Those minor joys aside, I’ve been actively trying to get out of the house to do some exercise at least one hour a day and it is clearly not going to happen at lunchtime anymore–well, not every day, at least, so I’m starting to get cabin fever.

All of this to say that I’m feeling as if I am starting down the slippery slope to both physical and mental burnout again, and this time I’m backing off as early as possible.

For starters, I am currently profoundly annoyed at my current working arrangements, since my days of wall-to-wall meetings with completely random 15 minute breaks are both utterly destroying my health and eroding my ability to focus. Sometimes, and despite being remote for many, many years, I would really prefer to be back working at an office, if only because I miss walking about and using stairs to go and talk to people.

Turns out my closest project team are now in Madrid (plus Belgium, Sweden, Canada, etc.), so that isn’t going to happen. And, truth be told, online meetings are now so stupefyingly more productive (as meetings go) that actual work is still best done remote–as long as you can cut through the tremendous amount of AI-augmented cruft that a meeting now entails.

I, as usual, have been pragmatic about it and crafted my own agent to summarize meetings the way I want them, and to craft terse, minimalist works of corporate obeisance that avoid the walls of text I get by default and focus on the stuff I need to do instead of spouting corporate cheerleading (it has become a surprisingly popular hack).

Anyway, my priority is now, again, my well-being. But I feel like my entire lifestyle is in dire need of an intervention, and the obvious life hacks most people suggest like exercising in the early morning (when I am trying to do my daily reading and research) or at the end of the day (when I am just bog tired) just don’t work for me, so the upshot of all this is that I am currently trying to carve out slots throughout the week to just get out of the house for 30 minutes.

Which is completely stupid.

This has to change (somehow). In the meantime, part of that carve-out is also going to be about mental health–I’m phasing out Twitter/X again, as well as a bunch of other “social” distractions and hypefests like HN.

A real house, with a mix of phones, tablets, laptops and a few stubborn IoT things that insist on staying in 2016, has… issues. But they’re not always obvious, and given we’d both upgraded the 5GHz band and changed the locations of the access points, it took a while to figure out where the new rough spots were.

If you’re just tuning in, I have a hard split between a legacy 2.4GHz network and the modern 5GHz one. I already had client-managed roaming and basic handoff guidance, but now I added usteer, 802.11k neighbour reports (because hostapd was not cooperating), and things are now pretty much perfect.

The long version is below, with anonymised data and enough detail for future me to remember why I did this.

The obvious advice for roaming is “use one SSID everywhere”, and that is often correct if you’re running Wi-Fi in an office, a public venue, or generally somewhere where you don’t have (or care about) legacy devices. It is also not what I did, because the 2.4GHz side needs to remain friendly to older and slightly terrible IoT devices, which means WPA2 compatibility and a conservative setup.

The 5GHz side is where the more modern clients live, and despite losing 5GHz access for a couple of things, I was happy to move it to WPA3. So this is what things look like from a high level:

• 2.4GHz: legacy-compatible WPA2-ish network for IoT and old clients.
• 5GHz: modern client network with WPA3/SAE
• 2.5GbE backhaul across four “dumb” APs
• Zero cloud management or vendor-specific software. Nada. Zilch. Non-negotiable.

However, I got a few complaints that when moving about the house, iPhones, iPads and MacBooks would not switch to another AP. Since our flat is wrapped around a couple of elevator shafts and there are a few spots (like the kitchen) where tiling, pipes and tiny RF nuisances like fridges were prevalent, that sort of tended to happen a lot–and Apple devices are notorious for being opinionated about that base station they want to stick to.

The baseline seemed fine. All four APs had 802.11r/k/v-related options enabled. Fast Transition was also demonstrably happening–the AP logs had auth_alg=ft entries that showed fast transition was happening, I had installed wpad-mbedtls for “mesh” support, but roaming clearly needed to be improved.

And my setup meant it had to be improved within each band/SSID, not across bands. Cross-band roaming is the client’s job, and many clients are not especially good at it.

But two things stood out:

• There was no steering daemon installed. Clients were making all roaming decisions on their own, which usually means they hang on to a far-away AP until their signal is frankly embarrassing.
• rrm_nr_list was empty on every radio. In other words, even though 802.11k was enabled, hostapd was not exposing neighbour reports to clients, so… no real way to steer anything.

So I installed usteer and its LuCI companion package on all four APs, enabled it, and left the initial configuration at defaults:

opkg update
opkg install usteer luci-app-usteer
/etc/init.d/usteer enable
/etc/init.d/usteer restart

The default configuration is minimal: LAN gossip, syslog enabled, IPv6 disabled for the daemon (because, for reasons, I don’t trust our current ISP router to do anything reliably except act as an ONT), and a moderate debug level. That was enough for all APs to see one another and exchange client data, which is exactly what I wanted.

