A Kiro Agent That Builds Other Kiro Agents
This Kiro agent builder defaults to your existing tools and MCPs while enforcing schema correctness.
Blog
Beyond Prompts: The Developer's AI Playbook for Automating Toil
Why context engineering beats prompt hacks, plus a practical framework for connecting AI to your toolchain and automating the toil.
MS Graph Skills for Claude Code: Three Ways to Automate Microsoft 365
Three ready-to-use skills that make Claude Code integration with Microsoft 365 simple. Choose from comprehensive toolkit, lightweight SDK, or minimal bash implementation.
Understanding Kiro CLI Features: Steering, Agents, and Hooks
Kiro CLI has three main customization features. Each serves a different purpose, and knowing when to use which one will save you from building the wrong thing.
Kiro CLI Steering: Keeping AI Tools Honest About Capabilities
AI tools still forget what they can do, where config lives, and when auth expires. Steering gives them the context they keep missing.
Zencoder in a Crowded AI Coding Market: A Quick Take
I spent about two hours kicking the tires on Zencoder. Short answer: I did not see anything that truly stands out from the crowded field of AI coding tools.
Prompting on the Go: Using Claude, Codex, and OpenCode from Your Phone While Running Code Locally
I wanted to prompt AI tools from my phone while working against a real local development environment. Here's how I set up a dedicated Mini PC with Ubuntu, SSH access, and network configuration to make my phone the prompt interface and my local machine the executor.
Microsoft 365 Graph Explorer: Self-Service API Access
A fast, self-service way to explore Microsoft Graph APIs, grab a short-lived token, and hand it to your AI assistant for email, Teams, and SharePoint workflows.
Skip the GitHub MCP: Use GitHub CLI Instead
GitHub MCP is powerful, but for most GitHub tasks the CLI is faster, simpler, and doesn't waste tokens. Install it, run the OAuth flow, and prompt your assistant to use gh.
MCP Configuration Guide: Docker Desktop, Atlassian, Memory, and More
A complete guide to configuring MCP servers for Claude Code and Codex CLI. Covers Docker Desktop MCP Toolkit, Atlassian for Jira/Confluence, Memory for cross-session context, AI-Sessions for tool handoffs, and Playwright for browser automation.
Quick Take on GPT-5.2 with Codex
Asked GPT-5.2 to connect a static basketball stat tracker to Firebase. A few clarifying questions and minimal back and forth later, it delivered a working integration. Competition between OpenAI, Anthropic, and Google is pushing everyone forward.
Keeping the Weekly School Digest Alive with Gemini
ChatGPT lost Google Drive access, so I moved the weekly digest entirely into Apps Script, dropped in a Gemini key, and let Google handle the schedule end-to-end. About 45 minutes of work.
Madison & Lucy Make a Website in an Afternoon
Madison and Lucy organized Madison's room and thought it was fun. So they made a website for their "organization service." Canva for design, Antigravity for code, done in an afternoon.
Building a Game in 15 Minutes with Google Antigravity
Will had an idea for a leaf-shooting game. We fired up Google's new Antigravity IDE with its spec-driven workflow and browser automation. Fifteen minutes later, we had a working game. Here's what the agentic IDE experience feels like.
Saturday Night Coding with Madison: Building the Wildcats Basketball Site
Movie on, laptops out. Madison and I built a complete basketball team website in a few hours on a Saturday night - just like we did with the soccer site.
From Soccer to Hoops: Adapting Our Stat Tracker for Basketball Season
Basketball season started. Parents asked for a stat tracker. Twenty minutes with Claude Code later, done. Same workflow as soccer: track stats, email summary, ChatGPT turns it into match reports.
Building a ChatGPT App in an Hour: First Look at OpenAI's Apps Platform
Between sets in my basement gym, I used OpenCode and Grok to build a ChatGPT calendar integration in an hour. A story about rapid prototyping, AI-assisted development, and why the security team had questions.
Automating Family Calendar Chaos with GitHub Actions
A Python script running on GitHub Actions automatically combines 6 family calendar sources into one feed every 6 hours. Free automation, 1,200+ events, zero manual work.
Vibe Coding with My First Grader
A 45-minute before-bed build with my son Will became a two-game mini arcade. A couple of Codex prompts, some HTML and JavaScript, and just enough glow to keep a first grader smiling.
Building a Soccer Website with My Daughter: A Quick Coding Adventure
When my daughter Madison's Junior Current soccer team needed a website, I saw a perfect opportunity for a fun father-daughter coding project. With the help of Kiro, AWS's agentic IDE, what could have been a lengthy development process became an enjoyable weekend activity.
Taming the Chaos: Building a Family Calendar System for Three Kids
Managing three kids' schedules across GameChanger, TeamSnap, school calendars, and volunteer commitments was driving me crazy. So I built a unified family calendar system that aggregates everything—and made it public so the grandparents can finally keep up.
Building an AI-Powered Engineering Workflow: My Workshop on Connecting Tools with MCP
I built a hands-on workshop teaching engineers to connect their entire tool chain—Jira, Confluence, AWS, Bitbucket—to AI assistants like Amazon Q and Kiro using the Model Context Protocol. Here's what I learned about breaking down silos and the challenge of maintaining consistent MCP configurations.
Bringing AI Into Everyday Life
I've been using AI heavily at work for a while now. As part of engineering, it's woven into our day to day — accelerating development, automating processes, and helping us think differently about how software gets built...
Running 100 Miles for Childhood Cancer: The Snowdrop Ultra Story
Sometimes the most meaningful challenges come from the most personal places. When my friend's daughter Lexie was diagnosed with cancer, I couldn't help but think about what that would mean for my own daughter and family. That's when I decided to run 100 miles...
Snider's 21 Favorite Podcasts of 2021
Here are my favorite 21 podcasts from 2021, covering everything from business strategy and technology to leadership and personal development. Each one offers unique insights that influenced my thinking throughout the year...