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TJ Miller and Chris Gmyr dig into Hive, the tmux-based agent orchestration tool Chris built to replace Solo, from profiles and runbooks to the optional dashboard. They also cover TJ's Halcyon notes app, his new local dictation app Sonari, and the app store compliance maze, sharing insights on turning side projects into real products.
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What is Slightly Caffeinated?
Join Chris Gmyr and TJ Miller as they dive into the world of PHP, Laravel, and all things programming, while also sharing insights on family life and other musings.
TJ Miller (00:00)
Yo, welcome back to the slightly caffeinated podcast. I'm TJ Miller.
Chris Gmyr (00:04)
And I'm Chris Gmyr
TJ Miller (00:05)
So, Chris, what's new in your world, man?
Chris Gmyr (00:08)
man, too many things.
TJ Miller (00:10)
I feel that.
Chris Gmyr (00:11)
Yeah. Yeah, I think I counted wrong the last time because this is our last week of no school. School starts next week on Monday. And yeah, just got a bunch of things that we're trying to like wrap up and yeah, just a bunch of stuff around the house and getting ready for
TJ Miller (00:27)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (00:27)
school, finishing up like school shopping and lists and meet the teacher later this week and my
the week just the schedule just looks like a patchwork of like out of office and different appointments and stuff going on. I'm like, this is
TJ Miller (00:40)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (00:42)
this is a mess. Luckily it's only like, you know, once in a while that it's like this bad. But yeah, I feel like I'm going in a million different directions and too many balls in the air, and just keep on adding like more balls.
TJ Miller (00:53)
Yeah. I'm
I I feel like I am doing the exact same thing right now. Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (00:58)
Yep,
totally. But like everything is like mostly good. like we're gonna go get passports for the family on like Thursday, because they were
TJ Miller (01:07)
Hell yeah.
Chris Gmyr (01:08)
recording early this week. because we have a a Disney cruise booked in March. So we gotta get like
TJ Miller (01:13)
Yes.
Chris Gmyr (01:14)
everyone's like stuff together. And I was able to just r renew mine with a updated photo, but everyone else
TJ Miller (01:21)
great.
Chris Gmyr (01:21)
with like my wife's name change after we got married because we haven't done
TJ Miller (01:24)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (01:25)
any passport type
travel and then the two kids don't have anything. So had to take pictures and go do that on Thursday and that should be good to go from there, assuming there's no like issues and whatnot, which not expecting there, you know, to be, but you know, just another you know, thing to add to the list
TJ Miller (01:42)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (01:42)
of things to do.
TJ Miller (01:43)
Yeah. I know I know that our passport process went super smooth because my wife put a lot of effort into making sure it went smooth. But like she scheduled it through the post office and like we walked in, like because my wife was so organized, it was like, Yep, here's all the paperwork. They went through everything, snapped our photos. We were like in and out of there, no big deal. so yeah, it's yeah, as long as you have your stuff together, like it was
The process was crazy smooth.
Chris Gmyr (02:12)
Yep. Yep. We filled out all the like online forms and just printed them off so we're like ready to go and shouldn't be like too bad and same thing, like appointment is all scheduled and and good to go. So hopefully it won't be too terrible. but yeah, random house stuff. We've had a little visitor living in our crawl space for the last week or so. nice
TJ Miller (02:31)
boy.
Chris Gmyr (02:31)
little nice little copper head, right by the back steps. So we have these
TJ Miller (02:34)
geez.
Chris Gmyr (02:36)
like
vents on the outside where, you know, air can get in and stuff like that.
TJ Miller (02:39)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (02:40)
And in this one in particular, there's some wire coming through like the the vent area. So I think he like kinda got up into like an expanded the hole and he's just been like in and out of there.
TJ Miller (02:52)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (02:52)
which, you know, is bad enough, but it's like right next to our back step to go into the backyard. And
TJ Miller (02:58)
Yeah, terrible spot.
Chris Gmyr (02:59)
like grilling and stuff and, you know, high traffic area, dogs going out, you know, all that stuff.
TJ Miller (03:02)
Kids, dogs, yeah.
Chris Gmyr (03:04)
So not great. so I had someone over yesterday to take a look at it and they're like, well, we can't really catch them if we can't see them. So they're gonna come out and like put some traps down and see if we can, you know, get them out of there in the next couple of days. But yeah, just
TJ Miller (03:16)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (03:16)
been like ongoing like, you know, anxiety about that. And I
TJ Miller (03:20)
Of yeah, dude.