However, the 802.11k neighbour list wasn’t being populated. After poking through the OpenWRT forums, I realized the missing piece was static-neighbor-reports, which is one of those tiny OpenWRT packages that does exactly what it says and nothing more.

Each AP can generate its own 802.11k neighbour report element via:

ubus call hostapd.<iface> rrm_nr_get_own

But clients only get useful neighbour lists if each AP is told about the other APs. So I generated per-band lists and installed them per AP:

opkg install static-neighbor-reports
/etc/init.d/static-neighbor-reports enable
/etc/init.d/static-neighbor-reports restart

The important detail is that the reports are band-specific: 2.4GHz radios only advertise 2.4GHz peers, and 5GHz radios only advertise 5GHz peers. No cross-band mixing, because the two networks intentionally have different SSIDs and security settings.

After that, every AP had three neighbours per radio, usteer had AP/client state, and hostapd has explicit 802.11k neighbour data to hand to clients that ask for it.

The first comparison is a little boring, but useful. Here is the 2.4GHz SNR before and after the change (this, like the other charts here, was generated from Graphite data):

There is no miracle here. 2.4GHz remains 2.4GHz–crowded, noisy, full of junk devices and crowded by all my neighbors. Two of the APs improved or stayed roughly level, two got worse in the sampling window, and I have zero expectations about ever clearing this kind of congestion without moving to the countryside.

The 5GHz side is more encouraging, even if you do need to know when we were near which AP at what time when you look at active bitrates:

The interesting part, though, is that at least between two APs, there was a noticeable shift in usage–which seems to reflect where clients should be registered in practice:

But the best sanity check is the sticky-client view, because that is what started this in the first place:

The number of merely weak clients did not disappear–one extra client fell below -75dBm in the later sample–but the very weak clients went away. That is the bit I care about: the previous -90dBm-ish sticky associations were gone in the later check, which seems to indicate clients are not getting hung up on their previous AP and are indeed roaming.

A single sample is not science, and Wi-Fi is a swamp of client decisions, radio noise and domestic entropy. I also saw one new Fast Transition log entry after the rollout:

FT: Missing required pairwise in pull response from a peer AP

That happened once in the latest check. It is not enough to call the setup broken, but it is worth watching–especially because SAE and FT have enough moving parts that I would rather trust logs than assumptions.

I will be keeping an eye on this over the next few weeks… somehow. I got an LLM to do the Graphite queries and chart scripting for me, and ain’t nobody got time to build dashboards only I would look at, but the metrics aren’t going to go away and the stable config lives in my local Gitea instance now, so there’s really no excuse not to do a spot check in a few months.

But I really like my Cudy APs. No cloud controller, no meshing, no mobile app and no secret sauce. Just OpenWRT, collectd/Graphite, and the odd ssh session to check configs.

That is still the main thing I like about this setup: when it gets weird, it gets weird in ways I can inspect.

Insomnia seems to be fading, but as the weather improves, the time windows for leaving the house and enjoying exercise before the heat kicks in have become narrower and are in full-on collision with typical meeting schedules, and that has become a major drag on my optimism since I have to wonder why, as an industry, we haven’t really solved meetings.

The technology is fine–it’s a culture problem. Stand-ups, project syncs, account planning, everything requires far too many unproductive meetings that just accrete overhead because a) people don’t really prepare for them and b) people don’t have time to prepare for the meetings that matter because of all the other meetings.

And, of course, everyone thinks their meetings are the ones that matter.

Either way, I’ve finally started having more enjoyment off-work. A good deal of it stems from the fact that I can now use piclaw as an interactive notebook across all of my projects and just scribble on a tablet screen (including annotating images and text to feed back into the agent).

I have already gotten most of the annotation experience to work on my Nomad as well (and with a local agent to boot), so I’m starting to wonder when OpenAI or Anthropic will pick up on this (neither of them has a decent tablet UX, and they clearly don’t seem to care about that).

In the meantime, I’m looking for an Android tablet that would be at least as good as a Samsung one, but without any of their UI junk–the TCL NEXPaper ones seem very interesting, but it’s apparently impossible to reach any of their marketing people…

One of the things I’ve been playing with a la longue is Joker, my souped-up version of a Clojure runtime for Go. Well, go-joker now has a proper notebook interface–cells with run states, rich outputs, inline SVG rendering, WASM-backed bitmap demos, and a parallelised Mandelbrot cell that renders fast enough to feel interactive.

This is another step towards the Mathematica-for-code thing I wrote about a few weeks ago, except it’s running in a Clojure interpreter that I developed in another notebook-like interface:

The irony of constantly working on notebooks within notebooks is not lost on me, but it does look very good right now.

