Happened to me too but my card didn’t actually get charged, maybe check yours. Also the card in the invoice wasn’t even the card I’m using with Anthropic
Hi, author here! I fully agree with your comment here and that’s exactly my point in the post: Different tools that work great for different tasks. If anything, the post is a take against treating Skills + CLI as a zero-sum replacement for MCP, and calling MCP dead/outdated
Especially portability is just not possible with Skills+CLI (yet). I can use the same MCP servers through remote MCP on my phone, web, iPad, in ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Mistral and so on, which I can’t do with Skills.
> MCP has severe context bloat just by starting a thread
Hi, author here. The “MCP has severe context bloat” problem has already been solved with tool discovery. Modern harnesses don’t load every single tool + their descriptions into the context on load, but use tool search to discover the tools lazily when they’re needed. You can further limit this by telling the LLM exactly which tool to load, the rest will stay unloaded / invisible
> But a worse problem is that the output of MCP goes straight into the context of the agent, rather than being piped somewhere else
This is semi-solved as agents and harnesses get smarter. Claude Code for example does discovery in subagents. So it spawns a sub-agent with a cheaper model that explores your codebase / environment (also through MCP) and provides a summary to the parent process. So the parent won’t get hit with the raw output log
I just released Configmesh this week. It's a macOS app (with CLI companion) for e2e encrypted syncing and backing up of dotfiles and application configurations. You can sync for example stuff from ~/.config/, Application Support, *.plists, and so on, and add config sync to apps that don't support it natively
It started out as a cloud runner for small (mostly pure) composable javascript functions that we run for you in the cloud. So whenever you have some small code snippet that you want to run, you can hit up microfn.dev, paste your code and then plug it into wherever you want (pipe into the terminal, use from MCP, add a cron to it, add to Siri shortcuts, use for home automation, ping it with webhooks, etc)
Now we added agents support, so you can have autonomous AI agents take your functions and decide when to use them. Even better, you can hook microfn into a MCP and have anything that supports MCP use those functions as well!
Suppose you need a new thing that your agent should do, you could ask the agent (whether that's claude or cursor) to compose a new function, add it to microfn, then use it itself going forward!
microfn.dev wants to be a toolbox for composable small tools. Imagine a toolbox at home with a bunch of hammers and screw drivers that you collect, share, and use for different purposes.
Some actual examples:
- Pull data off services (twitter, etc)
- Store data from sensors somewhere
- Give agents tools to talk to your specific systems without needing to write an entire MCP
- Wrap complex logic (eg slack auth + sending a message to slack) into a function and add it to a Siri shortcut, so you can quickly send messages to a specific channel with a ping or curl
Still very early alpha (beta-ish), but very excited about this
A buddy and me have been working on https://microfn.dev for a while: A platform for creating, managing and composing tiny (micro) javascript functions and using them from different places like webhooks, cron, MCP or AI agents.
It's still very heavy in development but the gist is: Say you have a cool idea for something small you want to automate or run - instead of thinking about hosting, workers, lambdas and what not, you just open microfn, open the editor (or the function generator), write your function, hit save - done! All the complexity is tucked away on microfn, and your place of use just has to authenticate with microfn and nothing else. We run it for you and keep you productive.
Now you can use that function from anywhere: From the terminal, periodically with a cron, add it to an AI agent as skill, use it through an MCP (not released yet), through Siri shortcuts, share it with your friends and so on.
Say you want to have an agent or function that gets the weather and sends it through Telegram: You can either quickly generate 2 functions through the AI function generator that get the weather ("I want a function that gets the weather for Tokyo") and another one for sending a message on telegram, or you can use what's already available (such as https://microfn.dev/david/getweathertokyo). Equipping them to an agent works like in a video game - each function is a new "skill" or "tool" the agent can use, and if someone else already has some cool skills, you can fork them without needint to re-implement everything from scratch.
So like a toolbox full of small composable hammers and tools that can be used across different scenarios and places, to be plugged into existing workflows, automation or to even be used in autonomous agents and through MCP.
Again, super heavy in development and not really a 1.0 yet, more like an early alpha, but wanted to share here anyway. Feedback greatly appreciated!
I blog about random bits and blobs in tech. Sometimes a review, sometimes trying out something new. Wanted to try and keep it interesting and not too fixated on one category.
Oh file management - my favorite topic! I spent way too much time finding a system that works.
Everything (files, PDFs, etc) that’s important goes into DEVONthink for future referencing. The app is excellent for finding files that relate and can do things like “I think this file goes into the folder ‘water bills’ based on other files in that folder. Move it?”. It’s also e2e encrypted and syncs to multiple cloud storages at once.
Everything that’s not in DEVONthink is considered temporary. I have hazel on my Mac automatically clean up old files in locations like desktop/downloads that are older than x and move it into the trash. If something is important I have to decide this early otherwise it gets thrown (but I could restore it for a while until hazel auto-cleans my trash)
Folders like Documents/, I leave as is. If apps want to write in there they can, but I don’t consider that location important. For more important app data I use iCloud and each app writes in their iCloud specific folder.
For nuggets that refuse to write anywhere else and only into a folder inside Documents, I have hazels sync feature replicate that specific folder automatically into a other location, like inside iCloud Drive.
Then if anything goes wrong I have an arq backup :)
I like the Touch Bar a lot. Not having esc was the only gripe I had with it but I personally much prefer the multifunctional bar over some static f keys
Yup. I ended up in my apprenticeship because during elementary school I wanted to go to the school where all my friends went even though my scores were better. Stupid I know but I was a kid that wasn't able to make reasonable decisions.
Yet I ended up through a apprenticeship in Software Engineering and I could go back at any time and finish my 12 years then go to university. Part of me wants to go study and get a degree, but all universities I inquired at rejected me for not having 12 years despite working for 8 years now.
I'm wondering if there is a simple trick / way to keep social media around without getting too addicted too it. I can completely 100% relate to this article and am scared by it.
However, I can't just shut my accounts down. The advantages they give me over a life without them are just things that I don't want to miss out. I feel "blessed" of having even the opportunity to use amazing worldwide connected tools like facebook and twitter considering the last 100 years.
I get around very often and make friends and contacts almost everywhere. Some of these connections are not relevant until I am in location X again. Some are old friends in my hometown that I from time to time contact. Some are professional connections. In many cases Facebook is the only viable connection to keep contact with less-frequently contacted people.
Messenger? Doesn't work. Some countries use WhatsApp, some LINE, some KakaoTalk, some Threma and some, well, facebook messenger. Replacing facebook with 6 messaging clients is just not gonna work.
I am currently blocking most websites through a little snitch profile but I can feel the urge to unblock them and just... one more time... check if there is something new. I even catch myself occasionally opening facebook just to see the "connection unsuccessful" message.
From my experience, Pomodoro helps a lot in staying focused. But please, if you have anything to share to get rid of this addiction, share!