Chris Gmyr (03:21)
put I have a bunch of the the wise cameras around and had an extra one that we usually take with us for travel in one of the I don't know, flexible tripods.
So I put the tripod up in the camera on the downspout of where all the rain and water comes down, which is like right next to the vent, and it's just like
TJ Miller (03:41)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (03:42)
pointed at the the vent area in the little like cutout there. So I just have it named as like snake pit on the wise
TJ Miller (03:50)
Ha ha ha.
Chris Gmyr (03:51)
app and just like take a look at it. And I don't know if it's like helping or making it worse every time that I see like movement on there, because we like
frogs and caterpillar season and just like a bunch of
TJ Miller (04:01)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (04:02)
stuff that's moving. I'm like, is it a snake? Is it something else? So it's like it's probably
TJ Miller (04:04)
Is it the snake?
Chris Gmyr (04:07)
worse that I have the camera up there, but I don't know, just I don't know. Makes me feel a little better, you know, in the meantime too of like I can check it before like the kids go outside or like taking the dog outside
TJ Miller (04:15)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (04:16)
for like especially at night when I can't really see as well.
TJ Miller (04:19)
Yeah, and
who knows, maybe you you catch it as it's as it's leaving and you can go out there and like seal it up real quick so it can't get back in, you know.
Chris Gmyr (04:28)
Yeah. Yeah. so yeah, dealing dealing with all that too and just working on a bunch of projects that we'll, you know, get into.
TJ Miller (04:34)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (04:36)
but yeah, that's I don't know, an extended version of what's going on with me. what's going on with you?
TJ Miller (04:42)
man, a lot of the same, like juggling too much stuff and adding more because I'm just a glutton for punishment, I guess. so we're we're in the home stretch. my wife is having a double mastectomy on Friday. it's for for the listeners, it's it's preventative. They found something but can't biopsy it.
So with her family history and her genetic markers, it's it's more of a question of when something could like cancer could occur, rather than like an if. So it's we're we're just getting ahead of things and doing that. So lots of like prep work around here, just kind of gearing up, making sure like
We
have groceries and everything. So I don't have to leave the house for a couple of days and can be like tend to her. Like she's been getting like supplies and new ice packs and super smart bought like a like a a juice kit, like a big box of like raw juices. so she's got that so she can like have those through recovery and kind of help make sure she's got all the vitamins she needs.
And then yeah, my my son's got he's actually got his eighth grade orientation later today. So we're we're kicking that off. And I think he starts he starts back before Labor Day. I don't remember exactly when, but he starts back very soon here. and so he's I mean we're also he we're also prepping for his birthday. his birthday's September third. and it's his thirteenth. so he kinda wanted to make a big deal out of it. He like
He asked for a VR headset and a birthday party. So I I we got him we we rented laser tag for him. So we're gonna do laser tag
Chris Gmyr (06:23)
sorry.
TJ Miller (06:23)
for his birthday and then yeah, we got him his VR headset. So it'll be
Chris Gmyr (06:28)
I love me some laser tag.
TJ Miller (06:29)
yeah, dude. I thought it would be so much fun. He got into like the kid version of paintball this summer. Like him and his friends all got these
They're kinda like they shoot they're like Orbees. They're like they're super small pellets. You dump in water, they expand and then when you get shot with them, they like explode. and they they kinda sting a little bit. But they're he's been doing that with his buds all summer. So I thought laser tag would be just like a a riot for all.
Chris Gmyr (06:56)
Yeah. And it hurts a lot less too.
TJ Miller (06:58)
Yeah, yeah, for sure. So
we got that going on. And then yeah, same thing, man. Just juggling some new projects. which I'm d we'll we'll talk a little bit more about. And I'm I'm definitely super hype on them. yours I I'm gonna tweet this out later too. or maybe even write a blog post on it. It was it was a conversation I had with my wife and it was a conversation I had.
At Laracon a couple times too. Like, and I think I may, I may have said it here also, but I feel like for so long in my career, I've been hyper focused and like obsessed about like the craft of of coding and just so deeply in the weeds of that that
Chris Gmyr (07:45)
Mm-hmm.
