Welcome to Build Notes

Here you will find writings & links about building, learning, and experimenting.

• 2026-02-04 A trusted tool for thought

  Our experience of using the internet has made it easy to assume that advertising on the products we use is inevitable. But open a notebook, pick up a well-crafted tool, or stand in front of a clean chalkboard, and there are no ads in sight.

  We think Claude should work the same way.

• 2026-01-13 Why Claude Code feels dumber in the Desktop App vs CLI

  Same model, same tool, but the Desktop App runs non-interactive bash, so my mise activate zsh in ~/.zshrc never fired. The fix: add mise activate zsh --shims to ~/.zprofile (which runs for all sessions), and keep mise activate zsh in ~/.zshrc for interactive use. If Claude Code seems broken in one context but not another, check your shell initialization.

• 2025-10-29 The Perfect Markdown Editor

  This app is not new but, for me, this is exactly what I've been looking for in a Markdown editor. Bear's Panda app was close but it also seems like abandonware. MarkEdit is still actively maintained and does the simple job very well. If I need something more advanced (like posts for this blog), I use Obsidian. But for just working with files from LLM's or code documentation, a much simpler app is all I need.

• 2025-10-21 OpenAI launches Atlas browser

  I really enjoyed using Dia and found the homepage being a chat prompt useful for quick questions. This just cuts out the middle-man and points me directly to my primary AI right away. The only reason why I haven't switched from Safari is that there seem to be a lot of security risk with these agent-based browsers (including Atlas) right now.

• 2025-10-15 Apple releases M5 chips

  Seems like a big bump for AI tasks but I don’t find myself doing a lot of local AI. My M1 Max hasn’t skipped a beat and still feels crazy fast. Same with my M1 iPad Pro. At this point, I won’t need to upgrade until there’s a significant form-factor change (like I got with the iPhone Air).

• 2025-08-26

  An Omarchy Journey (Part 2)

  Yep, I got a ThinkPad

  After installing Omarchy on a Chromebook, I was really feeling the sluggishness of the machine and decided that I would need something faster to appreciate what this new OS might offer.

• 2025-08-22

  An Omarchy Journey (Part 1)

  Installing Omarchy on a Chromebook

  I was sitting on the sidelines, enjoying watching @DHH create a Linux distro that seemed interesting and well designed. Or at least designed with good intentions (I couldn't tell for sure until I tried it for myself). The itch to try it out was getting stronger.