Engineering Manager @Zazzle · Wrote the book on Backbone.js (literally) · Built donatecode.com · More interested in the problem than the stack

Joined October 2008
95 Photos and videos
Pinned Tweet
12 Jun 2019
What a day! Meeting @stevewoz at @Sisense Eureka today. Such a friendly guy.
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James Sugrue retweeted
how to use Google's NEW open source Design.md AI Skills to make your startup look like a $100 million company in 1 hour: 1. Design.md is an open source file from Google that captures the soul of a design. Typography, colors, spacing, all in one markdown file. You attach it to your prompt and your agent builds beautiful things every time. 2. Think of it this way. The HTML is the finished dish. The design.md is the recipe. The skills are the ingredients. Put them together and everything you build looks consistent and professional. 3. Don't create a design system from scratch. Find a brand you love. Linear, Stripe, Vercel, whatever resonates. Study it. Use ChatGPT or Claude to help you extract the design language into your own design.md file. 4. Build skills on top of your design.md. A landing page skill. A mobile app skill. A motion design skill. A slide deck skill. Each one references the same design.md so everything looks like it came from the same designer. 5. The biggest mistake people make: they nail one screen and then everything else looks generic. Design.md solves this. One file keeps every page, every format, every medium consistent. 6. Use it across everything. Your landing page. Your app. Your pitch deck. Your promo videos. Same DNA. Same taste. Same system. That's what separates a startup that looks real from one that looks vibe-coded. 7. Build a second brain for design inspiration. When you see something beautiful in the real world or online, capture it. Save it. When you're building something new, reference it. Taste is developed, not downloaded. 8. It's obvious but the difference between a product people trust and a product people bounce from is how it looks and feels. Design.md gives you that edge. you can watch below youtu.be/oLu32YpiIJw?si=1YoY… shoutout to @mengto for coming on @startupideaspod and walking through his full workflow. if you want to use AI to actually build gorgeous designs, you'll want to use see this. watch
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James Sugrue retweeted
This guy literally broke down how to use Claude Code like an expert: 1:40 - Code vs Cowork vs OpenClaw 6:51 - Setting up context status line 12:03 - Sub-agents 17:49 - Creating skills 23:58 - Ask user questions tool 33:33 - Tool-powered skills: Tavily 36:57 - CLI vs MCP vs API hierarchy 39:30 - Make slides skill w/ Puppeteer 43:32 - Auto-invoking skills with hooks 46:49 - Jupyter notebooks for data trust 55:09 - The operating system file structure
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The most impactful engineers I’ve worked with were rarely the most visible ones. They were the ones who made the people around them faster, clearer, less blocked. Difficult to quantify in a performance review. Very easy to overlook. It’s also what actually moves things forward.
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I've been in software long enough to watch four things get declared "the future of frontend." I wrote the book on one of them — literally. Each solved real problems. Each created new ones. The survivors had one thing in common: they cared more about the problem than the stack.
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Boris Cherny, the creator of Claude Code, shared his entire setup. He runs 5-10 Claudes in parallel. Half his coding happens from his phone. Here's his 3-part formula for better results: Use the smartest model available — Counterintuitive: it's actually cheaper — Smarter model = fewer tokens = lower total cost — "Once the plan is good, the code is good" Invest in your Claude MD — Plain text file. No special format. — Whole team contributes multiple times a week — Every mistake Claude makes gets added so it never happens again Give Claude a way to verify its own output — Let it run the code. Let it see the browser. — "Imagine you're a painter wearing a blindfold" — Same thing for an AI that can never check its work His morning routine: wake up, kick off 3 sessions from his phone, check in later. His workflow: start in plan mode → lock the plan → auto-accept edits → done. No fancy setup. No complex tooling. Just multiple Claudes, a good plan, and a shared knowledge base.
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Currently debugging to Jonny Greenwood's "One Battle After Another" soundtrack while Claude acts as my wingman on something I probably shouldn't attempt alone. In the absence of true drama, score your code like the fate of the sprint depends on it. Highly recommend.
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James Sugrue retweeted
Reflecting on what engineers love about Claude Code, one thing that jumps out is its customizability: hooks, plugins, LSPs, MCPs, skills, effort, custom agents, status lines, output styles, etc. Every engineer uses their tools differently. We built Claude Code from the ground up to not just have great defaults, but to also be incredibly customizable. This is a reason why developers fall in love with the product, and why Claude Code's growth continues to accelerate. I wanted to share a few ways we're seeing people and teams customize their Claudes.
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James Sugrue retweeted
🚀 Today Amplify announces a new TypeScript-based, code-first DX inspired by your feedback. Instead of using the CLI or Studio, you can provision your infrastructure in files right in your code! Let’s talk a little bit more about the new experience. 🧵
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James Sugrue retweeted
If you're looking into event-driven architectures, watch this talk from @donkersgood. Lots of great tips (10, to be exact!). Hard-won lessons from building an event-driven system @ PostNL. Also, great images 💯 youtu.be/9r9WDzzTcr0
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25 Apr 2023
Finding out more about @workvivo’s culture and secrets to scaling is genuinely inspiring. Anything is possible. Andrea Graham is a natural speaker. Full of honesty, showing the road to success is not paved with gold. @RebelConf
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26 Feb 2023
We’re back #riverdance
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James Sugrue retweeted
The #Amplify Studio team rewrote the Content Manager from the ground up to provide the experience that customers were asking for. Give it a try and let us know what you think! Please reach out with any feedback. I'd love to hear any ways we could continue to improve 😊
🚀 What’s New: Improved Data Management in Amplify Studio 📊 Simplified data manager forms 🐛 Improved error handling capabilities 🏎️ Real-time updates and faster query performance ✨ Ability to switch between your preferred interface 🔗 go.aws/3YPBPGr
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James Sugrue retweeted
6 Feb 2023
At last, CorkDev is back, and it's back with an in person event at the Republic of Work on Thursday Feb 16th, at 6:30pm. We'll be doing an AWS re:Cap event, with Matheus Guimaraes guiding us through the key announcements from re:Invent 2022. meetup.com/corkdev-io/events…

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9 Nov 2022
I'm hiring software engineers for @zazzle in Cork, Ireland. Trust me, this is a job that you will love. If you're interested send me a message / catch up with me for a coffee. jobs.lever.co/zazzle/503a548…

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James Sugrue retweeted
Attending AWS #reInvent? Don't miss the #AWSCommunity session track, led by AWS Heroes! ⭐️ Favorite in the re:Invent session guide now, & grab a seat when reserved seating launches October 11, 10AM PDT: portal.awsevents.com/events/…
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James Sugrue retweeted
🚀 Introducing Amplify Learn 🚀 Full courses on how to build Amplify apps in both written and video formats! We'll be releasing new courses all month on React, Flutter, iOS, and more! Check it out! amplify.aws/learn
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5 Sep 2022
If you’re using @dynamodb you’ll want to consider this 👇
Today, we're announcing Dynobase 2.0. What's new? Read on.
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James Sugrue retweeted
The "AWS costs every programmer should know" article is trending again, but it doesn't mention the extreme cost savings you get from switching to VPC endpoints for S3/Dynamo/etc traffic instead of using NAT gateways. They're so simple to enable, and save you so much money.
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