Weekly Thing #346 ·
Wuphf, Landsat, Eclipse
Podcasting, Claude Code quality reports, Anthropic, Cloudflare accounts, wuphf, Port 22, Micro.blog, MCP Servers.
Good morning! ☕️
It has been really nice this morning to get up early, sip on some coffee, go through these links, and get this email to you. There are always interesting niches to explore, rabbit holes to jump into, and things to learn. More so now than ever before. 🕳️🐇
I’ve been making some massive changes to the Weekly Thing website by the way. I’ll share the specifics next week, but if you want to explore early check it out. Hint: have a chat with Thingy. 🤖
How about another sneak peek just for you? Folks probably know that I find the idea of your version number and birthdays thought provoking. I love the idea of a daily incremental improvement. Well, Claude and I whipped up Your Version Number to make that even more fun. Add one or more birthdays, select a theme, voila. All state is in the URL so you can bookmark, send to others, or make it your home page. 🎉
See you next week! Jamie v5.4.120
Docks ready for boats to arrive for the summer.
April 26, 2026 Excelsior, MN
Notable #
You can discuss any of these links at the Weekly Thing 346 tag in r/WeeklyThing.
The Other Reasons Why Podcasting is Hot #
I listened to this same Pivot episode that Doc Searls comments on here and it seemed the comment on “people actually listen to the ads” rang a little odd to him too. His assessment of what actually makes podcasts great is spot on and no surprise are the same things that make the open web so great — your in control, it isn’t owned by one company.
I haven’t gotten traction on my Another Thing podcast but it is still there and I’m not giving up. I did recently add the option to listen to issues of the Weekly Thing on the web, which then made a podcast a super simple thing to add. Search your podcast app of choice for Weekly Thing and you should find it.
An update on recent Claude Code quality reports Anthropic #
There were grumbles about Claude Code getting less smart and here Anthropic shares what they changed that caused this and what they did to fix it. It is an interesting read because the three changes span a change in a default, an actual bug, and a reasoning change. When I read this it feels like the kind of thing that agentic engineering teams are going to need to be really good at. It also strikes me as a difference between products and agents. If you build a product and ship it, minus bugs it will behave deterministically. The last item on Claude’s issue was a change in behavior that impacted coding performance. That isn’t a feature change. This is what “performance management” for agents looks like.
Agents can now create Cloudflare accounts, buy domains, and deploy #
This is the first “real” use case I’ve seen where agents are given access to payment methods and buying something on their own.
Starting today, agents can provision Cloudflare on behalf of their users. They can create a Cloudflare account, start a paid subscription, register a domain, and get back an API token to deploy code right away. Humans can be in the loop to grant permission and must accept Cloudflare’s terms of service, but no human steps are otherwise required from start to finish.
This is specifically done with Stripe.
This all works via a new protocol that we’ve co-designed with Stripe as part of the launch of Stripe Projects.
There is a not-so-subtle signal here that both Stripe and Cloudflare see agents, particularly coding agents, as their customer. If you fire up Codex or Claude Code and say “build me a thing”, they want the agents to prefer their platforms because the actual end-user probably doesn’t have a strong opinion and the agent is just looking to get the job done. It will likely pick the solution that allows it to do that most completely.
I can’t help but connect this back to crypto too. This solution is fine but it is fully platform lock-in with Stripe enabling it. The better answer, and I nearly guarantee we are going to get here, is giving your agents a crypto wallet and sending digital currency to it to get the job done. No lock in, no worry about the agent having access to your credit card, no risk it overspends, and instant settlement. This is so completely crystal clear and doable today.
Prediction: digital currency will take off with agent proliferation.
wuphf: Slack for AI employees with a shared brain #
This feels like someone was in my brain. I’ve been thinking about messaging between agents a lot lately. It isn’t a big leap to think about five different agents needing to communicate and share messages. However, it is a whole different thing to consider thousands of agents that are the same focusing on different work communicating. Instantly Slack comes to mind, but at a volume and terseness that would be very "agent’, not human. You can clearly imagine organizations where you have an agent discourse system operating in one style and speed, and a person one that is very much like Slack today, with an interop layer between them. This project is that agent system, sort of.
PS: We’ve been re-watching The Office as a family so the name of this app was fresh in my head and made me LOL for real. WUPFH.com!
I Left Port 22 Open on the Internet for 54 Days. Here’s Who Showed Up. #
This is a must read post. I love the framing here:
This isn’t someone scanning specifically for my server. This is the background radiation of the internet — a constant, automated, planet-wide sweep of every IP address on every port, all the time, forever. If you’ve ever had a machine with port 22 open, this is what’s been happening to it.
In less than a minute this honeypot registered activity. I absolutely adore the “background radiation” term. it is a perfect fit. There is a constant swarm of bots attempting to gain access to hosts like this. Forever.
The fact that they bots just login, get the name of the OS, cover their tracks, and then leave is creates an incredible picture. The robust multi-layered economy built to find hosts and exploit them is in full effect here. This is literally the “top of the funnel” activity for evil doers.
