Update for the week ending on Friday, Jan 16, 2026

mtlynch.io

• Published my December 2025 retrospective
• Fixed some dead links
• Linked to meshcore-open on my MeshCore post
• Fixed a dead link to buy Bowling Alone
• Started experimenting with merging book reports into notes

Refactoring English

• Published new chapter on overcoming writer’s block
• Worked on chapter about staying in flow state
• Fixed some cross references
  • Asciidoc is pretty lax about syntax, so I didn’t realize my cross-reference syntax was wrong but still working until I had a more complex cross-reference
• Switched my build from Woodpecker to Nix CI

LLM Sandbox

Continued working on my LLM sandbox so I can run LLM agents in “yolo mode.”

• Tried to add firefox to the sandbox container, but it seems like running Firefox under a podman container is hopeless.
• Tried using podman machines so that the sandbox is an actual VM, but it kept failing, and I didn’t see enough value in the additional protection to debug it.
• I now mount my host’s global .git config as read-only so I can let the sandbox make commits with my info
• Added common Linux utilities to the sandbox (e.g., curl, grep, jq, sed)
• Start codex with --search so it can search answers online

Little Moments

Little Moments is an open-source web app I’m working on to replace the current family photo sharing app (TinyBeans) I used (which I strongly dislike).

• Continued working on design doc

ScreenJournal

ScreenJournal is basically Goodreads, but for TV and movies. Or letterboxd, but focused on small communities.

• Added an activity feed
• Added timeouts for the HTTP server
  • Prevents slow loris attacks
• Added more rigorous checks for query errors
• Switch to cryptographic randomness for generating secret links
• Prevented a timeout on SMTP connections
• Refactor the app to share a single SQLite connection

beancount-chase-bank

• Added support for cash deposits
  • Chase just changed the representation of cashback rewards to be cash deposits
• Switched to uv for managing dependencies
  • uv just plays more nicely with Nix and feels smoother than legacy pip
  • And fixed up some stuff I forgot and then again and again
• Cleaned up stale rules in .pylintrc

go-evolutionary-migrate

I saw someone else created a simple SQLite migration library and realized I keep copy/pasting the same file to every project, and I could extract it to a reusable Go module.

• Implemented a basic version
• Updated to ncruces/go-sqlite3 v0.30.4
• Switched PicoShare to use it
• Switched ScreenJournal to use it

Streamablize

My personal utility for converting videos to web-streamable videos

• Improved error handling for ffmpeg
• Added go tests to the Nix build
• Added an AGENTS.md

Pointer Brother

Pointer Brother is a utility app I use for quick screenshot and image manipulation.

• Added a download as PNG option
• Used an AI agent to add playwright tests

MeshCore

libmeshcore-client

I realized I’m not actually implementing the peer-to-peer protocol; I’m implementing a library for device-client communication, though it reuses a lot of data structures from MeshCore’s peer-to-peer protocol implementation.

• Continued working on Python bindings
• Fixed my copyright notice

howdy-neighbor

• Switched from Woodpecker CI to NixCI
• Tested libmeshcore-client library in production
  • But it actually broke the app, so I rolled it back
• Updated the README to point to meshcore-open

meshcore-open

• Improved the login error message display in the repeater login dialog
• Worked on a PR to auto-login when we have a saved password

HN Observer

HN Observer is a tool I’m working on to predict the outcome of submissions to Hacker News based on historical data.

fusion

fusion is an open-source RSS reader I found when looking for an RSS aggregator to host on my NixOS system. I like that it’s written in Go and uses SQLite as a backend, so it’s pretty easy to self-host. The maintainer is very responsive to PRs as well.

• Overhauled the app to switch from svelte to vanilla HTML/JS/CSS
  • This was an experiment to see how well a sandboxed AI agent running in “yolo mode” could do
  • Result: Looks pretty good! I might end up continuing with this to move the whole stack to a style I prefer.

PicoShare

PicoShare is a minimalist web-based file sharing tool I’m working on. I’m often frustrated that I can’t just send someone a link directly to a file because every file-sharing service tries to re-encode images/video or wrap their own viewer around other files, so I’m making a simple self-hostable tool that lets you upload files and share them with other people.

• Started working with an LLM to replace bulma with bootstrap5
  • It got surprisingly far without me supervising
  • I used Bulma when I started the project becuase I wanted to try something simpler than Bootstrap, but I now prefer Bulma and this is my only non-Boostrap project
• Switched to link tags instead of CSS @import

Awesome WM config

• Made my password managers “scratchpad” style so I can summon them to any desktop wtih a hotkey
• Added a hotkey to launch applications with gmrun
  • It’s quick and has auto-complete
• Got rid of the hotkey for “maximize window”
  • I didn’t even realize I had it and had trouble figuring out how to undo it
  • I have a “fullscreen” button which basically does the same thing

Misc

• Started experimenting with zeitkapsl, an E2EE photo app
  • Like: Feels snappy
  • Like: Indie-run, and privacy focused
  • Like: Pretty easy to use
  • Dislike: Server is closed-source, so you can’t self-host it
  • Dislike: The UI doesn’t make photo privacy clear, but I spoke directly to the devs and got a better understanding
  • Submitted a PR to fix wording on an error
• Made some fixes to Phillip Dubach’s Cloudflre RSS Aggregator, based on the HN Popularity Contest
• Did monthly bookkeeping
• 1:1 with another founder