I write code, write about code, and build tools I actually use.
I'm Val. Most of what I write here is opinions about software, AI, and the things that happen when you mix the two, plus the occasional teardown of how something I built actually works. The tools are projects that started as personal itches.
Things I'm building
Tools I use every day. You might like them too.
A hand-drawn canvas for step-by-step visual explainers. Sketch shapes, code, and notes, turn them into an animated walkthrough, and share it as a link that plays in any browser.
Build a recruiter-ready résumé in your browser. Write in Markdown, preview live, and download an ATS-ready PDF. Your data never leaves the device.
Native desktop notifications for Claude Code. Click a notification to bring your terminal to the front.
A macOS screen recorder that does the post-production for you. Auto-follow zoom, privacy blur, keystroke overlay — baked in at capture time.
A Chrome extension that gives you full control over how Claude.ai looks, feels, and works. Themes, shortcuts, workflows.
Recent posts
Essays and how things work.
- Posting a notification is the easy part. Making the click land you on the exact terminal tab that pinged you is the hard part. How Pingme does it.
- LLMs made writing code faster. But writing code was never the expensive part.
- You escaped the 9-to-5. You didn't escape the pressure. You just became the one applying it.
- Business wants speed. AI delivers. But every line nobody understands is a dead program waiting to break.
- Developers stopped being creators. Now we clean up after something faster than us.
- AI-written unit tests only verify implementation, not business logic. Code coverage became a false sense of security.