// life timeline
2001Professional graphic designer
2007First Linux distros
2010Moves to western NC
2026Omarchy full time, omadesign
// 00
The rundown
Michael Hurley has been a professional graphic designer for 25 years and, in his words, always a little bit of a software engineer. He has a computer science degree and a commercial graphics degree, and has lived in western North Carolina since 2010.
He tried Linux distros from around 2007 but never stayed. "Linux felt like a toy until Omarchy 3, really. And then it was, okay, I can use this for work." He switched full time a few months ago and now spends about 12 hours a day on Omarchy, with Blip letting his Mac stay closed in the corner.
What he is building is the reason designers can come too: omadesign, a native Rust creative studio for Linux. Design, Layout, Pixel, Photo and Motion personas live in one document, covering what Illustrator, Photoshop and Lightroom do plus SVG motion export, with Camera RAW, the Omarchy theme, an installer for x86_64 and Asahi ARM, and an MIT license. A built-in agent sidebar can build Figma-style layouts element by element. Next on his list: a video app and a DAW.
He went public by default this year, with almost 200 repos since January.
“Linux felt like a toy until Omarchy 3, really. And then it was, okay, I can use this for work.”Michael Hurley · L27
// 01
Twenty-five years of design
A designer first, who loves design more than programming but is good at both. AI is a tool he decided early to use to his advantage. ↳ jump to L37 ↳ jump to L154
“I just went in always with the attitude that this is a tool that I'm going to use to my advantage.”Michael Hurley · L37
// 02
Linux was a toy until Omarchy 3
Distro-hopping since 2007, Arch avoided for its reputation, and then Omarchy made Linux work-ready. ↳ jump to L25
// 03
omadesign
"A creative suite replacement for Omarchy, because there's not a lot of good tools for Linux." One native Rust app for vector, layout, pixel, photo and motion work. ↳ jump to L10
// 04
Public by default
After years away from open source, he now ships in the open and asks for pull requests. ↳ jump to L169
“there's probably, like, almost 200 repos on there now since January.”Michael Hurley · L169
// 05
The PR stack
He writes a markdown list of features and bugs, the agent files issues, and then it ships a PR stack that solves each one in sequence: one merge, no conflicts. He also runs a T3 Code fork that picks the model by remaining usage. ↳ jump to L198 ↳ jump to L359
“turn it into issues, and then go do a PR stack, solving each issue in sequence.”Michael Hurley · L198
// their setup
Setup
hardware
Omarchy workstation, Mac closed in the cornerdaily · workstation
tools & models
omadesignt3codebliphyprlandgithubvercelcloudflare-pagesclaudecodexgrokrusttypescripthtml-cssagent workflow
Markdown list→issues→a stacked PR series→one merge
// learn from Michael
Learn from Michael
From a markdown list to a stacked PR series intermediateMichael's agent turns a feature list into issues, then ships them as one ordered PR stack.
Native Rust creative apps on Omarchy advancedHow omadesign covers what Illustrator, Photoshop and Lightroom do, in one native Rust app.
// full transcript (cleaned)
Show the cleaned transcript (333 lines) · open full page
L1Fred Nix: Hey, what's up, man?
L2Michael Hurley: Hey, what's up?
L3Fred Nix: Hey, let me change my camera. There we go. What's up, brother?
L4Michael Hurley: No, not much. What's going on with you?
L5Fred Nix: Uh, just, uh, making the rounds, trying to meet some folks. You're the—
L6Michael Hurley: Yeah?
L7Fred Nix: —I got over 35 people signed up. You're the first one to sign up. Let's go.
L8Michael Hurley: All right.
L9Fred Nix: How you doing? What you up to, man? What are you building?
L10Michael Hurley: So, I've been building OmaDesign. It's a creative suite replacement.
L11Fred Nix: Okay.
L12Michael Hurley: For Omarchy. Um, it's been fun, you know, cranking out the code.
L13Fred Nix: I dig your look, man. I really dig your look. The wolf man.
L14Michael Hurley: Yep. Yep. But yeah, uh, pretty much just that.
L15Michael Hurley: Creative tools for Omarchy, because there's not a lot of good, uh, tools for Linux, you know?
