Steven Gonsalvez

Software Engineer

Long read|

"Use Claude Code for FREE" is a Trap

Why free AI coding via Nvidia NIM and OpenRouter is a trap. The Cheap-Intelligent-Fast trilemma, 40 RPM rate limits, Opus 4.7 vs GPT-5.5 vs MiniMax M2.7 benchmarks, and why your first AI coding experience should not be the free one.

BlogAI-Augmented Development

Your Coding Agent's Best Feature Isn't the Code

Why Claude Code beats Codex, Copilot, and every other coding agent in 2026. The developer experience of terminal AI coding agents matters more than the model. Statusline, /insights, hooks, and the features that make the 8th hour feel like the 1st.

Banter

Claude Is Setting Up Hermes Which Is Setting Up NanoClaw and Nobody Is Writing Features

Banter

Anthropic Pulled the Plug on Third-Party Harnesses. Here's What I'm Running Now.

Tool

Token Optimisation 101: Stop Burning Money on AI Coding Agents

How to stop getting rate-limited after an hour on Claude Code, Codex, or Copilot. Context window mechanics, the /effort command, model routing, kicking new conversations, and the silent token drains most people miss.

Banter

Anthropic Just Killed Third-Party Harnesses and I'm Properly Gutted

Banter

Can Your Agents Speak Caveman? (And Should They?)

Banter

AI Alignment Just Got a Psychological Dimension and It's Properly Unsettling

Banter

Gemma 4 Is Running On Phones Now and I Don't Think People Realise How Mental That Is

Tool

expect-cli: The Validate Step My Agent Loop Was Missing

expect-cli reads your git diff, generates a test plan via AI, and executes it in a real browser with Playwright. Extracts cookies from your local Chrome/Firefox for authenticated testing. The validate step for agent loops.

BlogBrowser Tools for AI Agents

Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 1: Playwright, Puppeteer, and Why Your Agent Picked Playwright

Playwright for AI agents explained 2026. Why Playwright beat Puppeteer for browser automation, how accessibility trees slash token costs, dev-browser for coding agents, Patchright and Scrapling for anti-bot bypass.

BlogBrowser Tools for AI Agents

Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 2: The Framework Wars (browser-use, Stagehand, Skyvern)

AI browser frameworks compared 2026. browser-use vs Stagehand vs Skyvern: DOM-first vs vision-first architecture, LLM token costs per step, caching strategies, and the expect testing tool for coding agent validation loops.

BlogBrowser Tools for AI Agents

Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 3: Managed Infrastructure and When DIY Stops Making Sense

Managed browser infrastructure for AI agents 2026. Firecrawl vs Browserbase vs Steel vs Bright Data vs Browserless pricing and features compared. Self-hosted vs managed cost analysis and when DIY stops making sense.

BlogBrowser Tools for AI Agents

Browser Tools for AI Agents Part 4: Skip the Browser, Save 80% on Tokens

Save 80% on LLM tokens with content extraction 2026. markdown.new, Jina Reader, Trafilatura compared. Why feeding raw HTML to AI agents wastes tokens and how HTML-to-markdown conversion fixes your context window budget.

Tool

qmd + nano-graphrag: You Do Not Need Pinecone for This

qmd is a CLI semantic search engine for markdown by Tobias Lutke (Shopify founder). Hybrid BM25 + vector + LLM reranking. Local SQLite index, no cloud, no Docker. Pair with nano-graphrag for local graph RAG.

Tool

Google Stitch: AI-Native UI Design That Actually Understands Your Design System

Google Stitch is an AI-native design tool from Google Labs that generates high-fidelity UI from prompts and exports real code. DESIGN.md encodes your design system as portable markdown any AI coding tool can read.

Banter

Your Agents Are Talking Behind Your Back

Banter

Claude Code Source Code Leaked: 512K Lines of TypeScript and What Actually Matters

Blog

2-2 Factor for AI Agents: Multi-Agent Reliability

Human reliability maths applied to AI agents. Consensus protocols, identity checks, and why your agent swarm needs the same safeguards humans built centuries ago.

Tool

PinchTab: 12MB Binary That Replaces Playwright for AI Agents

PinchTab is a 12MB Go binary that gives AI agents browser control via REST API. Serves the Accessibility Tree instead of raw HTML, cutting tokens by up to 90%. Stable element refs, stealth mode, zero Node/Python dependencies.

Banter

AI Language Drift: When Your Discord Bot Randomly Replies in Mandarin

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AI Agent Persona Gone Rogue: 140 Direct Edits and the Foreman Pattern

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debug-bridge: Wire Your AI Agent Into Your Running Webapp

debug-bridge connects AI agents to your already-running webapp via WebSocket. Zero browser startup. Real-time DOM snapshots, console logs, and network visibility without Playwright cold starts.

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agents-in-a-box: My Toolkit for Context Engineering Across Every AI Coding Agent

agents-in-a-box is a Rust TUI with 71 skills, 37 agents, and a knowledge system that deploys to Claude Code, Codex, Copilot, Gemini CLI, Cursor, and 5 more platforms. Context engineering as a portable artifact.

Tool

My Security Agent Stack: How Zerocool Guards the Perimeter

The security agent stack behind Zerocool. Shannon for white-box pentesting (96% XBOW), PentAGI for autonomous scanning, Ghost Security for code analysis, Argus and WebCopilot for recon. All coordinated by one wololo agent.