Build with Micro.blog #
I’m a fan of micro.blog but the documentation for their APIs and services has always been lacking. This is a great resource. I pinged Vincent after he shared it that it would be great to make it easier for LLMs to use. He added llms.txt support in a couple of hours. Clearly he’s building with agents. The next day I had Claude Code work up mb-audit using that LLMS.txt endpoint to build a thing I have wanted to exist for micro.blog for a while.
If you want to create something use micro.blog, this makes it super easy.
Lessons on Building MCP Servers #
Great learnings for folks making MCP servers. I particularly like the design checklist at the end. All that is missing is packaging that up as a Claude Skill! There is a ton of art that comes into play when designing these as well as agent tools. Similar domain models. Doing this right is key to getting agents to operate consistently.
Journal #
Tammy and I went to Michael tonight and I really enjoyed the movie – more than I was expecting. His music was such presence when I was a teenager. Billie Jean is still amazing.
Refining Elixir’s agent definitions by having Opus review prompts that Sonnet has modified from OpenClaw’s refactor to be used by Haiku. Seems like magic. 🪄
We started the Dragon’s Keep room at Trapped Puzzle Rooms strong. First 20 minutes or so we just plowed through everything. Smooth! Then it all fell apart in the 2nd half. We completed but were 12m over time! See Dragon’s Keep on Escaping Things for me.
Beautiful day for MNUFC v LAFC! ⚽️
A little early still for tulips but always a nice time to explore the Minnesota Landscape Arboretum.
It is really important that you store your PLA in a dry environment. Humidity causes problems when printing. One of the cool things about 3D printing stuff is you mostly just print it. I now have ample PLA storage using this Drybox Sterilite 20 Qt project.
TIL: the most hamburger that Lions Tap has gone through in one day was 580 lbs. Father’s Day drove a big surge.
We watched Eternity tonight and it was a great movie. A very interesting concept and a touching story. Recommended. 🍿
Let’s go Wolves! 🏀
For the 2nd half of the Wolves game I got to sit court side – right next to the scoring table! Incredible experience that close. Those dudes are huge! Bonus to see the Wolves win the series and send the Nuggets home. Plus getting on TV. The Nuggets coach liked to stand in my view though. 🤩🏀
Briefly #
Cool app built on the Morty API that helps you book escape rooms for a trip with defined dates and locations, build the schedule, and even manage logistics across the bookings. → Skeleton Key
I touch on this topic in my Software is Liquid post. Prototyping is now best done in code. → AI Prototyping Is Changing How We Build Products at Uber
Life is not a problem looking for a software solution. My angle: the digital and the organic are different worlds. Sometimes they should work together. Sometimes they should stay in their lanes. → Beware Software Brain | The Verge
This made me smile. → Your Name in Landsat 🛰️
Love for tools that give users power over platforms. Consider this my weekly endorsement of using RSS and a feed reader. → Using the internet like its 1999 - The Universe of Joshua Blais
Bridging databases with streaming interfaces is a powerful feature. My Elixir project could possibly benefit from using this. → honker: SQLite extension + bindings for Postgres NOTIFY/LISTEN semantics
This feels like Microsoft responding to how powerful (and good) Claude for PowerPoint and Excel are. → Microsoft launches ‘vibe working’ in Word, Excel, and PowerPoint | The Verge
Super handy library if you need to display a directory structure or similar information. → Trees, from Pierre
I’ve talked to a number of parents who are doing some agentic game coding with their kids. I love it! What a great way to expose folks to the power of AI and have fun with your kids. This framework looks interesting to make even better games. → OpenGame: Open Agentic Coding for Games
Hmm, this seems like an obvious thing to look for. We have increasing data that microbiome is very powerful and important. And obviously coffee would affect that. “Behaviourally, coffee drinkers exhibited greater impulsivity and emotional reactivity, whereas non-coffee drinkers demonstrated better memory performance.” Wonder if the probiotic I take is handling my two cups of coffee okay? → Habitual coffee intake shapes the gut microbiome and modifies host physiology and cognition - Nature Communications
I sent this feature request into YNAB years ago. Fun to see it finally land! → Why Don’t You Take a Picture, It’ll Last Longer | YNAB
It used to be that Anthropoic and AWS were BFFs. But now AWS has OpenAI models. And Google is getting cozy with Anthropic. Everyone needs the money, and everyone needs access to frontier models. → Google Plans to Invest Up to $40 Billion in Anthropic
Delightful website to learn about Mahjong. It is on my long-list to learn this game. Tammy actually went to a class with her mother to learn it recently. → Mahjong: a Visual Guide
Software supply chain issues are growing. It would be a help to the whole industry if Github put some guardrails in GitHub Actions to help people not be so insecure by default. → GitHub Actions is the weakest link
Great way to plan out eclipse trips! → Solar Eclipse Map
I like that we are getting more “backup your cloud stuff” tools. It is all fine for us to have cloud capabilities but I don’t like the fact that I don’t have my own copy. Having a dozen terabytes of local storage with software constantly mirroring your cloud activity locally is the right answer. → Parachute Backup - Backup Utility for iCloud Drive and iCloud Photos
A haiku to leave you with…
Coffee stirs the gut While AI dreams in the night Both keep us awake
Would you like to discuss the topics in the Weekly Thing further? Check out the Weekly Thing on Reddit. 👋
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