I just got a SpacemiT K3 board to test, which is both my second or third RISC-V device and a refreshing take on the ecosystem, because a) it was zero hassle to set up b) came with 32GB of RAM and c) has a promising (if weird) NPU arrangement that I fully intend to exploit, even if (as usual) source code and documentation is a little sparse.

On the GPU side, I’ve been trying to shoehorn a Qwen model with MTP and KV cache optimizations into my 12GB 3060 in parallel (without any real usable solution yet), so alternative hardware is most welcome even if (at least right now) it poses a completely different set of problems to solve.

My long-delayed Maclock build draws near–after pondering my options I ordered the mini-macintosh PCBs and parts (5 of them, even though I only have 2 Maclocks) and have been poking at the Mac JITed emulators a bit, but I got sidetracked into getting the MMU to work in previous-jit and… I haven’t really paid much attention to any of the other bits.

I did try to get ios-linuxkit to run faster through a variety of strategies, but the truth is that performance work on interpreters is humbling–most ideas that sound good measure worse, and none of it panned out except some iOS fixes–terminal input latency, soft keyboard lag, DNS fallback, and iPhone canvas scaling.

The gap between “works on my iPad Pro” and “works on an iPhone” is always wider than expected, and in this case I am actually considering removing ghostty-web from the iPhone version given the added overhead.

In short, I bought another Combo Touch–the old one was falling apart.

Disclaimer: I paid for this with my own money, as I did the first one, but Logitech did offer me a discount. As usual, this article follows my review policy.

I had originally chosen the “sand” color, which was a sort of calculated bet–I wanted something different from the traditional black, and mentally prepared myself for it to accrue stains or dirt over time.

Guess what, it really didn’t. I guess it will look slightly darker and dingy if put alongside a new one, but I have zero complaints about the fabric-like parts and can only find a very small (sub 5-mm) stain if I look really hard. Maybe I was lucky, but those bits still look great.

I have also had zero issues with the keyboard. Yes, it has short travel, but it is effectively full size, the international English layout is excellent for coding, and it has been extremely reliable over the past four years. The only key with a (cosmetic) issue is my S key, which was slightly marred by a stray solder blob.

And the trackpad is simply sublime–it is the best non-Apple trackpad I have across all my hardware, not to mention it is luxuriously large for a tablet trackpad.

Over the years, the speaker slots (which are effectively thin strips of rubbery plastic) started deforming. First subtly, then to the point where they are now either broken or completely deformed:

This does coincide with how I hold it for writing in both landscape and portrait mode (the inner cover edge is also flaking off on the bottom left side in portrait orientation), but… I’m at a bit of a loss as to why this wasn’t factored into the design somehow.

Unfortunately, Logitech does not offer the possibility to buy only the cover, otherwise I would have kept my current keyboard.

And there were no refurbished ones shippable to Europe either (for whatever reason), so I ended up reaching out to support and then buying an entirely new “Oxford grey” one (which was effectively the only color available).

The new one is physically identical as far as I can tell–same connector, same kickstand, same key layout, same excellent trackpad.

Which means everything I wrote about the original still applies, and I won’t repeat it here. What I’m more interested in this time is whether this one will last longer without deformation.

I have my doubts, of course.

So I thought it would be a good idea to have a policy in place to make sure everyone is on the same page:

1. I don’t do paid reviews. I realize there is a fine line between getting “free” stuff to review and being paid to review it, but I’m not interested in crossing it–this site does not generate any form of income for me, and I’d like to keep it that way.
2. I only review things I have a personal interest in (i.e., things that I would ordinarily have an actual use for, learn from or would otherwise consider buying) or that would be interesting for the people I occasionally provide consulting services to.
3. I don’t do scripted reviews (i.e., there is no content placement, I write about the features I find important, etc.)
4. There are no editorial tweaks–vendors get to read my reviews at the same time as the general public.
5. I don’t participate in vendor affiliate programs–I’m OK with handing out discount codes or linking to the vendor’s site with a utm referral tag (so they can check attribution), but other than my usual (automatic) Amazon/AliExpress linking (which I started using for books decades ago and now do for electronics components), there are no other affiliate links on this site to ensure I don’t get any direct revenue from the reviews.
6. When applicable, scripts used for performance measurements and benchmarks will be published here or on GitHub.
7. Benchmarking will be focused on the aspects I value (although I will try to use standard tooling where appropriate).
8. I review what’s “in the box”, not what’s promised for future releases or what might be available in a future version.

I’m also open to reviewing books–I’ve done pre-publishing reviews in the past, and I’m always happy to read and review books on topics I’m interested in.

