Dev Journal: January 3-5, 2026
You had a productive 3-day stretch focused on three main areas: advancing fast-llms-txt (your FastAPI OpenAPI-to-markdown library), polishing chat-rag as an educational tool, and significant business/marketing work for AlteredCraft.
Friday, January 3
fast-llms-txt - Schema documentation improvements
- Worked through nested object extraction for arrays (e.g., Array[HistoryEvent]) to improve markdown output quality
- Added a premise section to the README explaining why OpenAPI specs, while excellent for machines, need LLM-optimized formats
- Investigated and ultimately reverted the "detailed spec links" feature—you determined LLMs don't need that extra verbosity
- Committed schema improvements with nested object handling
claude-explorer - Bug fixes
- Fixed the /history endpoint to properly handle entries without project fields
- Investigated parent/sub-agent relationship tracking in the activity endpoint
AlteredCraft - Strategic refinement
- Reviewed marketing documents with Karpathy's "1000 true fans" tweet as inspiration
- Brainstormed taglines, landed on: "Experiments, insights, and building blocks for the new abstraction layer"
- Started working on the dev journal draft article
Saturday, January 4
chat-rag - Educational enhancements (major session)
- Added auto-retry logic for port binding (tries port+1 up to 5 times)
- Simplified and DRYed up main.py
- Added comprehensive docblocks to all Python files since this is a teaching tool
- Reorganized .env.example with clear sections for required vs. tuning settings
- Added pytest with coverage and randomized test order
- Improved README structure for educational use with "Learn More" sections
- Fixed UI bug with collection selector after RAG connection test
- Improved test coverage on routes.py meaningfully (not just mocking Flask)
AlteredCraft - New Year's promo campaign
- Created complete marketing copy for multi-platform promotion
- Crafted Substack post, LinkedIn post, and Threads version
- Iterated heavily on tone—removing condescension, avoiding boasting, respecting reader intelligence
- Final tagline for 100-char constraint: "Experiments and insights for the new abstraction layer. Not hot takes. Honest research."
- Refined positioning to emphasize "building blocks" from real experiments
- Updated Business Strategy Change log
- Consolidated Core-Mission-Docs and Marketing folders
Weekly Review - Newsletter work
- Ran continuity and cross-week connections skills
Sunday, January 5
AlteredCraft - Substack tier pages
- Refined paid tier description—ensuring readers understand what extends beyond free
- Further refined LinkedIn copy
- Final version: "After 25+ years shipping software, I left AWS last year to explore this full-time. Published a book. Co-founded Portland AI Engineers. Now I dig into AI tools..."
- Created X (Twitter) post variant with thread format for character limits
- Continued dev journal draft work
claude-explorer - API improvements
- Reviewed TODO feedback from an API client
- Created GitHub issues for feature requests
- Consolidated file-history endpoints—merged file changes into the main session endpoint
- Updated the Next.js app to use the new consolidated endpoints
- Improved file change display in the UI
Activity Summary
| Day | Sessions | Messages | Tool Calls |
|---|---|---|---|
| Jan 3 | 14 | 1,001 | 296 |
| Jan 4 | 12 | 1,289 | 354 |
| Jan 5 | 7 | 719 | 190 |
Key themes: Educational tool polish, marketing copy iteration with tone refinement, API consolidation, and open-source library improvements.
Would you like any changes or additions to this journal?