TJ Miller (07:46)
I I feel like that got really in the way of like actually building things. And it has been so incredible to like be building things now, like the affordances that AI has given me to like actually build and complete projects and do the things that I was never good at, like marketing plans and like content schedules and like
Things
you kind of need to do to have a successful product launch. Like those felt so out of reach for me and my knowledge base. So I am just having like a blast getting to build for once, you know. that's it's just been so satisfying. And it's like I don't, it's not that I don't care about the craft of development anymore. And I can recognize that because I spent
that time being so obsessed with it is why I'm so effective now. So like the journey was definitely worthy to like get here. I don't have regrets over it, but just building has been a whole new level of satisfaction.
Chris Gmyr (08:56)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And we have talked a little bit about that before, but I think that'd be a great blog post. and I I think we're in a good spot to be in this era. I'm definitely worried about new people coming into the
TJ Miller (09:13)
yeah.
Chris Gmyr (09:13)
industry because I can't imagine trying to decide like well enough to guide an AI if I didn't have
you know, twenty to five, twenty-six years of experience right now,
TJ Miller (09:27)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (09:28)
you know. And even like me and I'm sure you like get hung up on things and it's like we can at least I feel work through that. Where like a newcomer to the industry is like, I don't I mean that sounds good. Let's just do that. And it's gonna have like a whole mess of problems, or people just won't be confident in like the newer engineers coming into
the space because like you can you can train, you can look at you know, patterns and architecture guidelines and whatever, but until you build something, you know, on your own, it doesn't really sink in. And then now adding AI on top of it and all of the complexities that it has is like not a good scenario for these new people coming in.
TJ Miller (10:12)
No,
I I really I've I've kind of like struggled with that, you know, but I think there's also like two sides to this. I think that it's absolutely like a detrimental situation for new people coming in. But there's there's this certain class of people that are just like genuinely curious.
And like want to learn this stuff that I think it is maybe the best time ever to get into it because you have a pair programmer, you have a sidekick, you have a reference to like go and be like, all right, well, what is this concept? Like explain this to me. And you can get high quality explanations within the context of what you're building. I think a perfect example of this is over the last
week
or so, Sam from like Sam Sapinfield, I think is her last name. she's been on Twitter, like kind of journaling the experience of being a non-developer, building an application with Laravel and AI. Like they, I I think,
Her and Abby had built a the the Lair V the Laricon Photos website. They built that with their like, we have no we're not developers, you know, and Sam's kind of walked through that story. and I I think I think that's just such a great example of like how, yeah, it can be like very detrimental. And I think most people probably fall into it's a detriment to getting started in this career. But I think there's absolutely a group of people that this is.
Making it maybe the best time ever to get into it because you you have this 24-7 resource there that you can ask questions to.
Chris Gmyr (12:00)
Yep. Yeah. I a hundred percent agree on that. And I think the the key to that is actually being curious and taking those steps
TJ Miller (12:09)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (12:10)
and keep on pushing and asking and also I think ejecting yourself out of the AI sessions as well and actually like getting your hands dirty, reading, you know, the old fashioned blogs and you know, resources like that
TJ Miller (12:22)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (12:23)
to then connect more of these dots, you know, in your mind, and then come back.
To the AI and be like, well, I read this in a book or a blog post or saw this. Like, what is this? How do I use it?
TJ Miller (12:34)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (12:34)
Does this make sense? explain so like full,
TJ Miller (12:35)
Is it applicable to what we're building?
Chris Gmyr (12:38)
yeah, full circle kind of you know, flywheel type of stuff for learning. And I think using that as a learning avenue and not just like, I'm just gonna offload all of my knowledge work to AI, you're gonna have two completely different results. So if people use it as a tutor or like an educator.
and pair programmer, moving forward, I think you're gonna get a lot better result from that.
TJ Miller (13:02)
Yeah, a hundred percent. yeah.
Yeah, just musings, I guess. Things I've been thinking about.
Chris Gmyr (13:07)
Yeah, totally.
TJ Miller (13:09)
cool man. On on on a coffee front, I I I finally ran through all the the bags of the local local roaster stuff. So I'm like, I'm now facing this like I have I have this Kirkland coffee that I'm not really a big fan of.
And I'm dying for some more of the coffee that Dorinda sent us with. So I'm I'm on a mission later today to see if I can order some from Australia. Or at the very least, I'm gonna see how much it's gonna cost Dorinda to send me some. Because I'm I I find myself craving it. It was really good.
