TIL what pckt blog is

and what atproto means!

I feel a bit like my mom when she started texting in 2008. A whole new world of open source tools available to me.

I feel like I am learning something new everyday, and not just little things, but incredible, mind-boggling things that are absolutely, fundamentally changing the way I work.

Not to be dramatic. (ok, kinda to be dramatic)

👾 claude

🦹🏻‍♀️ claude skills and superpowers

🖇️MCP servers

👻Ghostty

💗how to be kind to myself

^one of these things is not like the others. But they're all important to my work-life and are also all a WIP. I am an expert of none but a voracious learner and explorer of all.

side note: something about knowing next to nothing about how pckt.blog works is strangely freeing and these thoughts may or may not follow a logical path, fair warning ⚠️

So, claude.

I learned the power of claude and how to set it up and use it via terminal from my colleagues at work, many of whom are extremely excited and invested in claude and its potential.

The incredible thing about claude is that it accesses ALL of the files on my computer and can access pretty much any website (via mcp servers or Chrome Dev Tools). And then in can intelligently interact with those tools and files in a non-deterministic way!

As my coworker put it, "Everything you can do on a computer, claude can do it for you."

For the "cheap" price of $20/month (OOF).

So my next project will be seeing if I can use some free, zen ai models for coding agents and see how far I get on my personal computer...😈

claude skills & superpowers

When I started using claude a month ago, I would prompt it through the end of a task, then ask it to create a skill based on what we worked on together. That was fine, that was great.

But then:

enter superpowers

& now I use the /brainstorming command to begin any creative or skill-building work with claude. It significantly helps claude work more accurately, and perhaps more efficiently too? I haven't gone over the credit limits recently 🤔

So, in just a matter of weeks my workflow with claude has not only shifted but become BETTER.

MCP servers

I've connected claude to many of the apps I use daily and store information in, including Jira, Confluence, Google Workspace and n8n.

While I still go in to each of these tools directly, and while something simple like checking an email or updating a line in a spreadsheet may be done faster by myself, the mind-blowing power of claude really shows at the intersection and scaling of these tools.

For example: claude can clean up data on a Google sheet for you, format that sheet, add columns to include relevant information based on the search it did through your docs in Confluence and the internet, then feed that information into Jira to create action items or into Gmail to draft emails.

All with natural. language. prompting.

Try this: start your morning by asking claude to give you a roundup of the emails you got while you were away, tell it to summarize them for you, and prioritize which email to respond to first. oh, and while you're at it - draft that reply for me, too.

a few short minutes (maybe seconds) later...

DONE!

Ghostty

This may be a silly one for experienced coders, but as a marketer who wears the "I code with claude and good vibes" hat, it was a solid upgrade from just using the terminal.

(tbh, I saw my CEO using this in a video and thought it must be good if he's using it)

Why is it superior to terminal?

Voice commands actually work for me. I can press F5 on my keyboard (🍎 user) or Edit > Start Dictation and it actually works. Unlike in terminal. Maybe that was user error. #ohwell

The 'home' and 'end' keys actually jump the cursor to the front or end of your text. #iykyk

There are a lot of color variations to make it look cooler and friendlier for folks with dyslexia (not perfect, but a start).

Probably other things but that's what I've noticed so far.

How to be kind to myself

This one's a work in progress (dare I say ~forever~ though hopefully not) and speaks to my perfectionism tendencies and that little voice in my brain that somehow never needs to rest and can always find time to put the pressure on me 🙃

But a few things reminded me recently that

A) it's not a competition between you and everyone else

B) everyone blooms in their own time

C) I can set goals and not be ashamed of them or afraid of failing and therefore never starting

D) naps are good and you don't have to feel guilty for sleeping in

Well then...

...that got away from me pretty quickly. But it was kinda fun!

Mahalo and Aloha 🌺