everything i need to keep an eye on the day to day, restarting things and reporting when things fall over and break instead of a blank expression and digging into the why.

step away to lock back in

as with most things in life i took a few days after i was sick to realise that this stuff was not getting any easier or better, i had overwhelmed myself by jumping around from one firefight to another, nothing seemed to be getting better on the financials and i was not finishing and pushing projects.

i think it comes from knowing what a bucket of worms it opens up. people installing your software on a bizarre version of a mac, issues with payments, updates, servers falling over, gotta be smart with the stuff you ship so the surface of it all does’nt come back to bite you in the backside.

that being said, i need 1000x more payment buttons on the web and my focus is very much on flow and process building, less automation and more time saving and gauntlet looping a bunch of this stuff, i’ve not used my hermes agent server is a while now and it shows.

doing more while trying to do less

i see it all the time, people are doing more work hours than ever.

i think it’s a side effect of knowing that you can build/optimize and roll your own versions of things that cost you or frustrate you.

the downside of that like i put above is that this can leave you fragmented or working more just to put in that other feature that would give you something you had not even considered when you booted up the machine this morning.

it’s one of the things i don’t (but kinda do) like about llm’s — they will fix your problem and then offer advice about something else you could add or do or something to be mindful of, seems like nothing get’s to a finished state.

i recommend the /i-have-adhd skill for some days. trust me, it will save you mentally.

i think that’s it for now, peace and love

humble x