Chris Gmyr (13:50)
Yeah,
yeah. That's awesome. Cool.
TJ Miller (13:53)
Yeah.
Cool man. I don't know, do you do you have any any coffee caffeine related?
Chris Gmyr (13:58)
not much. I just got a new box in today for purity
TJ Miller (14:03)
awesome.
Chris Gmyr (14:04)
and so nothing to report yet, but I did get a honey processed one. So
TJ Miller (14:11)
Ooh.
Chris Gmyr (14:11)
let's hopefully be able to crack that open before next show. I don't know how much of the current beans that we have left, but yeah, hoping for for good stuff from that one.
TJ Miller (14:22)
Yeah,
definitely want to review on that, man. For sure. Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (14:26)
Cool. So we'll report back for sure.
TJ Miller (14:29)
Good deal. yeah, so moving on from there, I I would love for you to introduce this. It's it's something you shared with me like a week, maybe two weeks ago, and I have been using it and absolutely love it. So go for it, man.
Chris Gmyr (14:45)
Sweet.
Okay. so I've been working on a new project that I am calling Hive, I V E, like the Beehive. And it's a framework and tool set built on top of Tmux that does agent orchestration. so previously we were talking about solo term from Aaron Francis.
TJ Miller (15:04)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (15:05)
Fantastic application. Aaron's great.
and I was using Solo for personal projects and work projects. So I had it installed on both systems, paid for the license. Great. but we are going through a bunch of compliance and security things at work, and they've been like slowly turning off access to like AI enabled tools and some other things for like security purposes. So we talked a little bit about Whisperflow before, which was yeah speech
TJ Miller (15:33)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (15:33)
to text.
Which was great, but a lot of people were starting to install that. That does a lot of behind the scenes stuff that they weren't happy with. So they put a ban on that. So it basically just installed it from uninstalled it from everyone's computers. So with that, solo at at the time was fine, but I felt kind of a little icky using it and just wanted something a little bit, you know, simpler as well.
So basically what I did is made my own flavor of some of the features that I liked. and just trying to challenge myself and using different sort of you know, workflows with AI to build something like that. so what I did is I kept like the minimal like feature set that I liked. so it shares context back and forth between agents.
It's able to spin up agents automatically. And this is just using Claude under the hood. So it's it's basically similar to Solo where you're interacting or you have the option to interact with the individual sessions for like workers and the lead and all this other stuff. it has like scratch pads, so I call them pads, to-dos, there's like a a default
pad for your board, which is like this is the things that we're working on or notes specific to the repo and things like that. and you can either run it in kind of like raw tmux mode or a tmux driven through iTerm. So if you'd rather use like iTerm shortcuts and Windows and split panes and things like that, you can do that or do like raw Tmux with all your Tmux config and all that stuff. So
Couple of little options there. so that's where it kind of started in the basics. And as I was using it, I'm like, well, I I really want a way to solidify my workflow while using these agents and possibly using that across projects. One of my issues with Solo is that it took me a really long time to get it to like an orchestration level that I
was comfortable with and wanted. And that needed a lot of tooling. I ended up putting a bunch of stuff in my global claw, clawed local files in the individual repos. I set up a shared like run book that like all the the projects that were like solo enabled with like point two. So it's like the these are your instructions and had to copy and paste that, you know, across every single project, which also didn't run
all the time correctly. So I tried setting up hooks for it and all this stuff. And it ended up kind of being a mess. And it was like really tedious to spin up a new project with solo with the orchestration that I wanted. So in Hive, I one of the first features after the initial feature set was the idea of profiles. So there's two profiles shipped within Hive. It's like one simple which basically does nothing but just spin up Claude.
in an orchestration profile, which says, like, hey, you as the lead are going to spin up workers for whatever work that it is you're gonna do, plan lanes and rate pads and to-dos for that work. And basically that runs the show. So you interact with the lead and it spins out additional workers automatically to do whatever work that you're implementing.
so that gave me a way to not only kind of ship these like sensible defaults, but also you can fork these profiles and overwrite these to your local config. So you can still reference like the orchestration profile and have the choice to overwrite your own runbook or worker prompt and things like that. So it's it's kind of like how Laravel configs work.
