David Crawshaw
@crawshaw.io
ceo exe.dev, tailscale co-founder, programmer
Reposted by David Crawshaw
The Joel Test was 26 (!) years ago. I revisited it at blog.exe.dev/revisiting-j.... What questions did I leave out?
Revisiting Joel's Test - exe.dev blog
Joel Spolsky's twelve questions still hold, but agents demand nine more. Call it the Shelley test.
blog.exe.dev
August 31, 2026 at 1:21 PM
The Joel Test was 26 (!) years ago. I revisited it at blog.exe.dev/revisiting-j.... What questions did I leave out?
A surprising conclusion I have come to from working with agents. blog.exe.dev/devtools-mus...
Devtools must be open source - exe.dev blog
We have entered the age of personalized software.
blog.exe.dev
August 2, 2026 at 6:08 PM
A surprising conclusion I have come to from working with agents. blog.exe.dev/devtools-mus...
Reposted by David Crawshaw
The hardest part of developing little programs for yourself right now is setting up an environment to run them. This is the idea of @exe.dev, open the app on your phone, start typing, you have a program on a durable Linux sandbox.
Four quick prompts to make a custom feed bsky.app/profile/did:... for myself on an @exe.dev VM.
![[Screenshot of shelley's Table of Contents widget]
Jump to...
↑ Top of conversation
• I want to make a custom bluesky feed. How do I do it?
✓ Custom Bluesky feeds are built as **feed generators** — small...
• Build a feed that captures any posts that mention exe.dev or ...
✓ Done. I built a complete, working Bluesky feed generator in Go...
• It’s public already. Can you do an oauth flow with Bsky for me?
✓ Everything's wired and tested. I built a full atproto OAuth flow i...
• Yep, keep this running. Turn off the oauth login thing so othe...
✓ Done on both counts. ## Persistence ✅ - Installed as a syste...
↓ End of conversation](https://cdn.bsky.app/img/feed_thumbnail/plain/did:plc:cqw3c3jwrh3biffjthby5yao/bafkreihmujrto27z5g6qv2qlshopkmj7pu3r2kk4sdzzyeelzstg5nbuxa)
July 29, 2026 at 4:36 PM
The hardest part of developing little programs for yourself right now is setting up an environment to run them. This is the idea of @exe.dev, open the app on your phone, start typing, you have a program on a durable Linux sandbox.
Billing turns out to be a fascinating async database replication problem.
"Instead of having billing API calls littered in the code, what if we issued billable facts about the state of something and reconciled billing once the new facts were settled?" blog.exe.dev/billable-facts
Stripe Just Wants a Number - exe.dev blog
Inside exe’s billable facts architecture.
blog.exe.dev
July 29, 2026 at 2:37 PM
Billing turns out to be a fascinating async database replication problem.
Happy @exe.dev-on-youtube day for all who celebrate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhBF...
Agents Ship from Anywhere: exe.dev on iOS
YouTube video by Official Channel for Exe Dev
www.youtube.com
July 28, 2026 at 7:41 PM
Happy @exe.dev-on-youtube day for all who celebrate. www.youtube.com/watch?v=BhBF...
Reposted by David Crawshaw
PSA: You can now interact with your VM on Slack blog.exe.dev/run-a-slack-...
Run a Slack Bot from Your VM (Without Giving It the Keys) - exe.dev blog
blog.exe.dev
July 22, 2026 at 8:25 PM
PSA: You can now interact with your VM on Slack blog.exe.dev/run-a-slack-...
Reposted by David Crawshaw
Trying out @exe.dev and it's so cool!
Built a website for my wife in about 10 minutes. Easy for her to edit too since it's wired up to ChatGPT. You just ask it to make changes and it does.
There's also something magical about executing commands like this:
`ssh exe.dev share set-public`
Built a website for my wife in about 10 minutes. Easy for her to edit too since it's wired up to ChatGPT. You just ask it to make changes and it does.
