Taylor Schaack

@taylorlearns.com

I love learning, and I'm currently learning to build software. Spent 15 years in semi-technical roles, then AI gave me the tools I needed to pursue development starting in 2024. Learning something new everyday.

I've been THOROUGHLY enjoying having coding agents build customized HTML/CSS/JS throwaway sites for doing semi-involved work. Years ago, I would always think of ideas for workspaces dedicated to a certain type of task, and now I can just summon them into existence. What at time.

Finally got around to building a little tool I've wanted for the longest time. I'm colorblind, and all of the color ID tools I've found are for designers, so they return a hex or RGB, not a name. I just wanna know if it's blue or purple, man.

A screenshot of a Mac app called 'Name That Color' that returns plain english color names for a pixel on a user's screen.

Questions are free now. Been difficult for me for two reasons: 1. Years of encoding reminding me to not waste others' time with questions I could answer on my own, 2. Despite tons of rich answers, I can only absorb so much in a day. Answers far outpacing knowledge gain.

The issue with the memory/meta-frameworks like GSD and Superpowers is that when I enter one out-of-framework prompt, it takes 2-3 prompts to get everything back on the rails. Gotta figure out how to push all prompts through without blocking outside functionality.

There's a strange second-order effect from having (effectively) unlimited access to tokens. I didn't realize how much mental energy I was spending deciding if I should open a session because I was planning out my token budget for the day/week.

Trying out the open source models on OpenCode Zen and realizing just how overkill 5.3 Codex is for many tasks. The speed from the OS Zen models really improves the experience.

One day devs will be measured by token efficiency, I'm sure of it. I spend a ton more tokens than is necessary simply because I spend a lot of time exploring the possiblities and codebase.

What's the correct way to fix a subagent hang in Opencode? Is there some way to just kill the subagent and restart? Or need to kill the entire session and prompt with "continue"?

Switched to GSD from Superpowers, and boy oh boy what a difference. Walking through the decisions one by one goes so far in terms of keeping my mental model of the project up-to-date. Highly recommend for newer devs.

I feel like such an in-betweener right now. To experienced devs, I'm a vibe-coding larper. To non-devs, I'm a nerd maniacally ranting about the AI tsunami heading towards land. Just can't win with these people.

Antigravity monthly credit system just seems way off in today's market. I'm regularly checking my Codex/Claude session/weekly usage limits, already planning what I'm going to give them when the next session starts. It's day two and I'm out of Google credits, so, uh, guess I'll see you next month?

Do we have a name yet for the GSD, gstack, superpowers kind of tools yet? I feel like GSD's description of "meta-prompting, context engineering and spec-driven development system" is accurate, but just doesn't quite roll off the tongue.

Seems like lately the GPTs suggesting more and more 3rd party tools. I ask for a relatively simple local script and it suggests 2-3 libraries to achieve what a 200 line script should be able to do. Wondering where that's coming from.

Where's the suggested folder feature in Google Drive? Seems like such an easy win. When I add a new scanned receipt to my home folder, Drive offers to make a podcast about it, but still can't figure out which folder it belongs in???

I feel like I'm missing something, but managing my skill library with OpenCode (or Claude or Codex, all have the same issue) isn't intuitive at all. Trying to build a library where I can easily toggle skills on and off per project and even per-session and not have to open up a config file each time.

Set my OpenClaw up on an old laptop, gave it a dedicated Obsidian vault that's synced to my machine. So much better than trying to read large blocks of markdown in a chat window.

Just discovered interactive mode when listening to audio overviews in NotebookLM. Hard to imagine a world in which that doesn't become one of the most popular ways to learn about new topics, especially in academics.

Driving a lot of AI tools feels like driving the Suzuki Escudo Pikes Peak Special in Gran Turismo. If you're not vigilant, everything just spins out of control real fast.