L16Fred Nix: Right, agreed.
L17Michael Hurley: Yeah. I've been a graphic designer for 25 years, professionally.
L18Fred Nix: Oh, wow. Wow.
L19Michael Hurley: And, uh, always a little bit of a software engineer, and always kind of interested in going full-time on Linux.
L20Fred Nix: Yeah.
L21Michael Hurley: You know, three months ago, four months ago was the time to do the switch.
L22Fred Nix: Yeah, I've been—
L23Michael Hurley: Yeah?
L24Fred Nix: —I've been full-time on Linux on the server side for decades, but every time I try to use it on the desktop, it just, you know, like Mint, Mint Linux, or something else, it's just like, eh. And it really never drew me in. I always ended back up on a Mac, and then Omarchy came out, and man, that was it for me.
L25Michael Hurley: Yeah, yeah. Linux felt like a toy until—
L26Fred Nix: Yeah.
L27Michael Hurley: —Omarchy 3, really. And then it was, okay, I can use this for work.
L28Fred Nix: Right, right. What was your first, uh, distro you tried?
L29Michael Hurley: Uh, probably about until, like, 2007, '08.
L30Fred Nix: Okay, so you're in. You're in there.
L31Michael Hurley: Yeah. And I went through them all. Uh, I never tried Arch just because Arch had that reputation where it's like, I don't want to build it myself from scratch, you know?
L32Fred Nix: Yep.
L33Michael Hurley: So, yeah. I mean, that's really how I got into it.
L34Fred Nix: How is, uh, AI affecting your, uh, design career?
L35Michael Hurley: Um, I still do all that work myself for the most part.
L36Fred Nix: Well, yeah. I mean, what, you know, like the fear of being replaced by it and all that stuff.
L37Michael Hurley: Yeah, no, that hasn't really— that hasn't really affected my work in that regard. I just went in always with the attitude that this is a tool that I'm going to use to my advantage.
L38Fred Nix: Sure.
L39Michael Hurley: And, you know, you look at the numbers, and most people aren't using AI, but that's the big fear. Oh, your clients are going to switch, but they're not, you know? Even the really sad ones are like, yeah, it's just a toy right now.
L40Fred Nix: Right.
L41Michael Hurley: It doesn't do serious work.
L42Fred Nix: Right.
L43Michael Hurley: So.
L44Fred Nix: Well, uh, where are you? What time is it?
L45Michael Hurley: Uh, it's 12:30 here.
L46Fred Nix: Okay, me too.
L47Michael Hurley: I'm in Canton, North Carolina. Yeah.
L48Fred Nix: And where?
L49Michael Hurley: Canton, North Carolina.
L50Fred Nix: All right, that's cool. I'm in, uh, downtown Atlanta, pretty much.
L51Michael Hurley: Oh, we're two hours apart.
L52Fred Nix: Yeah, not too far. Not too far.
L53Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, I'm right outside Magney Valley, like close to Asheville, between my place.
L54Fred Nix: Okay, Asheville's a cool town.
L55Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, yeah.
L56Fred Nix: How long have you been there?
L57Michael Hurley: Uh, since 2010.
L58Fred Nix: All right. Where'd you come from?
L59Michael Hurley: Charleston. I went to college at Charleston. I got a computer science degree there and a commercial graphics degree at Trident Tech.
L60Fred Nix: Well, um, what's your— like, what do you do when you're not working? Like, do you play with Omarchy or what? That's about all I do is write code now.
L61Michael Hurley: Yeah. I mean, I'm probably 12 hours a day on Omarchy and writing code and building stuff.
L62Fred Nix: My man.
L63[redacted: family details, lines 63 to 68]
L69Michael Hurley: 40, yep. On the nose.
L70Fred Nix: Yeah. I'm— I got 16 years on you, my friend. I'm almost 57.
L71Fred Nix: Damn, 20 years. Damn, I'm old.
L72Fred Nix: I feel it, man.
L73Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah.
L74Fred Nix: I feel it.
L75Michael Hurley: All right, so what brought you into the Omarchy thing?
L76Fred Nix: So I've always— I've always— I've been a Mac guy for— I've never used Windows since basically 1999. I knew it was a toy from the beginning. And right when VMware came out and got serious, uh, with, um, ESX or ESI, whatever, um, ESI, and, uh.