You can like override the top defaults in your app, but it'll go through the Lairval framework for the config to kind of backfill, fill in those defaults from the framework. So it works very similar to that. So basically what you can do is fork or like export the like orchestration profile, spin it up, and make it whatever you want with these few files as a base, and you can expand from there.
And then you can set up multiple profiles. So if you want like an orchestration strict, where it like goes through like review loops and lead is checking things, workers doing specific like tasks, you can have that sort of profile and almost like a orchestration like YOLO, where like if you just wanted something to, you know, vibe code whatever project or idea that you had, like you could just say like you have all the permissions within this repo, go do it, merge back into main, or you know, push if you have a remote branch and things like that.
And it'll just kind of run. And all these different mechanisms will, you know, spin up those workers, it'll close them down automatically when work finishes, it'll keep the board updated, it'll keep the to to-dos updated, completed, all that stuff. there's an optional dashboard that I built. So in the hive.yaml, you can turn dashboard to true and it'll show you like all of the board, it'll show you like to-dos and stats over time, it'll s show you everything that's open, all the
wakes and hooks that are is going on. basically like that visual interface for everything that's going on behind the scenes. totally optional, but super handy for like long running projects. and I've been running this both on my work and personal computer and it's been fantastic. I've been doing a lot of tweaking to the forked orchestration profile that I have on both systems because I want it to work a little bit differently based on
the system that I'm on. but yeah, it's been fantastic. So I'm not sure if I'm like selling it like all the all the things that it does like very well. but it's been like a super fun project to work on. And yeah, I shared it with you a week or so ago and shared it with other guys in the group chat this morning. So I'm not sure
What the long term goal of this is going to be. Right now it's just like a cool personal project that I'm working on and just sharing with a small group of people. I don't know if I want to open source it. I'm not sure if it's like sellable or, you know, a public project, you know, in the future. I kind of just want it right now like simplified and just continue to work, you know, for myself and small group of people. because I think once you open it up, then you have like bug reports, you gotta
handle all the millions of edge cases.
TJ Miller (21:53)
yeah. Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (21:55)
It's like, I don't know if I want that pressure. you know, right now or in the near future. So it's something not in the back of my mind, but you know, we'll see what actually happens, you know, from it.
TJ Miller (22:05)
Yeah, I I know when you shared it this morning, like my first reaction was like, dude, docs open source it. Like just do it. But I also very acutely understand the pressures that come with that. So yeah, dude, I I have I think you did a great job breaking it down. I have really enjoyed it. I had finally downloaded solo term, kind of looking for
really to implement this kind of like lead sub agent pattern. and I had really found myself already starting to do that with go on dogs.
I had already kind of started to do that with just clawed code, basically just instructing the like the main opus agent, like saying, Hey, you're the lead, spin up sub agents as you see fit, and then kind of provide a breakdown of like here's when to use Fable, here's when to use Sonnet, here's like when to use Opus. So, like break that work down, use subagents to like do all the implementation. You're the gatekeeper of everything. so I'd been kind of doing that with just clawed code, but
It something about that like didn't really feel like it was the way to go. I I don't know, like it it seemed effective for very concentrated work, like I'm doing this one slice. Like I think that worked well with just clawed code. But what I did with Hive
is I basically put together for Halcyon, like the the Notes app I'm building. I had a deep roadmap of like both fixes and features that needed to be taken care of. And I didn't want to like sit there and like attend it to all of this stuff.
so I think you provided me like your orchestration file. I basically like I asked Claude, here's Hive, set it up, get it configured. Here's the the project directory with all the like the sub projects in it, like configure Hive for this system. Here's like an orchestration file, like run with that, but customize it for my needs. And I did it and I unleashed it for
I swear it ran for like a day and a half, two days. And like I'm I'm now sitting on a big list of things to QA. And like in between, like it would tell me one of the things I love about how your prompting works is it will when it checks in with you, like the lead will check in with and like post status updates as it goes. And one of my favorite sections is things that need your attention. and
Most of the time it's like no, but sometimes it does surface stuff where it's like, yeah, I need your feedback here. and that's been fantastic. Like, so I basically just interface with the lead. It spins up TMUX panes with agents in them to do all the different bits of work. a couple of things that I added in was like I really drove home to it that I want it to work in vertical slices and have codecs like
Before you implement a feature, create a PRD using my PRD creation skill, have Codex adversarily review that, then use the code review skill when you're done, and then have Codecs adversarily review that too. That I think, like I basically built that into I think the orchestration document is like this is your your
Chris Gmyr (25:21)
the
run book.