I have also recently started a YouTube channel called @TheTaoOfTech that I am slowly populating with videos that complement the content on this site. I will try to keep the same review policy there, although I might do some sponsored videos in the future (but I will always disclose that).

So if you have something you’d like me to review, please get in touch and we’ll take it from there.

Many people ask me about page views, statistics, Google rankings, etc. This is what I have to say about it:

• This site does not use Google Analytics for privacy reasons, nor any other mainstream analytics or tracking platform. The flip side of that is that it is (incorrectly) down-ranked in just about every single public site ranking.
• It does, however, use Cloudflare Analytics, which is privacy-preserving and a more accurate than most other tracking sites because it automatically filters out bots, referrer spam and other things that contribute to site traffic inflation. However, it can provide some interesting figures (updated for August 2024):
  • Over 2M monthly pageviews (and steadily rising).
  • Over 110K unique human visitors per month, mostly from the US, UK, Germany, and Singapore (if I add in figures from Japan and Australia, I get almost as much traffic from APAC than from the UK, which has always been interesting to me).

You can check this PDF for a sample Cloudflare traffic report.

This audience reach comes down to four main factors:

• My emphasis on consistently solid technical content–which ensures continued reader interest.
• No fake audience engagement on site (I interact with readers directly via e-mail correspondence)
• Posts are automatically broadcast to X/Twitter, Mastodon and a few sites that consume my RSS feed directly.
• I get a lot of traffic from places like Reddit, Hacker News, etc. (especially when I post something with an unusual technical angle).

All of my posts are automatically broadcast to my X/Twitter and Mastodon accounts, and I also post occasional links to my LinkedIn profile.

I am also (slowly) starting to produce YouTube videos. This will be a slow process, as I am not a professional video editor and I have no intention of becoming one. I will, however, try to produce some videos that complement the content on this site, and am curious to explore the medium a bit more (and not just in Youtube).

Links to all my social and video accounts can be found on the site footer.

This is a non-exhaustive list of things I’ve reviewed in the past:

Date	Category	Link	Notes
2026	Accessories	Logitech Combo Touch (long-term)	Purchased by me (discount from Logitech)
	E-ink Readers	The Xteink X4	Purchased by me
	NAS	YouYeeToo NestDisk	Supplied by YouYeeToo
	SBCs	Orange Pi 6 Plus	Supplied by Orange Pi
2025	Accessories	The Maclock	Purchased by me (AliExpress)
	E-ink Displays	The TRMNL (DIY Everything Edition)	Purchased by me from Seeed Studio
	Networking	Sodola SL902-SWTGW218AS	Purchased by me
		Cudy AX3000 Wi-Fi 6 System	Purchased by me (multiple units)
	SBCs	ArmSoM AI Module 7	Supplied by ArmSoM
		LattePanda Mu	Supplied by DFRobot
		LattePanda IOTA	Supplied by DFRobot (expansion boards included)
2024	Keyboards	Hexgears Immersion A3	Supplied by Hexgears
	Mini-PCs	GMKtec G2
	NAS	CM3588 NVMe NAS Kit	Supplied by FriendlyELEC
	Networking	SL-SWTG124AS	Supplied by Sodola
		SL-SWTGW218AS
	SBCs	Orange Pi 5+	Supplied by Orange Pi
		YouYeeToo R1	Supplied by YouYeeToo
		Banana Pi M7	Supplied by Banana Pi
		Radxa X4	Supplied by Radxa
		XPI-3566-Zero	Supplied by Geniatech
		Banana Pi M5 Pro	Supplied by Banana Pi
2023	3D Printers	Kingroon KP3S Pro V1	two year review
	Apple	Mac Mini M2 Pro
		iPhone 15 Pro, Watch Series 9
	Keyboards	Bluehand
	Mini-PCs	Beelink U59 Pro
	Monitors	LG 28MQ780-B
	PC Builds	ASRock DeskMeet B660
	SBCs	Radxa Zero
2022	Apple	iPad Pro M1
	Keyboards	Avatto Folding Keyboard
		Dierya 63, Adafruit Macropad
		Logitech Combo Touch
	SBCs	Banana Pi M2 Zero
2021	Monitors	LG 34WK95U-W
	Music	Teenage Engineering OP-1
2020		Yamaha Reface DX, AG06
2019	Apple	iPad Mini 5
		Watch Series 5
	Music	Roli Songmaker Kit, Korg Nanokey Studio
2018	Apple	iPhone XS
2017	3D Printers	BQ Prusa i3 Hephestos	Built from kit
	Mini-PCs	Z83ii
2016	PC Builds	Streacom ST-F1CB WS Black Aluminum Case
2013	Phones	HTC One	Test sample
2009	E-ink Readers	The Sony Reader	Purchased by me
2008	Accessories	DisplayLink DVI	Supplied by DisplayLink

