"You need to talk to someone." Running out of money, failing at Upwork and learning the power of warm outreach. It’s been a month. Find out the mistakes I’ve made and what I’ve learned from them this month in Dev Builds #7. Coming to your inbox tomorrow 📥

I want to make websites like artists make paintings. 🖼️ Jenny Saville, Albertina museum in Vienna.

it’s all good and well to value distribution over product But you can’t distribute nothing

Gemini 2.5 Pro is excellent for coding.

I’m going to hedge my bets and look for full time positions in parallel with selling business websites. Today I’m polishing the CV ✨

Do something difficult enough times and you start to look forward to it This happened for me with running 🏃 Now it’s happening with gym 🏋️

Dev builds #6 is out now 🗞️ I took a moment to reflect on what I learned from preparing my talk for #EpicWebConf Hopefully, it can help with your AI chats, too ✨ devneill.substack.com/p/3-simple-...

I love the @raycastapp calculator. It always surprises me how many use cases it covers 🔥

I built an app in 20 minutes on stage at #EpicWebConf two weeks ago. To do this, I built the same app 66 times. Tomorrow, I'll share how you can get more predictable, quality results from Cursor too. Tobi says it's time to take prompting seriously 😉 devneill.substack.com/

Would you be interested if I interviewed up and coming Indie Hackers? Not the success stories like @starter_story. They're too far ahead. I'd chat with the ones that are starting to connect the dots, but are just a few steps ahead of us at the beginning.

I’ve been nocturnal since getting back to Europe 🦉 Back at the gym to try reset the body clock 🏋️ (I can only lift a quarter of that)

I'm on my way home! I've met incredible people. I've learnt some powerful ideas. I've had a lot of nerves and a lot of laughs. Put yourself out there, do something scary - it will be worth it. Thank you for all the support and an amazing event @kentcdodds.com and #EpicWebConf

Such an amazing experience ✨

Thank you Annie! 🙏🏼

Thanks Tyler! 🙌🏼 🙇‍♂️

Amazing talk on the history of JavaScript by @anniesexton.com 🔥 #EpicWebConf

✅ Final run through done. ✅ Stage outfit ready. ✅ Told myself I’ve got this. Today is the day!! #EpicWebConf

And we’re off!! Let’s build an AI app with @neondatabase ⚡️ #EpicWebConf

✅ Salt Lake City centre explored! Now locking in to some serious talk rehearsal 🗣️ #EpicWebConf

Made it to SLC! It’s way past my bedtime time and things are getting a little weird 🎸🫠 Goodnight 😴

Touched down in Denver! I left 11 hours ago but the time is only four hours later 🥲

And so it begins 🚶 Munich ✈️ Salt Lake City #EpicWebConf

Flying to America tomorrow

Diving into this whole video thing! 🎥 🎞️ #EpicWebConf

So talking is hard 🤣 #EpicWebConf

Too much screen time without movement is a really bad thing. You can’t work hard unless you work out.

#EpicWebConf prep is going well 😄 🛠️

OK @windsurfai.bsky.social is really growing on me. The memory system is amazing. It keeps the most relevant parts of your chat history, but manages it's context proactively to avoid the window getting overloaded. No need to start a new chat and rescan the code every 20 minutes 👌

So @windsurfai.bsky.social is actually really nice. I had to stop using Cursor because of the Anthropic rate limiting today, and Windsurf has been smooth 🧈

We are now software architects.

Cursor can now manage my DNS records for me via a Cloudflare MCP server 🤩 This means I can build an app, deploy to fly and connect to a custom domain without leaving my editor 🔥

Your .cursor/rules/PRD.mdc is your mission control. It keeps you and your LLM on track. It is a record of: - Your app foundation (tech stack) - Where you want to be (core feature set) - Where you are now (up to date roadmap) - How you will get there (implementation plan)

Dev builds #5: You don't know where your opportunities will come from. Where can you put yourself out there this month that could lead to something great?

So Trae.ai is quite nice

Who decided that ENTER should rename a file instead of open it?

When you pause a @raycast.com focus session it show's a coffee cup. Because of course I'm getting a coffee ☕ I love this kind of attention to detail 🤌

I've gone through my YOLO phase now. The speed was exhilarating but working step by step and reviewing your LLMs code as you go is the more sustainable approach – at least for now. 🚶‍➡️

LLMs do not clean up after themselves 🚯

I've been stuck on a problem for a few days and was going around in circles with Claude 3.5. Claude 3.7 solved on the second iteration. Things are moving so fast 👏⚡

Just bought the domain for the app I'll be building during my talk at #EpicWebConf 🎉 It's going to solve a very important problem for everyone there ✅

Perplexity is great start for research, but it's not perfect. It makes bold claims and provides sources to back up those claims ...but when you look at the sources, there is no actual evidence for the claim @perplexity_ai states. Remember to do your own research 💡 Example👇

New day, new LLM model. Let's go. 🔥

This is just so cool from @joshwcomeau.com 🤩

The historical performance chart is coming together for Know 📈 Built way faster than I could have imagined thanks to @shadcn.com and @zed.dev's AI powers 🔮✨

This is an incredible run through of Cursor at its best. Highly recommend - thanks @rileybrown.bsky.social 🚀 www.youtube.com/watch?v=fae...

As part of my #EpicWebConf prep, I'm exploring all the AI-powered IDEs out there to find the best. I've been using @zed.dev as my daily driver. I love it and its hard to leave... but from tomorrow I'm going all in on Cursor. Then @windsurfai.bsky.social Any others worth trying?

Locking into Epic Web Conference preparation for the the next 34 days 🔒 Lots of AI research and experimentation ahead 🤖📝 ...as well as speaking practice 🗣️ If you are interested in harnessing AI in your web development, it will be live streamed 🚀 #EpicWebConf www.epicweb.dev/conf/2025

This is a goldmine of tips to use Cursor/AI powered IDEs more effectively. "The better you can sync your brain with your assistant, the more powerful it will be." www.youtube.com/watch?v=gYL...

Vim mode in @craft.do would make it the absolute GOAT 🐐

Simple as that. Thanks @marclou.bsky.social 🔥 youtu.be/QD50Pkf0Ov0...