AI

A friendly group of developers, no recording, no posturing — just shared screens and honest notes from the second AI Shoulder Surf session. The recurring theme: people are tightening up where their agents can reach, and getting choosier about which models they trust with the work.

Dependabot’s defaults can make it look like an agent of chaos. Here’s how cooldowns, dependency groups, and a Claude skill turn down the churn — fewer rebases, boring CI, and a few extra days for the world to flag the bad actors.

Notes from an informal Zoom session where developers shared AI tools, automation techniques, and projects. Topics included using Claude in headless mode to manage version bumps across 20+ packages, an overnight bot that processes GitHub issues and responds to PR comments, the “Talk About Us” copy-auditing skill, and a lively debate about whether the future of development is writing specs rather than code.

It’s easy to fall into a trap of using jargon when discussing what you’re working on. Sometimes we need help expressing our thoughts in interesting and meaningful ways—using our own voices, in a way that’s memorable and repeatable. A blog post by Anil Dash helped me rethink my writing. I’ve turned those principles into an AI skill, so you can try it too.

Recently I got access to GitHub’s Copilot Chat. I have been trying to figure out how (and if) Copilot can help to improve my productivity. Initially I did not think yet another article on AI would have any point, but many smart, competent software developers do not use AI (yet?). Some of them may not be aware of how they can leverage AI and some may rightly just be wary of all the hype. My plan is to share some practical examples and you can judge for yourself if it is worth your time.