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/rust?utm_content=atom 2020-09-01T10:41:00+00:00 2026-05-22T06:03:26+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com The language that helped coin the moniker Rust Evangelism Strike Force, and which is slowly starting to get to me.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Backend	2024	trailbase	a self-hostable Firebase replacement
Data	2021	ballista	an Apache Spark-like distributed execution environment
	2023	lance	a modern columnar data format that is optimized for ML workflows and datasets, compatible with pandas
Editors	2026	Ferrite	A fast, lightweight text editor for Markdown, JSON, YAML, and TOML files built with Rust and egui
Embedded	2024	embassy	a framework for ESP32, Pico and Nordic MCUs
	2026	mousefood	a no-std embedded-graphics backend for ratatui
GUI	2024	dioxus	GUI library for desktop, web, mobile, and more, using the system webview
		egui	a simple, fast, and highly portable immediate mode GUI library for Rust.
		graphpu	a 3D GPU graph visualization application
	2025	azul	a desktop GUI framework for Rust
Game Engines	2020	Bevy	a data-driven game engine
		GameLisp	a scripting language for Rust game development
		RG3D	a 3D game engine
Learning	2024	rustlings	a collection of small exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code
Libraries	2020	lunatic	a platform for building actor systems running WebAssembly
		pulldown-cmark	Markdown paraer
		rust-crdt	A family of CRDT’s supporting both State and Op based replication
		syntect	Syntax highlighting using Sublime Text definitions
	2021	bastion	a distributed fault-tolerant runtime system
		comrak	a Rust port of cmark-gfm
	2023	ratatui	a library for developing text user interfaces
		ractor	an actor library
	2024	kameo	a lightweight library for building fault-tolerant, distributed, and asynchronous actors
	2025	ratzilla	a library for building terminal-themed web applications using Rust and WebAssembly.
		pagefind	a static site search engine that runs in the browser
	2026	FrankenTUI	minimal, high-performance terminal UI kernel for deterministic, flicker-free inline UIs with a diff-based renderer and strict cleanup guarantees (Rust nightly, WIP)
		xmloxide	A memory-safe Rust reimplementation of libxml2 that passes the W3C XML conformance suite, provides XML/HTML parsers, XPath, validation, canonicalization, and a xmllint-compatible CLI.
Microservices		openworkers	a self-hostable implementation of Cloudflare workers
Networking	2024	koblas	a simple SOCKS5 proxy
Parallelism	2020	rayon	a data parallelism library
	2024	kay	An intriguing, mostly self-contained Actor system
Profiling	2020	heaptrack	a memory profiler
Reference	2023	The Rust on ESP Book	A very nice guide on how to do Rust development for Expressif ESP32 devices
Security	2026	LiteBox	a security-focused sandboxing library OS for reduced host attack surface
		monty	a minimal, secure Python interpreter in Rust for running AI-generated code
Servers	2022	meilisearch	another search engine with document-level access control
		tantivy	another search engine (Lucene-inspired)
		sonic	a fast and schema-less indexing/search backend
	2026	Garage	an S3-compatible distributed object storage service for small-to-medium self-hosted clusters
		narwhal	an extensible pub/sub messaging server for edge applications
Streaming		airplay2-rs	Open-source AirPlay 2 audio sender in Rust — mDNS discovery, RAOP/RTSP pairing, ALAC encoding, buffered audio sync
Tools	2020	rust-musl-builder	Docker wrappers for building Rust binaries with musl
	2021	tauri	an Electron alternative that uses system webviews
	2022	mcfly	an enhanced ctrl-r replacement
	2024	dtui	a tool to inspect the system/session dbus
		zoxide	a port of the venerable z utility to Rust
	2025	monolith	a tool to save web pages in a unified HTML format
	2026	eilmeldung	a fast TUI RSS reader based on the news-flash library
		vcad	Parametric CAD in Rust; exports STL, glTF, USD, DXF
		Google Workspace CLI (gws)	One CLI for every Google Workspace API; discovers commands from Google’s Discovery Service, emits structured JSON for humans and agents, and ships dozens of reusable agent skills + an MCP server.
		rmux	a tmux-compatible Rust terminal multiplexer with a daemon-backed SDK and ratatui integration
		siomon	Linux TUI/CLI hardware and sensor monitor written in Rust, ships as a static binary with zero runtime dependencies plus JSON/XML/HTML outputs, alerts, and CSV logging.
		Horizon	GPU-accelerated terminal board with an infinite 2D canvas, workspaces, and AI-aware panels for coding workflows.
Web Frameworks	2023	Rocket	a mostly complete async web framework
	2024	spring-rs	a microservice framework inspired by spring-boot

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/com/apple/tv?utm_content=atom 2007-04-15T08:29:48+00:00 2026-05-22T06:03:26+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Apple’s Apple TV is the company’s media-centric set-top box, originally shipped in 2007 as a streaming appliance and now evolved into a hub for tvOS apps, AirPlay, and HomeKit-aware home entertainment.