L77Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L78Fred Nix: I really went hard on that in my career, virtualization, and I've always been in the technology sector and ran a bunch of groups for Dell, about 5,000 people, and did some startups. And, like, you know, I've always bounced around with Linux, but, like, uh, I've always had a Linux machine, and I typically would run Ubuntu on it, like a laptop that was just a Linux laptop. And effectively, what it would become is I'd run, uh, a Vert Manager on it and end up just SSHing to it
L79Fred Nix: because the GUI in it just wasn't really worth messing with. Um.
L80Michael Hurley: Yeah, right.
L81Fred Nix: So, you know, I'd always try to use it, and it just was like, damn, I need something on my Macintosh, or I can't really use that. So my— I'd always have a Linux laptop, but it'd always end up being closed, and it turned out to be a good VM manager because it had, you know, it'd always have 32 gig of RAM, and it kind of had a UPS built in with the battery, so it kind of ended up just being a Proxmox server for me all the
L82Fred Nix: time. And, uh, and then I had a, uh, a little HP gaming laptop with a little, uh, I think it's an RTX 4050 with 8 gigabyte RAM, and it was running Mint Linux, and Omarchy came out about three days after it came out, and I was like, you know what? There ain't nothing on that Mint Linux box that I care about.
L83Fred Nix: Like, I could lose it today and, you know, don't care. So I was like, what do I need to do to make it— to get off of it before I blow it away?
L84Fred Nix: And I was like, nothing. So I threw Omarchy on a USB stick, installed it, and, like, I didn't get off of it for a few days.
L85Fred Nix: Um, then about 10 days in, I was like, damn, I don't even know what a reboot looks like. Like, I haven't even rebooted this thing yet.
L86Fred Nix: And I made some, uh, little, little plugins, some little just nitpicky s***, changing the screen, and it takes you a minute to understand. Like, you know, I think my very first plugin was changing the, uh, the time and date at the top of the screen.
L87Fred Nix: I wanted it to tell me what percentage of the year has been completed. And.
L88Michael Hurley: Right.
L89Fred Nix: It is— the answer is 77.94% of the year is gone. And then I started putting a bunch of, uh, I've got a whole bunch of different subscriptions to Claude and Codex and Kimi and Grok and all those, and I started going around and back and forth with those, and I thought, I need to make a display screen so I can kind of see what's going on with my agent. And kind of built that, built that.
L90Fred Nix: Um, a couple days later, DHH picked it up and retweeted it, and it became what's called, um, Infomarchy, which is on the plugin site. And effectively, it just does like, uh, I don't know if you can see my screen very well, but, like, that's it.
L91Fred Nix: It's pretty blurry, but, like, it's got— I don't know if you've used it, but it's got all your agents, all your, uh, subscription details, the percentage that you've burned, and most importantly, it's got how much banked time you've got. So, like, if you don't use it for a couple hours, like, it'll tell you you're, like, you know, 5% ahead.
L92Fred Nix: And that became really useful. And then I started saying, well, I want the system to tell me which subscription to use, and use them kind of, uh, smartly so that at the end of the— when at the end of the week, when the subscription resets, I want all my— all my agents to be at 1% or less so that I use every bit of it maximally.
L93Fred Nix: So if I end up using Claude too much, it'll switch over to Codex and back and forth. And, uh.
L94Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L95[redacted: private group, funding figures and politics, lines 95 to 137]
L138Michael Hurley: But yeah, I don't know. I always— I got— I guess I got burned by open source when I was, like, 19, coming fresh out of college from computer science, you know, where I felt like I contributed a lot and didn't get anything back.
L139Fred Nix: Yeah.
L140Michael Hurley: Including any, like, hey, thanks at all.
L141Fred Nix: Right. Nothing. Like, nothing.
L142Michael Hurley: Yeah. Bro, yeah, yeah. Because it was, like, 2003, '04, '05, and it was HTML5 was about to come out, and I was on the what?
L143Michael Hurley: WG, and I was contributing code, like, all day, every day for, like, HTML5 and CSS3 to.
L144Fred Nix: Nice.