There's also something magical about executing commands like this:
`ssh exe.dev share set-public
July 24, 2026 at 9:36 AM
For those curious about how to bring @exe.dev to work, here is how Antithesis did it.
"I just realized what I wanted was, like, a computer." How @antithesis.com uses exe to give agents real machines, safely: blog.exe.dev/how-antithes...
How Antithesis Turned exe into a Sandbox for Agentic Software Tests - exe.dev blog
blog.exe.dev
July 22, 2026 at 3:43 PM
For those curious about how to bring @exe.dev to work, here is how Antithesis did it.
Reposted by David Crawshaw
Built a distributed DNS server in ~a week. Rebuilt twice on purpose. Shipped -> went on vacation. DNS incidents a month later: 0. How we did it (hint: the answer isn't vibe-coding): blog.exe.dev/claude-is-no...
Claude Is Not a Compiler - exe.dev blog
blog.exe.dev
July 21, 2026 at 2:54 PM
Built a distributed DNS server in ~a week. Rebuilt twice on purpose. Shipped -> went on vacation. DNS incidents a month later: 0. How we did it (hint: the answer isn't vibe-coding): blog.exe.dev/claude-is-no...
Reposted by David Crawshaw
Setting up Gerrit on @exe.dev with X-ExeDev-Email auth took 60s!
However, that doesn't make git work. I hacked together a little proxy that does a tiny amount of OAuth2, exchanging exe.dev auth in the browser for a token that works with git-credential-oauth.
However, that doesn't make git work. I hacked together a little proxy that does a tiny amount of OAuth2, exchanging exe.dev auth in the browser for a token that works with git-credential-oauth.
GitHub - filippo-claude/gerrit-exedev-auth-proxy: Authenticate Gerrit web and Git smart HTTP with exe.dev OAuth
Authenticate Gerrit web and Git smart HTTP with exe.dev OAuth - filippo-claude/gerrit-exedev-auth-proxy
github.com
July 14, 2026 at 1:36 PM
Reposted by David Crawshaw
We're going to be sharing more about how people use exe to build cool stuff. First up—a conservationist who turned 40 terabytes of public data into a video game: blog.exe.dev/meet-the-con...
Meet the Conservationist Who Turned 40 Terabytes of Public Data Into a Video Game - exe.dev blog
Raffael Hickisch spent years dreaming up conservation tools he couldn't afford to build. Then he built them himself, with an AI agent and a country's worth of public data.
blog.exe.dev
July 14, 2026 at 3:02 PM
We're going to be sharing more about how people use exe to build cool stuff. First up—a conservationist who turned 40 terabytes of public data into a video game: blog.exe.dev/meet-the-con...
Reposted by David Crawshaw
New episode of @fafo.fm with @crawshaw.io about @exe.dev scheduled for Monday
Have some more outages included in the newsletter. If you like reading those kinds of things subscribe at sub.fafo.fm
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July 10, 2026 at 11:45 PM
New episode of @fafo.fm with @crawshaw.io about @exe.dev scheduled for Monday
Have some more outages included in the newsletter. If you like reading those kinds of things subscribe at sub.fafo.fm
Have some more outages included in the newsletter. If you like reading those kinds of things subscribe at sub.fafo.fm
Reposted by David Crawshaw
I’ve been considering buying a new Mac mini or Mac Studio (yes, yes… I’m aware of the price increases) but after reading this I might just stick with my MacBook Air and just use @exe.dev
Building Software From My Phone - exe.dev blog
blog.exe.dev
July 8, 2026 at 2:48 AM
I’ve been considering buying a new Mac mini or Mac Studio (yes, yes… I’m aware of the price increases) but after reading this I might just stick with my MacBook Air and just use @exe.dev
Reposted by David Crawshaw
Used exe.dev to build and host my first custom Bluesky feed: bsky.app/profile/will... so that I don't miss any great baseball goofs. I was worried it might use a good bit of my vcpu quota but consuming the jetstream is way less resource intensive than I would have guessed
exe.dev - ssh exe.dev
Build apps or SSH into a persistent Linux VM. ssh exe.dev.
exe.dev
July 5, 2026 at 9:46 PM
Used exe.dev to build and host my first custom Bluesky feed: bsky.app/profile/will... so that I don't miss any great baseball goofs. I was worried it might use a good bit of my vcpu quota but consuming the jetstream is way less resource intensive than I would have guessed
Reposted by David Crawshaw
Using exe.dev with a ChatGPT subscription just got easier! blog.exe.dev/chatgpt-subs...
