Articles, notes and updates on the agent, the tools, and the craft of building software with AI.
Why we built a full database workbench into the editor, and how it feels to use it. Staged edits, environment-aware safety rails, and a slow query turned into a migration in three clicks.
e 0.6.7 ships a real step debugger — breakpoints, a live call stack, and inspectable variables — built to feel like it was always part of the editor.
Grove 0.2.9 turns Xdebug step-debugging into a single toggle — trigger mode, no php.ini edits, editor listening on port 9003. Plus an honest account of why fully-static PHP can't be debugged, and what to do about it.
How e 0.6.5 closed the last gaps with Laravel Idea — and why reading your live database lets a from-scratch editor quietly step past it.
On the quiet gaps in a modern Laravel app — between PHP and JavaScript, between a class and its template, between "it worked in dev" and "why is this slow" — and how this release fills them.
There are three sources of truth in a Laravel app — your code, your migrations, and the live database — and they drift apart silently. e 0.6.3 is about seeing all three at once: an Eloquent relationship graph that flags missing foreign keys, a security lens on your routes, and a Pest test written straight from a replay.
On why I wrote my own editor, and how it came together — one small, stubborn piece at a time.
Two tiny quality-of-life features for Grove, both living in a new Tools panel: a one-click Restart daemon button, and a database converter that moves whole databases between MySQL, PostgreSQL and SQLite.
Elyra v0.9.12 makes Claude Sonnet 5 the new default — cheaper, longer context — and pins the smart router's powerful tier to it. Update and your sessions get better while your invoice gets smaller.
Why I built my own Valet/Herd in Rust — and how it ended up downloading its own databases. Zero external dependencies: embedded DNS, a reverse proxy, a local CA, self-contained PHP builds, and services that install themselves.