AI Devblog

AI Devblog

Write a technical story that changes what a particular reader understands, believes, or can do. Keep the empirical honesty of a good engineering report, but make comprehension and human interest the organizing priorities.

Use this order of attention:

route the genre → align with the reader → choose the angle → explain → support with evidence → edit → cold-read → present → publish

Apply swyx-writing as the shared voice and editing layer. For substantial public technical writing, read its technical-writer influences and the story modes before proposing an angle. Apply research-grounded-writing when the post requires external research or source-backed claims.

Use blog-system-design with this skill when the task changes the shared blog index, taxonomy, article shell, typography, navigation, search, responsive behavior, or reusable components. A post must not silently redesign its publication.

Route the material

First decide whether a devblog is the right container:

• Put a routine shipped fact in a changelog or release note.
• Put durable project onboarding, commands, API guidance, and contributor instructions in a README; use ai-readme when available.
• Put an exhaustive roadmap, product plan, design specification, API reference, or component inventory in documentation.
• Continue here for reconstructed technical work, a tested argument, a consequential origin story, or a mechanism worth teaching.

Apply an interestingness gate. A shipped capability alone is not enough. The material needs at least one reader payoff: a non-obvious finding, consequential decision, useful technique, measurable result, corrected belief, surprising failure, illuminating mechanism, or reusable model. Recommend a smaller form when the work does not earn a post.

Choose one primary story mode:

• Field report: a change, incident, migration, or measured result.
• Short lab note: one useful experiment, release, artifact, or strange fact.
• Mechanism explainer: a system made understandable through one example.
• Incident or reversal: a reasonable belief that reality disproved.
• Evidence-led argument: several concrete cases that revise a common belief.
• Hands-on argument: a stance earned through a small reproducible exercise.
• Origin story: turning points that explain why a system has its current shape.
• Product announcement: what changed, why it helps, the hidden hard part, and the exact constraint.

A post may borrow a secondary move, but do not turn every available fact into an omnibus article. See story modes for structures, title families, and Dan Luu/Fly.io-inspired angle prompts.

Choose a weight that fits the idea:

• Note: about 300–800 words; one narrow finding and little ceremony.
• Standard: about 800–2,000 words; the default for a developed story.
• Feature: over 2,000 words only for a stated editorial reason; consider splitting work that grows beyond roughly 4,000 words.

These are editing signals, not quotas. Never inflate a useful note or compress a mechanism until it no longer makes sense.

Align with the reader

Before a standard or feature post, determine what the skill user expects the reader to be, know, and want. If this is not already explicit, ask one compact batch in the align-me shape:

1. State each belief as a numbered decision.
2. Give lettered, mutually exclusive choices with concrete consequences.
3. Recommend one choice for each decision.
4. End with Reply approve all to accept 1A, 2B, 3A, or give changes such as 2C. Then wait.

Use the reader-and-angle checkpoint for the exact questions. Default to a smart adjacent engineer who knows the domain but not the project and wants a useful mental model or decision. Do not ask what the user has already answered. For a short note with an obvious readership, state the inferred assumptions briefly and proceed.

Then write privately:

• Before: what the reader probably believes or cannot yet do.
• After: what the evidence should make them believe, understand, or try.
• Spine: the one question the post answers.
• Not this post: two or three tempting facts that belong elsewhere.

For a standard or feature post, offer two or three genuinely different angles unless only one honest angle exists. Keep each option compact: title, promise, and tradeoff. Recommend one and wait. Never hide a single thesis behind cosmetic title variants.

Establish the evidence boundary

Apply research-grounded-writing for general source selection, attribution, uncertainty, and claim verification. For a technical field report, also reconstruct the work itself:

1. Inspect the relevant source, diff, issue, transcript, experiment, incident, or primary external research.
2. Identify exact revisions, versions, data, configuration, dates, and environment when they affect the claim.
3. Re-run or read the decisive tests and measurements when reasonably cheap.
4. Separate source change, commit, push or merge, deployment or migration, and live user-facing verification.
5. Preserve failed attempts, unfavorable results, reversals, and uncertainty when they explain the final conclusion.
6. Identify evidence that challenges the preferred thesis, especially for an evidence-led argument.

Distinguish what this agent observed from repository history, another agent's work, human decisions, and inference. Attribute material ideas and firsthand observations. Do not invent motives, reactions, or a first-person experience.

When coding-agent threads exist, use them to recover the real prompt, surprise, failed assumption, and decision sequence. Match a thread by commit, file, command, and timestamp before using keyword similarity. Private threads may inform causality, but quote or screenshot them only after checking disclosure, secrets, identities, private paths, customer data, and internal architecture.

Do not promote a green build, HTTP 200, commit, upload, or public URL into proof of a different claim. Match numeric precision to the decision: round human durations and measurements unless extra precision changes the conclusion.

Address the elephant

Treat the title and deck as one honest promise. Choose the family that fits the story: result, stance, reversal, distinction, paradox, mechanism, imperative, question, or origin. Between the title, deck, and first paragraph, name the central subject and stakes plainly.

If the post is about a Program Database, say Program Database. If it is about SQLite, a product failure, a commercial interest, or a controversial recommendation, say that. Do not bury the lede behind an abstract principle or mystery hook. Cleverness may sharpen a clear subject; it may not conceal one.

Open according to the mode:

• use an artifact or consequence for a field report;
• use the disputed premise for an argument;
• use the visible result for a tutorial or lab note;
• use the admission and current consequence for a reversal;
• use the present constraint or decisive turn for an origin story.

Name the system and why it matters by the end of the first paragraph. State the bottom line by the third. Label proposals and unshipped plans explicitly.

Follow the destination's existing front matter, author, avatar, and AI assistance conventions. Do not invent a persona or add a new metadata model for one post. Use a real publication date and a few durable, specific tags.