L145Michael Hurley: Have specs for the browsers. And, uh, I remember it felt at the end, when the release came out, it felt like Apple and Facebook were just kind of like, hey, that's mine.
L146Fred Nix: Yeah.
L147Michael Hurley: You know? And then a couple years later, Chrome came out, and I was like, well, s***, I did all that work, and I'm not even named on the thing, you know?
L148Fred Nix: Yeah.
L149Michael Hurley: I have no credits.
L150Fred Nix: Yeah. No, that sucks. Well, at least you can— you know, you can tell folks that, like, I— I would imagine that HTML5 and CSS, like, that's some of your code I'm using when I touch my browser every time.
L151Michael Hurley: For sure, yeah. Um.
L152Fred Nix: That's great.
L153Michael Hurley: And then, like, so I just kind of stood back from open source from then. I was like, well, I can build stuff for me. I'm a designer.
L154Michael Hurley: Like, I love to design much more than I love programming, but I'm good at the programming thing.
L155[redacted: spending figures, lines 155 to 158]
L159Michael Hurley: Give myself a budget, and now we'll just make what I want to make.
L160Fred Nix: That's fantastic, man.
L161Michael Hurley: The tools.
L162Fred Nix: What's your, uh.
L163Michael Hurley: Uh, I'm sorry.
L164Fred Nix: What's your username on GitHub?
L165Michael Hurley: GitHub, it's MichaelMonetized.
L166Fred Nix: Okay, same ass.
L167Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L168Fred Nix: Let's see if I can find you. Um.
L169Michael Hurley: So there's— there's probably, like, almost 200 repos on there now since January.
L170Fred Nix: Yeah, yeah. It's definitely increased since AI came out for me too.
L171Michael Hurley: Yeah. I went from, like, 8 projects to.
L172Fred Nix: Right.
L173Michael Hurley: 200.
L174Fred Nix: I'm trying to find you on, uh, I'm not typing it right. I can never spell Monetized, right?
L175Michael Hurley: It's, uh, almost spell Money, except for the Y and then T-I-Z-E-D.
L176Fred Nix: All right. Where's my screen here? Uh, Money.
L177Fred Nix: There you are.
L178Fred Nix: There you are. Let's see.
L179Fred Nix: Do a little bit of follow action. That's funny you call yourself, uh, Michael Monetized whenever you, uh.
L180Fred Nix: Look at there. Oh, you got the glasses.
L181Fred Nix: That's cool. Let's check out your repositories.
L182Fred Nix: You must have a whole bunch of private ones.
L183Michael Hurley: There's, uh, yeah, there's a few private. Mostly public, though, lately. I mean, since— really since I want to say July.
L184Fred Nix: Yep.
L185Michael Hurley: I've just gone public with everything new.
L186Fred Nix: You want to build in public, right?
L187Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah.
L188Fred Nix: What's your.
L189Michael Hurley: I don't know if it's like a SaaS project or something like that.
L190Fred Nix: What's your, uh, pri— what's your most favorite project that you've got out there?
L191Michael Hurley: Uh, probably Element Design right now.
L192Fred Nix: Right. Oh, you got some.
L193Michael Hurley: PRs.
L194Fred Nix: You got some PRs. Oh, you did them yourself. Now, so what's your workflow?
L195Fred Nix: Do you— you just don't push to main? You PR everything for documentation purposes, or how do you flow?
L196Michael Hurley: Yeah, so I'll give, uh, I'll give my agent a markdown list of features or bugs I've run into.
L197Fred Nix: Yep.
L198Michael Hurley: Or that I've heard from user reports, and just say, turn this into issues. You know, combine the ones that are part of each other, depend on each other, turn it into issues, and then go do a PR stack, solving each issue in sequence.
L199Fred Nix: Right.
L200Michael Hurley: You know? And then it'll just stack them all, and that way it only has to merge once, and there's no conflicts, and it's all there, and I can go back and read it if I want to. Most of the time, not since August, I haven't had to read it, you know?
L201Michael Hurley: Since.
L202Fred Nix: Right.
L203Michael Hurley: Opus 5.5 and Astra and Sol, I haven't had to read it.
