npm run manage-todos: When I run this command, an agent parses all posts for the hashtag “todos”, reads the surrounding text, then adds a corresponding entry in the relevant section of Tasks. It also removes the trigger hashtag from that post, and removes all completed tasks on the tasks page. Pretty neat, I know. Even before I ever came up with the blueprint for this feature, I had a feeling I’d need some sort of task-management system, and so I’d been adding hashtag “todos” to posts for months and months now. Bonus point for planning ahead!
Now that I’m using Claude Code, I’m putting greater emphasis on keeping my Claude.md updated. Claude updates it automatically, but with my added supervision, it updates it properly. I gave Claude the task of aligning the 3 main READMEs in my project. I plan on keeping them aligned, because otherwise, messes can build up quickly (2025-08-24).
I made some more improvements to my Quartz site pages. I hid the list of hashtags from showing at the top of each page under the page title. It’s pointless to list ‘em twice. I also hid backlinks from showing on my Tasks page (see “pointless”) and improved the text in my site footer. Lastly, I figured out how to create invisible links to sections of a page using <a> tags, which allowed me to link to the essay below from the FAQ section on my home page (which I just created). Maybe someday, I’ll create a non-dev related blog section of this site, but until writing inspiration begins to strike me more continuously, I’ll abstain from that task. Not even gonna add that to my todos.
I read a really good essay the other day by William Gibson called “Googling the Cyborg” (in this book). In this essay, Gibson argues that we as humans have a tendency to be overly literal when we imagine the future (or any daunting unknown, really), and this blinds us to the fact that so often the very future we resist is already manifesting itself around us in a less obtrusive form. He used the cyborg as an example of this—rather than getting superpowered electronic brains implanted in our heads like cyborgs, we instead connect everyday to an invisible, worldwide, superpowered electronic brain: the internet. It’s often our idea of the interface for a futuristic technology that’s misaligned, because it’s easier to imagine the future based on ways in which we already interface with technology today.
I say all this not because I seek to turn this blog into a hybrid dev/philosophy blog, but because every inventor must have a philosophy through which they create, and mine is this: I want this interactive energy ball experience to augment physical reality the same way perceiving energy augments physical reality. I don’t want to take the participant out of reality—I want to open them to more of it. That’s why I’ve thus far avoided VR.
Maybe someday, we’ll have a neuro-link that interfaces with our optic nerve to inject AR experiences directly into our line of vision, or smart contact lenses that do that, or something else. One thing is clear to me, though: people are far more comfortable in this reality than they are in an artificial one. We like to have our feet on the ground when interfacing with the Great Beyond. So, unless VR technology becomes more passive, I’ll abstain from placing my efforts there.
The simpler future is the more rational one to work towards. What makes more sense, building flying cars, or improving highway infrastructure and vehicle efficiency? What makes more sense, replacing this reality with a virtual one, or adding virtual elements to this reality?
Tags: programming workflow claude optimization tasks ar philosophy project-management