TJ Miller (25:22)
Yeah, the run book, yes. like this is your process for working. And like that was incredibly effective. Codex was catching all sorts of stuff that Claude was greenlighting that are things that I would have had to catch later or like caught in QA and had to go back into. so this has been like a huge unlock. Like I tried solo, but like I kind of felt lost. Like the product felt great.
I totally understand its purpose, but like
Chris Gmyr (25:51)
Mm-hmm. A hundred percent.
TJ Miller (25:53)
it did not feel turnkey for this workflow like Hive does. Like Hive was basically like I had Claude set it up, then all of a sudden I'm talking to the lead agent, and then it just starts spinning up its workers and like it just it it fit the mental model that I was after so well. so I've I've been been loving it. And one of the cool things too is like.
without even without launching with the hive command, like raw claw code, clawed code like hooked up, like picked up on the stuff that was available and started using to-do lists and pads without me even like giving it any guidance in a brand new project.
and so that was I think that was a powerful unlock too, that like it'll just reach for the tools you made available without using the structured command. And like that's valuable too.
Chris Gmyr (26:47)
Yeah, yeah, totally. And I think that's what's really cool is just the cust like customizability of it. You have like the the basic building blocks in the hive system in general, but then you can tweak the steps or what you want out of the system or the framework of Hive, which I think is really powerful and like a big unlock with those profiles.
across your projects too. So in the Hive like YAML config, you can have a bunch of custom like EMV like variables in there. And then you can have triggers based off of those within like all the profile as assets. So there's the posture, which is like the main like prompt for the lead. And then there's the runbook, which the lead follows and you can write like you said, basically whatever you want to do in there.
And then a worker prompt that's the system prompt for each new worker that spins up, along with a lead will actually push instructions to each worker. So in a couple of projects that I have going locally on my personal system, is Hive has a remote repo on GitHub. you put the the repo name in there. If you have something like Jira or linear, you can put like the ticket prefix. So if it needs to create tickets, you can just say
create a ticket for XYZ and it'll already know like how to tag it and where to push it in those systems. but on another project I didn't have a remote. So it couldn't do a CI process. It couldn't do like a full PR process. So I have these conditionals built into the run book of run book and the worker prompt for like those hive variables so it can say like if you have a remote, then you're doing all of the remote process.
So the CI checks, the PR workflow, the checking your local code review to what maybe if you have like a code review agent in GitHub running either like Claude or Code Rabbit or something like that, you can build all that stuff into the the prompts and instructions in the runbook or the worker for those things. And it's conditional based on the environment variables that you have set up for the project.
so it just gives you like a a huge unlock of the customizability of things for your like either system or like individual projects as well, which I think is pretty cool.
TJ Miller (29:07)
Yeah.
Yeah. And one thing that I noticed is that off the bat it it started utilizing Claude Code's new interagent messaging system, which I have enabled. and I know I I don't think you can for work because that's only supported by Claude and I think you y'all use bedrock and and
Chris Gmyr (29:28)
Yeah.
TJ Miller (29:31)
So I it was cool that like there's that flexibility in there too of like, yeah, I like use you know Hive's inner communication system or like you know, in my case, I'm like, yeah, no, use Claude's inner communication system. Like it works really well. yeah, and I don't know, I've I've been super impressed with it. It it chewed through like a huge like a backlog of features, you know, it rewrote the syncing engine.
I I was I was super impressed. some great work, man.
Chris Gmyr (30:03)
Yeah, so yeah, thank you so much. And yeah, hopefully some others use it and give some feedback and then we'll see what next steps are, if anything. But yeah, in the meantime, just glad you're liking it. And I don't know, it's been super solid for me on multiple systems and been happy
TJ Miller (30:18)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (30:18)
with that. one quick call out on the the managed communication through Claude. it does work very well, but you lose the insight into like hive debugging because it's not stored.
Anywhere it just kind of like lost. So for
TJ Miller (30:33)
a good call.
Chris Gmyr (30:35)
you'll have to check out my like newly exported files because I think I have a note in there of for worker communication, it says do not use cloud managed communication. So everything goes through Hive. But if you have multiple lead agents that are in different projects, so project one has a lead, project two has a lead, project three has a lead.
