---
title: "If You Never Do Anything Else to Fix Your Prompts, Do This One Thing"
description: "Why do LLMs confidently invent APIs that have never existed in the history of the universe? It is not a memory defect. Agents hallucinated because they were committed to the prompt—and Fernando Flores sol...
*This is a submission for the [Hacktoberfest Open-Source AI Challenge Week 1: Touch Grass](https://dev.to/challenges/hacktoberfest-week1-2026-10-05)*
## What I Built
In Port Harcourt, the light goes and the room changes in about two seconds. The fan stops. The router dies. The laptop drops to batt...

I've always loved the idea of reusing old hardware, especially when it's still more than capable of the job you need it for. Planned obsolescence aside, a lot of machines can still do what we need t...
Most AI tools are very good at one thing:
> **Giving you an answer.**
You ask:
> “Which customers haven’t paid yet?”
The AI gives you a list.
You ask:
> “What should I tell them?”
The AI drafts the message.
You ask:
> “Who should I follow up with first?”
The AI prioritizes them.
Useful?
...
You know the moment. You're waiting for the kettle, or the elevator, or a page to load, or a friend who's running late. There's a gap — thirty seconds, maybe three — of nothing to do.
And your hand is in your pocket before you've even decided to reach for it.
Not because you need anything. There's...
# I’m More Interested in Why Things Break Than Why They Work
I don’t think I became interested in technology because I wanted to build apps.
I think I became interested because I wanted to understand things.
There’s a difference.
When something works exactly as expected, there usually isn’t much...
This week, security leaders raised a harder question: who verifies the AI systems now verifying compliance? That is the right controversy. **SOC 2 automation** is no longer about replacing screenshots; it is about proving the automation itself can be trusted.
## SOC 2 Automation Is an Evidence Syst...
---
title: "Nudging with Questions: Why Telling Your AI What to Fix Triggers an Apology Death Spiral (And How to Advance Juniors)"
description: What I learned mentoring juniors for four decades seems to apply to today's agentic coding: why barking code fixes triggers sycophantic panic, and how Socra...
AI has made me _dramatically_ faster at building software. You can see it on my GitHub: a sudden surge of activity at the start of September, several projects started, and a few of them actually shipped.
That part isn't up for debate. I can go from an idea to a working prototype in a day. I can as...
# Why Small Developer Tools Can Have a Big Impact
When developers think about building software, it is easy to imagine large applications with authentication, dashboards, databases, APIs, AI features, and dozens of screens.
But some of the most useful software can be surprisingly small.
A command...