Insights & updates from the build floor

Mar 16, 2026

Beating Agent Anxiety

I've broken out of the rate limit rat race, and my Claude subscription is working for me full-time on things that really move the needle.

By Ed Grosvenor

Mar 11, 2026

The Trial Period Might Be Ending

Anthropic might have just signaled that the trial period we've all been enjoying is about to come to an end.

By Ed Grosvenor

Feb 14, 2026 AI

The New Folly of Conventional Wisdom

As the way we build applications evolves, our dogma must evolve with it. It might be time to stop saying a rewrite is never the answer.

By Ed Grosvenor

Feb 09, 2026 FFmpeg

Why Your FFmpeg Drawtext Words Don't Line Up

PHP's GD library and FFmpeg both use FreeType to render fonts. They produce different pixel measurements for the same text. Nobody warns you about this

By Len Woodward

Feb 06, 2026 FFmpeg

The Single Quote That Took Down 30 Subtitle Filters

How a children's story taught us that FFmpeg's documentation lies about single-quote escaping.

By Len Woodward

Jan 26, 2026 AI

Software Development Is Changing Less Than You Think

I arrived at my desk this morning, relieved to find that I was not, in fact, replaced by a lobster.

By Ed Grosvenor

Dec 06, 2025 NativePHP

What I Want to Solve Next Week

In the coming week, my focus is going to be on improving the ergonomics of developing mobile apps with NativePHP

By Ed Grosvenor

Dec 02, 2025 AI

The AI Velocity Paradox

AI has allowed us to significantly increase team velocity, while forcing each of us to slow way down.

By Ed Grosvenor

Nov 19, 2025

How I Spent the Cloudflare Outage

The decisions we make when all is calm should give us confidence when the storm hits.

By Ed Grosvenor