Byron Ellis
@fdaapproved.bsky.social
Computer things, sometimes I draw pictures of data. Sometimes I also take pictures or make simple noises in complicated ways.
Halloween has been deployed. I am also happy to report that despite the best efforts of the raccoons we were able to actually grow pumpkins this year.
September 28, 2026 at 2:27 AM
Halloween has been deployed. I am also happy to report that despite the best efforts of the raccoons we were able to actually grow pumpkins this year.
You know what just occurred to me? LLMs write interview code. Think about every coding interview you’ve done or conducted: it has this “show your work”
look with very little design (no time) very little use of libraries and so on. Now go look at your baseline LLM code. Yup. Same thing.
look with very little design (no time) very little use of libraries and so on. Now go look at your baseline LLM code. Yup. Same thing.
July 3, 2026 at 10:29 PM
You know what just occurred to me? LLMs write interview code. Think about every coding interview you’ve done or conducted: it has this “show your work”
look with very little design (no time) very little use of libraries and so on. Now go look at your baseline LLM code. Yup. Same thing.
look with very little design (no time) very little use of libraries and so on. Now go look at your baseline LLM code. Yup. Same thing.
In 2000 when I went to grad school I dropped off my Korg o1w/fd at my Mom’s house. At some point it disappeared and I thought it was gone forever. Turns out my sister had taken it during one of the moves and she brought it back this weekend. Power supply: noisy. Battery: dead. But it powers on!
May 25, 2026 at 3:59 PM
In 2000 when I went to grad school I dropped off my Korg o1w/fd at my Mom’s house. At some point it disappeared and I thought it was gone forever. Turns out my sister had taken it during one of the moves and she brought it back this weekend. Power supply: noisy. Battery: dead. But it powers on!
The garden continues to be a delight. Most things are flowering and we harvested our first artichoke this week.
May 4, 2026 at 1:37 AM
The garden continues to be a delight. Most things are flowering and we harvested our first artichoke this week.
My sister was going through some old boxes and unearthed this treasure. Still in its original packaging.
April 13, 2026 at 6:54 PM
My sister was going through some old boxes and unearthed this treasure. Still in its original packaging.
Went a little nuts and ended up creating an “Operating System” for agent orchestration out of Ragtime. Gluing together FUSE and Starlark, what could possibly go wrong right?
Even decided to finally make a website for ragtime which is as deeply tedious as ever: ragtime-os.ai/posts/2026-0...
Even decided to finally make a website for ragtime which is as deeply tedious as ever: ragtime-os.ai/posts/2026-0...
I'll see your CLI and raise you Files.. or how I accidentally made an Agent Operating System.
A couple of weeks ago I had a post over on LinkedIn about using FUSE to isolate my Pecan VMs such that they didn’t even need to have external read-write mounts to the filesystem. Everything could be d...
ragtime-os.ai
April 6, 2026 at 2:00 AM
Went a little nuts and ended up creating an “Operating System” for agent orchestration out of Ragtime. Gluing together FUSE and Starlark, what could possibly go wrong right?
Even decided to finally make a website for ragtime which is as deeply tedious as ever: ragtime-os.ai/posts/2026-0...
Even decided to finally make a website for ragtime which is as deeply tedious as ever: ragtime-os.ai/posts/2026-0...
Nice afternoon for chilling in the garden.
March 29, 2026 at 11:44 PM
Nice afternoon for chilling in the garden.
Ah beach town life: what… is that? A kite? Ah, no. It’s a guy riding a very tall unicycle with a parasol and what appears to be a UFO made out of a pop up photography diffuser. As one does from time to time.
March 29, 2026 at 10:08 PM
Ah beach town life: what… is that? A kite? Ah, no. It’s a guy riding a very tall unicycle with a parasol and what appears to be a UFO made out of a pop up photography diffuser. As one does from time to time.
Went on a bit of a FUSE kick and managed to get things to a state where pecan no longer needs readwrite mounts.
Relatedly I also discovered fuse-t.org which converts FUSE into NFS mounts on macOS without kexts.
So I’ll see Garry Tan’s “all CLIs” and raise him “all files.” 🙂
Relatedly I also discovered fuse-t.org which converts FUSE into NFS mounts on macOS without kexts.
So I’ll see Garry Tan’s “all CLIs” and raise him “all files.” 🙂
March 28, 2026 at 3:46 AM
Went on a bit of a FUSE kick and managed to get things to a state where pecan no longer needs readwrite mounts.
Relatedly I also discovered fuse-t.org which converts FUSE into NFS mounts on macOS without kexts.
So I’ll see Garry Tan’s “all CLIs” and raise him “all files.” 🙂
Relatedly I also discovered fuse-t.org which converts FUSE into NFS mounts on macOS without kexts.
So I’ll see Garry Tan’s “all CLIs” and raise him “all files.” 🙂
I have reached the “throat mics are pretty cheap and I have this RODE usb audio interface that I think should work” stage of modern software development.
March 23, 2026 at 1:19 AM
I have reached the “throat mics are pretty cheap and I have this RODE usb audio interface that I think should work” stage of modern software development.