The hardware has changed a lot over the years, yet the missing remote control experience inspired a number of companion tools that bring deeper integration with the macOS ecosystem.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Applications	2026	ItsyTV	Native macOS menu bar remote for Apple TV with D-pad navigation, app grid, now-playing controls, pairing helpers, and per-device hotkeys.
Tools		pyatv	an asyncio Python library and CLI for Apple TV and AirPlay control, metadata, and streaming

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/swift?utm_content=atom 2016-12-07T19:38:00+00:00 2026-05-22T06:00:01+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com This is a stub to start gathering some resources on Swift, which won several of my personal awards for “most breakages between major releases” and has therefore not been something I’ve invested a lot of time on.

In fact, I’ve yet to have a reason for building something with it (other than the occasional test), but it pays to keep an eye on things.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Apps	2026	phosphene	Video wallpaper engine for macOS Tahoe
Database	2024	Blackbird	a zero dependency SQLite database wrapper and model layer
Libraries	2026	bonsplit	A native macOS tab bar library with split pane support
	2025	WorkKit	an amazing Swift package to parse documents from Apple’s iWork suite
		Noise	a Swift wrapper around Racket CS.
		SwiftAI	a Swift library for building AI applications
	2024	SyndiKit	A Swift library for RSS and Atom feeds
		Async-Channels	Performant channels for Swift concurrency
	2016	Markingbird	A Markdown libary
Other		Building on ARMv7	A concise walkthrough
Runtimes	2024	LuaJIT-spm	A LuaJIT package
		swift-rp-pico-bare	Embedded Swift on the Raspberry Pi Pico
Samples	2025	winamp	A Winamp clone written in SwiftUI
	2024	Swift-D3-Charts	Replicating D3 Charts with Swift Charts
Tools	2026	apfel	a macOS CLI for on-device Apple Intelligence via FoundationModels
		MXMaster	A lightweight macOS utility for Logitech MX Master mice, replacing the bloated Logitech Options
		agentswift	A native macOS agent app for Apple-platform development, with Claude-based multi-step coding workflows.
		AnsiSaver	An ANSI art screensaver for macOS that streams 16colo.rs packs via libansilove rendering
		swifdroid	Swift toolchain and frameworks for Android development
	2024	skip	a framework for creating dual-platform mobile apps in Swift and Kotlin
		bclm	a command line tool for limiting the battery’s max charge on macOS
	2022	textra	a nice CLI tool that uses VisionKit and speech recognition APIs to OCR documents and audio into text.
Tutorials		Stanford University CS193p (Developing Applications for iOS using SwiftUI)	a pretty decent set of learning materials

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/javascript?utm_content=atom 2007-02-28T21:44:19+00:00 2026-05-22T06:00:01+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com The ECMA - 262 Standard, ratified after Netscape and Microsoft (mostly) agreed to make JavaScript and JScript interoperable.

In order to run NodeJS sanely on macOS and WSL, I’ve taken to setting up an unprivileged package install folder like so:

mkdir "${HOME}/.npm-packages"

# Add a new dotfile, without expanding $HOME
cat << 'EOF' >> ~/.npmrc
prefix=${HOME}/.npm-packages
EOF

# Add the following five lines to .bashrc, without expanding variables:

cat << 'EOF' >> ~/.bashrc 
NPM_PACKAGES="${HOME}/.npm-packages"
PATH="$NPM_PACKAGES/bin:$PATH"
# Unset manpath so we can inherit from /etc/manpath via the `manpath` command
unset MANPATH # delete if you already modified MANPATH elsewhere in your config
export MANPATH="$NPM_PACKAGES/share/man:$(manpath)"
EOF

I’ve taken to looking for alternative ways to develop in JavaScript that don’t require me to put up with its syntax and overall insanity. Here’s a few I like (mostly compilers, since that’s what makes the most sense for me):

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Compilers	2021	Imba	another Elm-like language that compiles ro Javascript
	2019	Reason	an OCaml-like language and compiler
	2018	Elm	A functional language that compiles to JavaScript
		wisp	A homoiconic LISP dialect with Clojure syntax and macros
		pythonium	A Python3 to JavaScript translator
	2017	Opal	A Ruby transpiler

Resources

Most of these are library-independent. Check my jQuery page for more, since there’s an entire sub-culture that believes it to be JavaScript programming in and by its own…