TJ Miller (30:56)
Mm-hmm.
Chris Gmyr (30:57)
then those leads can communicate through the managed communication lines through Claude because that might be like higher level things of like, hey, is this runbook working for you or is this worker prompt working for your project? And it allows you to communicate across those leads and make maybe those like shared changes to those like profile assets that will then spread back out to.
the workers and the different projects. So that's what I've been using it for is like, hey, project one made this change to the runbook. Does that work for you? Or do you f see
TJ Miller (31:31)
Yeah.
Chris Gmyr (31:31)
any gaps for that? And fill those gaps and like they'll communicate and I just basically said like fix it. So it works for both both projects or multiple projects. So could be something that you wanna check out or implement.
TJ Miller (31:45)
That's sick, man. I definitely do that. And yeah, the audit, the auditability, I can see that being very helpful to have. yeah, sick, dude. I'm all about it. And like I'm I'm a sucker for T-Mux things. So that was just like perfect.
Chris Gmyr (32:00)
Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Great. So yeah. moving on. I had one, but I know we're running out of time and I want you to get to one of your topics. So I'm gonna bump mine back to next week.
TJ Miller (32:11)
Yeah,
that sounds good, man. so in in the spirit of building, I can't help myself but start to juggle more balls in the air. So coming out of Laracon, I was just like feeling super hot and inspired. We were sitting at the Vibes conference from the native PHP guys. And I wanted to take notes and like I talked about this like notes app that I started building, right?
Chris Gmyr (32:37)
Mm-hmm.
Yep.
TJ Miller (32:38)
so I've since announced it on on socials and everything. I just put out a tweet to a blog post about it this morning as well. and so I've I I came out hot building on that, and that's been such a fun project to work on. Like it's the the markdown notes editor I've always wanted, right? Like it was
Obsidian felt like too much. Bear felt like not enough. Like Notion is its own thing. and so I wanted something super simple. So I like I started building Halcyon notes. And man, that's been it's it's been a lot of work. There is so much polish that I'm like trying to put into it because I'm just
Chris Gmyr (33:21)
Yeah.
TJ Miller (33:23)
super obsessed about it. Like, where's
Like where your when you create a new note, where does your cursor land? Like little the millions of little decisions like that to like really polish the experience. But it's my first native app of anything. so I I've been having a riot building that and then getting to to build it with hive has been great because gist will like
have this list of features I want to implement or over, you know, just using it, I've jotted down a million little paper cuts and then I can just like go to the hive lead and send it off working on it all. so the notes ads notes app is coming along really well. some pieces of that like I've I've never really been able to like successfully market a product like
Prism came together as it did, but that wasn't as intentional as I'm trying to be now, like properly launching a product. I've I think I've more or less settled on the pricing. It's going to be a free app to use with local notes. it's going to be pay for sync, which is like end-to-end encrypted syncing.
And I'm going to be I'm working on building a publish feature, very much like Obsidian's publish feature. and this is both like a, you know, have vaults kind of like Obsidian, but also just if you want to like read like I'm reading so much Markdown that I wanted a beautiful place to read the markdown. So
You can just open this, like open up a single note and have like a really nice rating experience with Vim keybindings to navigate and scroll and jump around. I just added front matter support as well. so I'm trying to, you know.
pull the the things I found useful about Obsidian into it and like kind of have the like polish and experience of bear. I'm also building an iOS app for it, which is a nightmare. I I love it.
Chris Gmyr (35:28)
There's a lot involved.
TJ Miller (35:29)
It works great, but because I'm using encryption, in order to get it in the app store,
I have to like file some document with the the BIS and NSA because I'm using end-to-end encryption. Like, I don't know. The iOS app's getting kind of crazy.
Chris Gmyr (35:47)
That's a lot.
TJ Miller (35:49)
it works great. It it's beautiful, but like what I'm discovering is does I don't think it matters how complicated your app is. It's only half the battle.
Like getting
Chris Gmyr (36:01)
Mm-hmm.
TJ Miller (36:01)
the app built is like half the battle. The rest is figuring out how to navigate all of this gnarly certificate signing shenanigans and then compliance stuff and just like this mess to get it out into the app store. that's a whole nother thing. I'm still doing it though. We're we're gonna have an iOS app for this. We're we're gonna
Chris Gmyr (36:21)
We're pushing we're pushing forward.
