June 15, 2026 · Leif
AI is a calculator. You still own the code.
How I actually use AI to build: the mindset, the tips and hacks I use day to day, and the opinions about MCP, skills, autonomy, and shipping that I will argue with you about.
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Notes from building CorvidLabs in the open: the tools, the trust toolchain, and the decisions behind them. Subscribe via RSS.
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June 15, 2026 · Leif
I built my own dictation app instead of renting one
Why I built Quill, a local-first voice dictation app: on-device Whisper and embedded llama.cpp polish, full privacy, free, with cloud sync and models reserved for Pro.
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June 15, 2026 · Leif
I love Claude Code. I built my own runner anyway.
Why CorvidLabs runs Merlin and Ollama day to day and keeps Claude Code and Codex for contract work: ownership, any provider, and a runner built on our own tools.
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June 15, 2026 · Leif
I wanted a confidence rating without asking an AI
augur scores the risk of a diff with no LLM: eight signals from git and the filesystem, one score, one verdict. A deterministic baseline a human or an AI can tune.
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June 15, 2026 · Leif
One command for every project
fledge is the dev CLI I wanted: one gate across every language, a tiny core, a sandboxed plugin protocol, and no AI required, which is exactly why an agent can use it too.
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June 15, 2026 · Leif
I wanted my specs checked both ways, so I built spec-sync
spec-sync is my own take on spec-driven development: a CLI that checks spec and code against each other in both directions and fails CI when they drift.
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June 15, 2026 · Leif
Who reviewed this commit, and how sure were they?
attest records who or what reviewed each commit, at what confidence, signed and stored in git notes. It captures the augur verdict and gates the merge on a policy.
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June 14, 2026 · Leif
Building a flock in the open
Why CorvidLabs ships a family of small, sharp dev tools that feed each other, and why we are writing about it here.
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June 12, 2026 · Leif
Why agents want a CLI, not an MCP
Why the command line is the interface I build for AI agents in development, and where MCP and skills actually belong.
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June 9, 2026 · Leif
Stop meeting, start building
AI made building cheap, so the excuse to sit in meetings instead of shipping is gone.
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June 6, 2026 · Leif
Give the agent its own VM
Where you let an autonomous AI agent run matters more than what you let it do, and isolation is what buys you the freedom to give it real autonomy.
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June 3, 2026 · Leif
A conversation is a path
How I steer an AI session by treating the conversation as a path: retrace wrong turns, keep steering instead of restarting, and fan out once the context is rich.
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May 31, 2026 · Leif
Getting an AI up to speed
Getting good output from an AI is mostly an onboarding problem, so here is how I build context and set the target before it does any real work.
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May 28, 2026 · Leif
Trusting code I didn't read
How I trust AI-written code I never read line by line, using confidence ratings and a stack of cheap verification signals.