@mintuz.com
Senior Software (Web) Engineer @ Monzo. Web & App Engineer. Personal favourites SwiftUI and React. 💪 workoutplan.app 🏡 belongings.app 🤓 swiftforjs.dev ⏱️ timetrials.app ☀️ morningclub.app 👶🏻 wakewise.app
Happy Pokemon day. 2026 Christmas Day will be my personal 30th Pokemon day.
I remember receiving the game from my grandad and having no idea what it was and spending weeks trying to defeat Brock because I only had Charmander on my team 😂
I caught Mewtwo with a standard Pokeball as a kid.
That kind of dedication has followed me into adulthood and everything I do 😏
pick 👏 the 👏 right 👏 tool 👏 for 👏 the 👏 right 👏 job.
Say it together now.
The human touch will be the thing that drives downloads on the AppStore.
I’ve seen a bunch of competitor apps appear recently and they all look the same.
What makes your app stand out amongst the vibe coded slop will be the difference between success and failure.
Hello Opus 4.6
I’ve been using AI for things I consider myself an expert at and using time saved to level up other skills using my brain like SEO, Graphic design and marketing.
0 to 1 is like stepping outside and running a 10k marathon after spending 10 years as a coach potato.
1 to 2 is like you’ve been training for a 10k marathon for 12 months, step outside and break your ankle.
When your TV remote has too many buttons, you can’t change the channel.
There’s a lesson in that.
Goodbye loyal customer 🫡
Agent Skill directories that let you install arbitrary skills and scripts, That's an attack vector waiting to be exploited surely?
MRR is a funny metric. I’ve been measuring my apps success in bills paid.
My energy bill is now paid by my apps every month 😆
Next goal: the mortgage.
I created a new Claude Code skill this evening for iOS App Store market research.
Previously this was a custom MCP server that I had to spin up locally on my machine.
SKILL.md files don't just have to be coding conventions and how-tos. They can allow your agents to call third parties.
Claude Long Term Memory
spec-kit, bmad, task-master, beads, beans.
It doesn't matter which one you pick. They all do the same thing
Just use one and get familiar with it - don't get stuck in that loop of switching tools every week because someone on Bluesky recommended it.
AI has turned my iPhone into a dev workstation.
A user reported a bug for an app I’ve built. I shared a screenshot + high-level architecture via Codex on iOS.
It found the issue, fixed it, and deployed - entirely from my phone.
12 months ago I was just doomscrolling and reading memes 😂
After watching a video Ali Abdaal created on the “GPS Method” I created a Claude skill to help me set my 2026 goals.
Works a treat 👌 and here is a top tip; you can zip skills up and upload them to Claude web.
github.com/mintuz/claud...
LLMs, autonomous agents, and “vibe coding” reward system thinkers.
Models think locally. Slop happens when humans do too. Your value is the bigger picture and to guide them along the path.
My 2026 Indie dev goals
- Reach £1000 MRR
- Release a new unannounced app I’ve been building for the last month.
- Start posting on TikTok behind the scenes of my indie app development process.
Have we not always been spec-driven development 🤔
You’re welcome.
My favourite 2025 app is “How We Feel” fantastic app for mental health, beautifully designed and completely free. No subscription required. A rarity in 2025
howwefeel.org/get
Web dev in 2015 was more enjoyable and easier than web dev in 2025.
This my 1000th post
My christmas holiday hackathon is here 🫡
openai.com/index/develo...
Fun fact. codex has experimental skill support github.com/openai/codex...
Give Claude Code ago and research / install different skills/agents/workflows they really are a game changer.
The best way to learn though is experiment and “automate” the donkey work in your processes.
Here’s my Claude code plugins to get started github.com/mintuz/claud...
Be open minded.
I’ve seen some of the best engineers I’ve worked with share some incredible insights that 6 months ago would have been possible.
My personal experience is I did a large refactor last week +140/-5000 lines in two prompts and it was absolutely how I would have done it.
But you may say…. Something something none-deterministic 🥱
Writing code has always been none-deterministic. Once it’s written that’s when you want it to be deterministic.
I don’t think I’ve ever configured webpack the same each time I’ve had to do it.
Engineers that leverage AI are coming for your lunch money if you like it or not so you may as well learn the tools well or get left behind.
Dr Andrew Ng had a nice quote “AI won’t replace people, but people who use AI will replace people who don’t”
Made some improvements to my Claude plugins this evening. I was finding the skills were eating up the context window and only had a trigger rate of about 30%.
Refactored to use progressive disclosure and updated descriptions to WHEN -> WHEN not syntax.
github.com/mintuz/claud...