Category	Date	Link	Notes
AI	2019	nlp.js	a natural language processing library for bots
Animation	2018	Pts	A Processing-like library
	2023	anime	an impressive lightweight JavaScript animation library
	2025	vfx-js	a library for creating visual effects
		defuddle	an implementation of the readability algorithm
Audio	2020	Wave.js	a themable audio visualizer
Automation	2018	n8n	a Zapier alternative that is Open Core, but requires licensing for most uses
	2023	activepieces	another self-hostable Zapier alternative (MIT Licensed)
CAD	2025	BREP	a feature-based modeling playground with BREP-style workflows on triangle meshes
Charting	2010	Highcharts	A very comprehensive charting library
	2013	GoJS	A commercial charting and diagramming library
	2018	F2	an elegant charting library for mobile
	2023	Graphic Walker	An embeddable Tableau-like dashboard UI, also available for Jupyter
		tremor	a React library for creating semi-interactive dashboards.
		Observable Plot	A nice D3 wrapper that makes a lot of it much more intuitive
	2025	simplegantt	a simple Gantt chart library for restricted environments
Data Structures	2017	seamless-immutable	Immutable data structures a la Mori
	2018	knockout.sync.js	A nice nockout extension that allows you to sync data among clients and backends
	2022	automerge	a library of data structures for building collaborative applications in JavaScript, using CRDTs
Frameworks	2025	mastro	a very simple framework on performance and simplicity
Games	2010	Akibahara	A wonderful set of small libraries to clone 8-bit era arcade games
Graphics	2008	JS Infoviz Toolkit	A pretty comprehensive set of resources
	2009	Parcycle	A particle system for Canvas
	2010	Raphael	A vector graphics library
	2011	paper.js	open source vector graphics scripting framework that runs on top of Canvas
	2012	Ejecta	A fast GL-backed canvas library for iOS
	2013	Two.js	An intriguing API that supports a number of back-ends (svg, canvas and WebGL)
		svgjs	A lightweight library for SVG handling
	2014	glsl-transition	A library that uses GL shaders for transitions
	2015	smartcrop.js	Content-aware image cropping
	2019	Fabric.js	supports various kinds of canvas manipulation, including image filters
		Planetary.js	Another globe visualization library
		uPlot	extremely fast timeseries plotting
		Gio.JS	Globe visualization library
		chart.xkcd	various XKCD-styled chart types
		globe.gl	Very nice globe visualization component, with animated overlays, arcs, etc.
	2020	Textures	a lovely way to do SVG-based hatch fills for charts
	2021	midori	a library for animating image backgrounds with cinematic effects
Libraries	2019	cote	a zero-configuration microservices framework
		moveable	GUI library for drawing editors
		htm	a JSX-like library
		flexsearch	a full-text indexer for browser and server-side
		osmosis	an HTML parsing library with Xpath support
		azure-sync	syncs from local filesystem to blob storage
	2021	microdiff	a fast object diff library
		piscina	a cleverly named task pool
		htmx	a nice, compact, Ajax library
	2024	main-thread-scheduling	a library for scheduling tasks on the main thread
	2026	mochi	High-fidelity browser automation and fingerprinting library for Bun.
		muJS	A lightweight AJAX navigation library — 5KB alternative to Turbo and htmx
		docx-preview	browser renderer for .docx files using HTML/CSS output
		docx-editor	an open-source WYSIWYG .docx editor library with tracked changes, collaboration, and agent support
		pptxviewjs	lightweight web component/renderer for PPTX file previews
		xlsx	spreadsheet parsing/export library used for rendering Excel workbooks in browsers
		htmx SSE	Server-Sent Events extension for htmx
Markup	2007	Diff Algorithm	Text diffing
	2013	Rainbow	A nice syntax highlighter
		Codeblock.js	A nice way to provide code samples.
Mobile	2019	Expo	Good React Native wrapper/accelerator
		NativeScript	Native mobile development with nice Vue support. Probably my favorite so far
		Ionic	Good Angular, Vue and React Native wrapper/accelerator
Runtimes		QuickJS	supports compilation to standalone binaries
	2022	rampart	A minimal footprint runtime/stack with full text search, sql, lmdb, redis, https, websockets, curl, crypt and more
		Bun	an all-in-one runtime and NPM client written in Zig
	2023	kaluma	tiny and efficient JavaScript runtime for RP2040 (Raspberry Pi Pico)
		otto	a JavaScript interpreter written in Go
	2024	quickjs-ng	a fork of QuickJS
	2025	MicroQuickJS	a minimal port of QuickJS for microcontrollers
Tools	2011	PhantomJS	A complete WebKit renderer, since obsoleted.
	2012	javascript.tmbundle	An indispensable “TextMate”:apps/TextMate add-on (the autocompletion features alone are priceless)
	2016	nodeenv	A sane way to install multiple versions of Node in segregated environments. Downloads prebuilt binaries on macOS, Linux and Windows.
		create-react-app	A bootstrap tool for React apps.
	2017	pkg	Package Node projects into an executable
	2022	pkg	Package Node apps into standalone binaries
	2023	xstate	JavaScript and TypeScript finite state machines and statecharts.
	2024	Hexo	a static site generator
	2026	portless	Node-based CLI that runs your dev server through a local proxy so every service gets a stable .localhost URL (with HTTPS/2, host sync, and auto-managed ports for subdomains/worktrees).
UI	2007	Timeline	a draggable timeline widget
	2011	Color Wheel	A color picker component
		Timeframe	Amazing calendar widget with support for date range selection.
	2012	Mousetrap	a very nice way to handle keyboard shortcuts
		jsPlumb	A Yahoo pipes-like library
	2013	rainbow.js	A slim progress bar
		Odometer	A library for counters with smooth transitions
		nprogress	Another slim progress bar
		Kalendae	a very impressive, framework-agnostic date picker
		date	A date parser that can take pseudo-natural language strings
	2014	Framerjs	For designing interactive prototypes
	2015	lazysizes	For lazy image loading
		dragula	a cute drag and drop library
	2018	zircleUI	a Vue-based framework for developing zoomable UIs (especially nice for touchscreen displays)
	2019	Flowy	a library for implementing flowchart editors with drag and drop
		tiptap	a nicely featured editor component for Vue.js
	2020	arwes	a React-based framework with a futuristic look and feel
		neutralino	a lightweight alternative to Electron
		plyr	a customizable HTML5 video player component
	2023	Yue	a cross-platform C++ library for writing desktop apps
	2024	mizu	a lightweight HTML templating library for any-side rendering with support for custom elements
		shadcn-ui	a nice-looking React component library
	2026	Zumly	a JavaScript library for hierarchical zoom navigation and structured zoomable user interfaces with pluggable transition drivers.
Web Frameworks	2024	Hono	another lightweight web framework, focusing on edge platforms
WebGL	2026	moebius-effect-threejs	Moebius/cel-shading effect implemented in Three.js using custom shaders — specular, diffuse, and outline passes for a stylised hand-drawn look