TJ Miller (36:23)
do it. but
I'll probably have the like the desktop app is very close. hopefully have that. I I need to get it in front of more people testing first. but hopefully in the next like I'm I'm trying to set launch for like three weeks out. At least that's the that's the content schedule I've put together with Claude leading up to a launch. So
kind of eyeing out three weeks for the desktop app. The iOS app may take a little longer because yeah, I guess that's that's the process. So yeah, yeah, tons of I'm I'm adding a lot of new features, but I also am being careful. I don't want to bloat this. Like that was kind of the problem with Obsidian, like too many options, too, too much flexibility, not enough opinions. so I'm trying to like offer.
Enough flexibility, but also enough opinions baked into it. So yeah, super hype on that. That's been an absolute treat to build so far.
Chris Gmyr (37:25)
Yeah. Love seeing the progress so far and I you've just been rocking all the the changes and updates and the marketing site and the docs have been looking fantastic and yeah, I think everything's like really coming together.
TJ Miller (37:34)
Yeah. I'm I'm making I'm
making a real effort with this and the next project I'll talk about briefly. I'm really trying to make an effort to like put pay for products out into the world, like r and really treat them as products. it's new for me. and and these are all the gaps I had. Like I don't know how to put together a content schedule or like
When I should publish blog posts, when I need to tweet about it, when I should be emailing the list, what I should be talking about. you know, so that's been a huge unlock to have that stuff available, you know, now. so yeah, like so halcyon's good. So
Part
of that was I'm starting to try and use dictation more. I I know a lot of people have really found that as like a big unlock, like, but I I I've not really jumped on that train, but I I'm trying to to do it more because I think it makes sense. Aaron Francis talked about something as part of his.
he talks about it on mostly technical, about being the VP and like some of the the stuff he's been doing. he in in Notion kind of setting guidelines for the team. He he talked a little bit about his like AI writing guidelines and like kind of how he approaches it. And he talked about like how he'll just like dictate a bunch of a bunch of stuff.
And then have it kind of like clean up, turn it into consistent ideas. Like if you're circling back to earlier concepts, it can like take care of all of that, and give you like structure, but it really starts with like the transcription first. Like, let's let's talk through all of this. there's a ton of options out there for this, like there
Are a bunch of open source ones. There's a bunch of payfor ones like Whisperflow, Super Whisper, Mac Whisper, Soto. There's there's a bunch of them.
And of course, me sitting at them, like none of them felt quite right. And like I wanted something, I wanted something private. I don't it just I got a bug up my butt about making it like private first, all local. and so I started building scenarios. I just tweeted a link out to the landing page yesterday. I've got docs built for it. I'm still kind of refining things.
but this will be another app that I'm selling. So it does does voice to to text transcription. You can choose between Parakeet, which is like the Nvidia model, which that's the one I prefer. But you also have options between I think like four or five Whisper models, which are built into Apple intelligence on Mac OS. So you have
you know, options for local only models to run this stuff. And then if you opt into the cleanup feature, which is absolutely important in my mind, you know, let me ramble and then like give it grammar and everything. so what what I did is I added a like local transformation layer using Apple Intelligence like onboard models with macOS 26.
So if you got Tahoe, you can do cleanup all local. And then I've got different transforms you can have. So if you want like formality and email and then casual and you know for messages, you can set these
Chris Gmyr (40:51)
Mm-hmm.
TJ Miller (40:51)
different transforms up. You can customize the prompts for them. And I just added app detection too. So you can tie a transform to you know, Slack or iMessage or you know, mail.
so tons of options there. I'm just kind of getting the ball rolling with that. that's actually fairly feature complete. I'm just polishing now. So I'll probably have that launched and for sale probably in the next like two weeks. really excited about that one too.
Chris Gmyr (41:21)
Yeah, that is also looking awesome. I just want all the things right now.
TJ Miller (41:25)
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. So cool. On on that note, man, you want to wrap up?
Chris Gmyr (41:31)
Yeah, let's wrap it up.
TJ Miller (41:32)
All right. Thank you all so much for listening to the Slightly Caffeinated podcast. Show notes, including all the links and sh social channels, are down below and are also available at Slightly Caffeinated.fm. If you have any questions for us or have a suggestion, go to the ask a question page on our site and we'll feature it on an upcoming episode. Thank you all so much for listening. We will catch you next week.