L204Fred Nix: Yeah, it's— it's a little distressing. Like, um, I'm Gen X guy, so we always want to know how stuff works, and I'm slowly just having to let that go because it produces stuff so fast. Even if you want to, like, you're hardcore and, like, I'm going to inspect everything, you just can't.
L205Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, I kind of slow walk myself out of it because I do a lot of client websites and, and web apps and stuff like that. And in the beginning, like, between January and July, it was like, okay, I'm a systems guy.
L206Michael Hurley: Here's a repo where I architected, you know, the Next.js or the TanStack start, how I want components nested, all of that.
L207Fred Nix: Right.
L208Michael Hurley: Right? Go use this as a— not a template, but as a guideline, like, how I like things structured so I can review them easy.
L209Fred Nix: Right.
L210Michael Hurley: And then in July, it just gets to the point where I could be like, I need a website. It's done in an hour.
L211Fred Nix: Yeah.
L212Michael Hurley: You know, I can go tell it what I don't like and what I do like, and then it fixes it. And I don't have to.
L213Fred Nix: Right. I've got a— I've been working on the same AI since, uh, January 8th at 2:00 a.m., and, you know, did all the memory tricks and the recall tricks, and, uh, you'll hear me refer to him as Larry. And I've got him now where he's got a whole, basically, a site factory, and I can just give it, like, a ramble to him by voice for, like, 5 minutes, and he just creates everything.
L214Michael Hurley: Nice. Very nice.
L215Fred Nix: So when you make websites, do you host them in GitHub and then publish them on Cloudflare pages, or how do you do it?
L216Michael Hurley: So it's a combination of Vercel, Railway, and Cloudflare.
L217Fred Nix: Yep.
L218Michael Hurley: It just depends on how big it is, how much it's going to cost me to put it where, you know, wherever.
L219Fred Nix: Right.
L220Michael Hurley: Most things are free on Vercel that I've launched, so I haven't had to worry about it.
L221Fred Nix: Sure.
L222Michael Hurley: I'm right on the edge, though. They're warning me every month, and I'm playing the game where I'm deleting deployments and preview builds.
L223Fred Nix: Right. Throw it up in— throw everything into Cloudflare pages. It's free up to 10,000 users per month, which I don't even come close to.
L224Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L225Fred Nix: What's your, uh, what's your X? Is it Michael Monetized?
L226Michael Hurley: It's, uh, Michael Hurley, but the U in Hurley is an underscore. I think I followed you last night. No, I've been following you for a couple weeks.
L227Fred Nix: Let me see. I'm still— Hurley, H-U-R-L— I'm going to try— I don't follow you. There, uh, nope.
L228Michael Hurley: So Michael Hurley, but replace the U with an underscore.
L229[redacted: old account history and family, lines 229 to 253]
L254Fred Nix: Cool. What's you working on? You still banging on Element Design?
L255Michael Hurley: I am, yeah. I'm actually— I'm trying to build, uh, like, a foundation over it called Hammy Uno. And I've got three apps to release.
L256Michael Hurley: There's, like, a Final Cut slash After Effects app.
L257Fred Nix: Right.
L258Michael Hurley: That's going to be part of a suite with Element Design, and then, like, a DAW app.
L259Fred Nix: Gotcha.
L260Michael Hurley: That's, you know, Ableton mixed with Serato DJ. So kind of encompass all of the ways to create digitally in a conglomerate with a big suite.
L261Fred Nix: So I'm not much of a, uh, a visual designer. Are you, like, kind of modifying it out of, like, Photoshop, or is it, like, uh, do you do After Effects kind of stuff, or, like?
L262Michael Hurley: Yeah, so the Element Design suite is a single app that does everything Illustrator does, everything Photoshop does. Lightroom's incorporated. Um, and then there's this app online called SV Gator that was for doing motion graphics with SVGs.
L263Fred Nix: Mm-hmm.
L264Michael Hurley: And I've incorporated a version of that in this. Um, so it's— it's illustration, Photoshop type work, camera work, motion graphics. Um, and then there's an AI mode now where you can just tell your agent, hey, I want a framer layout or a Figma layout for XYZ, and it'll just build it.
L265Fred Nix: Is the AI integrations built into the, uh, Element Design?
L266Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, so.