July 3, 2026 at 6:05 PM
Using exe.dev with a ChatGPT subscription just got easier! blog.exe.dev/chatgpt-subs...
All these "clientless" compute options appearing over SSH. Someone tried to sell me one today in an HN comment thread. Truly, the sincerest form of flattery.
June 27, 2026 at 6:01 PM
All these "clientless" compute options appearing over SSH. Someone tried to sell me one today in an HN comment thread. Truly, the sincerest form of flattery.
It’s the “Camera” in Canon font that I love.
June 27, 2026 at 1:28 PM
It’s the “Camera” in Canon font that I love.
I am convinced that commercial LLM offerings are bad at writing as a side effect of their post-training. I saw better writing from open base models 18 months ago. I cannot even trust a "frontier" model to write dev docs.
More evidence we need a future of many models.
More evidence we need a future of many models.
June 27, 2026 at 11:47 AM
I am convinced that commercial LLM offerings are bad at writing as a side effect of their post-training. I saw better writing from open base models 18 months ago. I cannot even trust a "frontier" model to write dev docs.
More evidence we need a future of many models.
More evidence we need a future of many models.
nyc fighting waymo is like reading about people who used to fight seatbelts. every time I see young children cross at the intersection near my house where a pedestrian was killed earlier this year, I wish autonomous vehicles were in my neighborhood.
June 24, 2026 at 1:23 PM
nyc fighting waymo is like reading about people who used to fight seatbelts. every time I see young children cross at the intersection near my house where a pedestrian was killed earlier this year, I wish autonomous vehicles were in my neighborhood.
This is a limit of large human institutions. A large group cannot trust its own people, because large groups include bad people. So you have to build in checks and enforce them.
But some people cannot operate effectively under those constraints. So some of the best people stick to small teams.
But some people cannot operate effectively under those constraints. So some of the best people stick to small teams.
June 24, 2026 at 8:34 AM
This is a limit of large human institutions. A large group cannot trust its own people, because large groups include bad people. So you have to build in checks and enforce them.
But some people cannot operate effectively under those constraints. So some of the best people stick to small teams.
But some people cannot operate effectively under those constraints. So some of the best people stick to small teams.
To get good value out of agents you need a good development cycle. For an iOS app that means: while you are playing with the app, see a bug, you flip over to the agent, explain the problem, and then your app is updated with the fix.
It's a REPL for iOS dev.
Takes a lot of setup.
It's a REPL for iOS dev.
Takes a lot of setup.
Behind the scenes on how the exe.dev iOS app was built: blog.exe.dev/ios-developm.... Step 1: buy mac mini. Step 2: give Shelley access to simulator. Step 3: over the air updates, Step 4: prompt app into existence from itself. Also, gratuitous profiler. boldsoftware.github.io/public_html/...
exe.dev - ssh exe.dev
Build apps or SSH into a persistent Linux VM. ssh exe.dev.
exe.dev
June 24, 2026 at 7:02 AM
To get good value out of agents you need a good development cycle. For an iOS app that means: while you are playing with the app, see a bug, you flip over to the agent, explain the problem, and then your app is updated with the fix.
It's a REPL for iOS dev.
Takes a lot of setup.
It's a REPL for iOS dev.
Takes a lot of setup.
I get to this website by going to the URL bar and typing bs
June 22, 2026 at 9:30 PM
I get to this website by going to the URL bar and typing bs