Development
Building software: programming, developer tools, APIs, deployment and DevOps, and building with AI (agents, MCP servers, RAG, AI coding tools). An extra channel alongside an episode's main one, so AI engineering episodes sit in both.
#4582: Designing a Home MCP Gateway for Conversational AI
How to securely connect ChatGPT to a home-hosted MCP gateway — transport, auth, and the missing pieces.
#4581: Text In, Text Out: Designing Single-Purpose AI Utilities
Why small, narrowly scoped AI tools need system prompts that say "shut up and return the output" — and how to write them.
#4580: The Tiny AI Tools That Beat Big Agents
Why small, single-purpose AI utilities outperform autonomous agents for daily work — and what interface they need.
#4575: Measuring Rooms with Fiducial Markers: AprilTag vs ArUco
AprilTags, ArUco, ChArUco — which marker system actually helps you measure a room from a photo? We break down the tradeoffs.
#4572: The vCard Files: Why a 30-Year-Old Format Still Runs Your Contacts
We crack open the VCF spec — what's inside, what breaks, and why the humble vCard still beats every proprietary contact app.
#4569: Dialing Without a Switchboard: Twilio Number Normalization
Twilio expects E.164, but Israel dials 0-3-... Here's what breaks when you become your own carrier.
#4549: When AI Agents Spend Real Money
An AI agent bought a phone number through Twilio. Here's how agentic commerce already works — and what it means for authorization.
#4548: The Hidden Software Running Your Company
Inside the shadow fleet of custom apps running organizations — and how AI is making building them the default.
#4546: Redis: What It Actually Is and Why It's Everywhere
Redis powers half the internet's caching, but almost nobody knows what it actually is. We break it down from the ground up.
#4543: WhatsApp Business API vs App: Which Fits Your Solo Practice?
A solo consultant's guide to choosing between the WhatsApp Business app and the API for client messaging.
#4542: Going Fully SIP: Why It's Not Ready (Yet)
A deep dive into the three structural reasons you can't ditch your carrier for Twilio and SIP—yet.
#4523: Can You Trust an AI's Summary?
Dedicated text compressors exist but aren't in production. The real problem? Nobody can verify the summary didn't drop what mattered.
#4522: The Sixth Shim: When MCP Becomes a Middleware Factory
Six servers, six shims, no architecture. A taxonomy of MCP integration pain.
#4521: MCP Transport Architecture in 2026: Gateway Design
Three transports, one gateway. How to bridge stdio, legacy SSE, and streamable HTTP in production.
#4499: Twilio for Small Business: IVRs, SIP & Phone Trees
How to build professional phone systems with Twilio — IVRs, round-robin routing, voicemail transcription, and SIP setup.
#4496: How to Find Anything in Israel with Google Lens
A visual search hack for finding products in Israel's fragmented e-commerce market — and why an MCP solution could automate it.
#4490: Right to Repair: History, Hype, and Hard Limits
From John Deere tractors to iPhone batteries — the real history, genuine commitments, and where repair advocates overreach.
#4478: Digikey, Mouser, and the Hidden Supply Chain of Components
How Digikey and Mouser quietly keep the global electronics industry running with impossibly large catalogs and same-day shipping.
#4477: Structuring Raw Voice Prompts at Scale
How to decompose messy voice dictation into clean, routable components for AI workflows.
#4476: Python Visualization vs. Subscription Tools
Thirty free Python libraries that rival paid tools like Tableau and ArcGIS. When is the subscription worth it?