L267Fred Nix: That's sweet.
L268Michael Hurley: I told it to— I told it to look at T3 code and build me an ACP that's just in a sidebar that runs off of the same type of, uh, method that T3 code works.
L269Fred Nix: Okay, cool.
L270Michael Hurley: So the thread name and all that is just built in. It's built in Rust, not, uh, TypeScript, but, um, it's just built in there. It looks just like T3 code, but as a sidebar.
L271Michael Hurley: And then.
L272Fred Nix: That's cool.
L273Michael Hurley: You can go into layout mode and be like, I want a website for, uh, Tinder for Horses, and it will just run through step by step and place all the elements where it needs to.
L274Fred Nix: That's cool. What I do is, when I think of a project or some code I want to work on, I go into Projects and create that subfolder for that project. And then I go find, like, everything I can on GitHub that looks pretty good that's, like, might have different pieces and parts of it.
L275Fred Nix: And sometimes there's, like, three to five different repos, and I'll clone those inside that project folder. And then I'll start.
L276Michael Hurley: Yep.
L277Fred Nix: Start my agent inside of the root directory and then tell it what I want to do, and then have it go look at all the other repos and basically take cherry-pick pieces and parts of those repos into my main and make my own.
L278Michael Hurley: Yeah, nice. Nice. I did something like that in, uh, March.
L279Michael Hurley: I, um, Next Faster had just broken a bunch of benchmarks for, like, uh, you know, getting close to how fast you can get through prefetches and stuff like that on.
L280Fred Nix: Yeah.
L281Michael Hurley: Like an e-somersite. So I had, at OpenClaw at the time, I was like, okay, go fork Next Faster, uh, get rid of Supabase, replace it with Convex. Like, that kind of thing.
L282Fred Nix: Yeah, yeah.
L283Michael Hurley: You know? Um, and then go replace all my websites with the Next Faster version.
L284Fred Nix: Right.
L285Michael Hurley: So they're all lightning fast. Um, and that was a fun project. But yeah, similar.
L286Michael Hurley: It was like, oh, take these three ideas and mix them.
L287Fred Nix: Yeah.
L288Michael Hurley: And go. Yeah.
L289Fred Nix: Yeah, I love— I love find, like, I'll, whenever— and if it's okay with you, can I PR your Element Design and just see if I can— I'll throw my factory at it. And I'm not going to add features or any of that. I'll just see if I can find bugs for you.
L290Michael Hurley: Yeah, do it. I would love that.
L291Fred Nix: All right, sweet.
L292Michael Hurley: Yeah, I'm welcoming contributions I can get. I've got.
L293Fred Nix: Yeah. Like, uh.
L294Fred Nix: Yeah, like my, um, uh, Elma, uh, InfoMarchy and Blip, they all have, like, a couple hundred PRs from other people. And, man, it just makes— like, I— some people are really anti about that, which is odd to me. Um, but, like, I'm pro.
L295Fred Nix: Like, please PR the s*** out of me and make my stuff better. And I'll— I've got it set where Larry processes PRs automatically when they come in.
L296Michael Hurley: And effectively, like, if it's, like, dumb s***, like, you f***** up this little thing, like, fix it and don't ask me. But if it's, like, a design thing, come get me and let's talk about it.
L297Michael Hurley: So sometimes I'll wake up in the morning and go to my Marchy box or Marchy box, and, like, I'll use Blip and look at it. I'm like, holy s***, here's a whole new feature up here.
L298Michael Hurley: And it's, like, brand new things. It just works.
L299Michael Hurley: I love it. Oh, Blip was, uh, another one of those moments for me.
L300Fred Nix: Nice.
L301Michael Hurley: Installing Blip on this Mac, I was like, ah, perfect. Now I can really let go of— my Mac can literally just stay closed in the corner.
L302Fred Nix: My man, that's exactly what I wanted it for. I'm so— that tickles me to hear that, man. Thank you so much.
L303Michael Hurley: Yeah, yeah. That was one of those moments. When Quatro came out, I was like, ah, now I can really dive in.
L304Fred Nix: Yeah.
L305Michael Hurley: Blip came out and I was like, this is great.