I was working on a RAG-style session search thingy and I decided it plus some of the dynamic hook stuff I’ve been doing would be a useful standalone thing.
So I made ragtime: github.com/byronellis/r...
RAG-like indexing and dynamic hooks with Starlark. Very early days so we’ll see how it evolves
So I made ragtime: github.com/byronellis/r...
RAG-like indexing and dynamic hooks with Starlark. Very early days so we’ll see how it evolves
GitHub - byronellis/ragtime: Dynamic hooks for managing agent context
Dynamic hooks for managing agent context. Contribute to byronellis/ragtime development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
March 15, 2026 at 8:17 PM
I was working on a RAG-style session search thingy and I decided it plus some of the dynamic hook stuff I’ve been doing would be a useful standalone thing.
So I made ragtime: github.com/byronellis/r...
RAG-like indexing and dynamic hooks with Starlark. Very early days so we’ll see how it evolves
So I made ragtime: github.com/byronellis/r...
RAG-like indexing and dynamic hooks with Starlark. Very early days so we’ll see how it evolves
Watching the last Front 242 concert on YouTube. Audio is terrible but I’ve heard every track so many times it really doesn’t matter.
March 14, 2026 at 3:18 AM
Watching the last Front 242 concert on YouTube. Audio is terrible but I’ve heard every track so many times it really doesn’t matter.
How many test engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None! That’s an observability problem!
None! That’s an observability problem!
March 6, 2026 at 5:24 AM
How many test engineers does it take to change a lightbulb?
None! That’s an observability problem!
None! That’s an observability problem!
As a friend put it “this is one of those Jedi things where you have to make your own lightsaber isn’t it?” “Maybe…” Anyway, I felt like making my own container-centric agent harness using Virtualization.framework and so: github.com/byronellis/p... is the beginning.
GitHub - byronellis/pecan: Possibly Extensible Coding AgeNt
Possibly Extensible Coding AgeNt. Contribute to byronellis/pecan development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
March 2, 2026 at 4:25 PM
As a friend put it “this is one of those Jedi things where you have to make your own lightsaber isn’t it?” “Maybe…” Anyway, I felt like making my own container-centric agent harness using Virtualization.framework and so: github.com/byronellis/p... is the beginning.
Apropos of nothing really other than being weirded out by “Senior Dev” language is Medium posts, tech levels would be easier to explain if we used character classes instead. There’s some amount of XP involved (everyone states as a tank after all) but there’s more to it than that.
February 1, 2026 at 3:12 PM
Apropos of nothing really other than being weirded out by “Senior Dev” language is Medium posts, tech levels would be easier to explain if we used character classes instead. There’s some amount of XP involved (everyone states as a tank after all) but there’s more to it than that.
I feel like “momentum engineering” is perhaps a better term than “vibe coding.” The point is not to turn off your brain, it’s more like snowboarding on a deep powder day. The board is going to do what it’s going to do and its your job to not lose velocity and bog down.
January 20, 2026 at 2:06 PM
I feel like “momentum engineering” is perhaps a better term than “vibe coding.” The point is not to turn off your brain, it’s more like snowboarding on a deep powder day. The board is going to do what it’s going to do and its your job to not lose velocity and bog down.
Folks, we can’t call them agent fleets. That’s boring and besides… these things are clearly waaaghs.
January 9, 2026 at 8:19 AM
Folks, we can’t call them agent fleets. That’s boring and besides… these things are clearly waaaghs.
I like a roughly 1:1 meringue to filling ratio.
December 28, 2025 at 10:48 PM
I like a roughly 1:1 meringue to filling ratio.
So I had forgotten my current ramekin (a vintage 1980s one that my mom gave me) was smaller than my old one so I made the wrong amount… but things turned out OK in the end.
November 28, 2025 at 3:37 AM
So I had forgotten my current ramekin (a vintage 1980s one that my mom gave me) was smaller than my old one so I made the wrong amount… but things turned out OK in the end.
You know it’s serious when this bad boy comes out
November 27, 2025 at 6:22 PM
You know it’s serious when this bad boy comes out
Fork Tender is going to be the name of my shoegaze band.
November 27, 2025 at 3:33 AM
Fork Tender is going to be the name of my shoegaze band.
So maybe the math annotation thing was too much. Trying again: Right now LLMs are being used to make a very verbose C, complete with footguns. But if LLMs capture linguistics that implies it’s all languages at the same time and we should be trying to make “vague pseudocode” work instead.
September 1, 2025 at 3:16 PM
So maybe the math annotation thing was too much. Trying again: Right now LLMs are being used to make a very verbose C, complete with footguns. But if LLMs capture linguistics that implies it’s all languages at the same time and we should be trying to make “vague pseudocode” work instead.
My new favorite 20s AI explanation: LLMs are to Search Engines as JPEGs are to RAW. Which I guess makes fine tuning the LLM equivalent of Photoshop.
August 12, 2025 at 5:03 AM
My new favorite 20s AI explanation: LLMs are to Search Engines as JPEGs are to RAW. Which I guess makes fine tuning the LLM equivalent of Photoshop.