L306Fred Nix: Yeah, I've talked to DHH and, like, we're actively— when we're making plugins and talking about it in the, uh, in the base camp, like, we're— we're attacking each one of the pieces of the wall of, like, the garden wall of Apple, like, to try to just, like, everywhere we can, just knock the f*** down and get it out.
L307Michael Hurley: Yeah. Yeah, I've been using the iPhone one too.
L308Fred Nix: Yeah?
L309Michael Hurley: Uh, I'm tempted to work on a native iCloud, you know, files.
L310Fred Nix: Yeah. Um, I'll tell you that the danger is you got to, like, make sure you look at where people have had success because, um, if you get too close to the walled garden, uh, Apple will cancel your iCloud account. Like, just gone.
L311Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L312Fred Nix: Yeah.
L313Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L314Fred Nix: So just be careful. All right, let's see here for a second. All right, we're off.
L315Fred Nix: That's all I got to do and you'll start getting PRs.
L316Fred Nix: Yeah, it's fun. It's, um, when I started making Larry way back when, I figured out everybody's trying to do the memory thing.
L317Fred Nix: And what I learned was, is that all the— all the agents are great at writing things down and remembering it. The difficulty is recall.
L318Michael Hurley: I love that.
L319Fred Nix: Recalling the right context.
L320Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L321Fred Nix: The right information at the right time under the right context for the right project. That's where it's hard.
L322Fred Nix: Yeah.
L323Fred Nix: Right.
L324Michael Hurley: Right. Yeah. Yeah, I found that with OpenClaw.
L325Fred Nix: Right.
L326Michael Hurley: Uh, I was trying to build all these, like, QMD memory systems.
L327Fred Nix: Yeah.
L328Michael Hurley: So it was going to be able to, you know, just surface the context it needed when it needed. And it just couldn't— it could never— I'm not going to say it could never. It could do it a lot.
L329Fred Nix: Right.
L330Michael Hurley: But it would critically forget important pieces.
L331Fred Nix: Right.
L332Michael Hurley: And make terrible mistakes.
L333Fred Nix: So I don't— I'm not a fan of Hermes or OpenClaw.
L334Michael Hurley: I'm not a fan.
L335Fred Nix: But what I do do.
L336Michael Hurley: Oh, okay.
L337Fred Nix: Is because Larry has a little bit of autonomy.
L338Michael Hurley: I'm almost like, god, we're just going to go.
L339Fred Nix: He still has to be prompted and I still have to hit the enter button.
L340Michael Hurley: I'm almost like, god.
L341Fred Nix: But there's some things that he can do automated-wise. And so.
L342Michael Hurley: I'll build up my own.
L343Fred Nix: Larry is a Claude code session that I— that I basically, again, cherry-picked some code out of OpenClaw and cherry-picked out of Hermes because they're all open source. And he makes— it makes Larry better, but I'm not running Hermes and I'm not running OpenClaw. And the cool thing is, is when they update their s***, I just pull the commits down and it makes Larry better.
L344Fred Nix: And there's, like, there's probably 12 different repos that are out there that Larry's built off of. And about every other day or so, he'll go, hey, there's updates to such and such repo I'm built off of.
L345Fred Nix: You want me to go take a look at it?
L346Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L347Fred Nix: And I go, yeah. Just make sure it's useful. And he goes out there and says, I brought this code in from Hermes, I brought this code in from OpenClaw, I brought this in from, uh, Helter Skelter's memory cycles.
L348Fred Nix: And, like, it just gets— it automatically gets better. And then I probably have— I have a website called nixfredos.com, which is where Larry builds himself.
L349Fred Nix: And so anybody can point their agent at nixfredos.com and, like, you can go cherry-pick it and bring stuff in and make your Claude code better.
L350Fred Nix: Yeah, so, like, you can do a complete install. And for a lot of people, when they install Claude code vanilla, I'll tell them to just install the whole thing.
L351Fred Nix: But, like, you, you probably have pretty customized stuff. So what I would tell you to do is go up to nixfredos.com and tell your— you don't even have to go to it.
L352Michael Hurley: Right.
L353Fred Nix: Just tell your agent.
L354Michael Hurley: I like that.
L355Fred Nix: Like, go tell me the top 10 features at nixfredos.com that you want to be— want me to be able to do. And, like, I'll— and then you tell it what— what you want to work on and what you want— want it to have. And it'll just pull just those pieces out.
L356Fred Nix: And then when I update it, it'll update you to be better.
L357Fred Nix: Yep.
L358Fred Nix: Right.
L359Michael Hurley: Nice. Yeah. Yeah, because right now I'm using T3 code, and I've got it forked to where it'll auto-select a model, kind of like what you were saying with your usage limits.
L360Michael Hurley: It'll look at what's left, what's urgent to, you know, take advantage of, and pick Six One Soul or Opus 5.5.
L361Fred Nix: That's amazing.
L362Michael Hurley: And then I've got.
L363Fred Nix: That's freaking amazing.
L364Michael Hurley: For, like, the durables, like you're saying with Larry, I've got GrokBot and Dot running routines where they're looking at my PRs that come in or issues that come in, or they're reading my email and my X account, telling me what to reply to and how to reply and stuff like that, so.
L365Fred Nix: That's cool, man.
L366Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L367Fred Nix: That's cool.
L368Michael Hurley: But most of my work is going to T3 code.
L369Fred Nix: Well, cool, man. I just wanted to say hello to you and get the meat.
L370Michael Hurley: And now I've got to get used to that workflow.
L371Fred Nix: I got to go take the dog out.
L372Michael Hurley: And get back out with my Freds.
L373Fred Nix: But, uh, I did follow you.
L374Michael Hurley: The working ones are hidden from the list.
L375Fred Nix: I appreciate you following me.
L376Michael Hurley: You know, I can see all my projects on there.
L377Fred Nix: Uh, this will probably run a couple hours.
L378Michael Hurley: Down the list, like, okay.
L379Fred Nix: And then I'll just shoot— shoot up the PRs.
L380Michael Hurley: Yeah.
L381Fred Nix: Uh, the thing I tell people about when I help them with PRs, if you don't like it, reject every single one of them. I don't take it personally. It's your project.
L382Fred Nix: You decide if it— if it'll help you. Accept— accept and merge the PR.
L383Fred Nix: If you don't like it, like, no, no bad sauce, man. I'm all— I'm chill.
L384Fred Nix: That— that's it.
L385Fred Nix: Yeah, yeah. Well, I have— I have Grok, Kimmy, Codex, a little bit of Local, and some other things.
L386Fred Nix: So, like, I— I make them fight it out. And then Larry is the judge that decides.
L387Michael Hurley: Yeah. And my thing is I'll fight which one wins, and then I trust the judgment.
L388Fred Nix: You would merge what's useful.
L389Michael Hurley: You know?
L390Fred Nix: So, like, all the other ones go out. Like, I don't even log into Grok.
L391Michael Hurley: That's true.
L392Fred Nix: I don't even log into ChatGPT. Larry just has the APIs to go call. So I just use Larry only.
L393Fred Nix: He pulls in and basically sends them out to go. Right now they're looking at Element Design for bugs.
L394Fred Nix: And then he comes back and goes, you know, he's the judge of what they say. And then he makes the final decision about what to— what to push up as PRs.
L395Fred Nix: Yeah. Hey, man, I appreciate you spending time with me and, uh, reach back out.
L396Fred Nix: And if you come up with any cool s***, uh, hit me up. And, uh, I really appreciate it, man.
L397Fred Nix: This has been fun. You're the first one.
L398Fred Nix: Well, you're the third one, actually, because I did le— I— you're the first one when I made it official and put my calendar out there. So, man, I'm— I'm—
L399Michael Hurley: Sweet.
L400Fred Nix: I'm— I really appreciate you clicking the link and taking a chance on me.
L401Fred Nix: All right, brother. Peace out.
L402Fred Nix: All right, man. I hope so.
L403Fred Nix: We'll see— see— see you soon.
L404Michael Hurley: Yeah, it happens.
L405Fred Nix: Later.
L406Michael Hurley: All right.
L407Michael Hurley: Nice.
L408Michael Hurley: Yeah, yeah. That's— it's been fun.
L409Michael Hurley: All right. Talk to you soon.
L410Michael Hurley: See you.
L411Michael Hurley: Yep. Bye.