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/til/2026/05/20/2240?utm_content=atom 2026-05-20T22:40:00+00:00 2026-05-24T12:57:44+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com This is a little bit of follow-up to my MiniBook X review – I keep using it routinely (especially when we travel for leisure) and love the little thing to bits, but I’ve been wanting to run it mostly on power saving mode to reap the most benefit out of the hardware (and battery, of course), so I started looking at desktop environment alternatives.

Yes, I could already get a full afternoon (and then some) out of it, but Apple Silicon has spoiled me as far as battery life expectations go, and GNOME has a little bit too much baggage for that kind of extended use.

Since I spend 90% of my time on it writing or coding and still have a penchant for keyboard-driven desktops, I initially switched to Fedora Sway Atomic (gotta love being able to swap environments with a single command…), but later installed Niri and Noctalia Shell because I really like both the idea of a scrolling window environment and the sheer polish of the whole thing–even if there are some rough edges here and there.

I am very happy with it, and writing plugins for it is trivial:

The one thing that annoyed me to no end, though, was locking on suspend, which Noctalia Shell should do but apparently doesn’t in Fedora, so I had to resort to two hacks:

The first was adding a switch-events block to the Niri config to trigger the lock screen when the lid closes:

switch-events {
    lid-close {
        spawn "qs" "-c" "noctalia-shell" "ipc" "call" "lockScreen" "lock"
    }
}

The second was setting up a swayidle systemd user service to lock after 5 minutes of inactivity and suspend after 10:

[Unit]
Description=SwayIdle Service
After=graphical-session.target

[Service]
Type=simple
ExecStart=/usr/sbin/swayidle -w \
    timeout 300 'qs -c noctalia-shell ipc call lockScreen lock' \
    timeout 600 'qs -c noctalia-shell ipc call sessionMenu lockAndSuspend'
Restart=on-failure
TimeoutSec=30

[Install]
WantedBy=graphical-session.target

This last one feels extremely gauche and I hope to find a better way, but I guess this comes with the territory. I don’t really care about having a trendy Wayland desktop (I just want a dead simple one with a bit of polish), but I hope this kind of hacks won’t be necessary for much longer.

Oh, and of course I set gsettings set org.gnome.desktop.wm.preferences button-layout 'close,minimize,maximize:appmenu' to match macOS decorations.

Field	Category	Date	Link	Notes
	Diffusion Models	2026	GenCAD	Image-conditioned CAD generation using transformer contrastive representations and diffusion priors (TMLR 2025).
	Tools		remove-ai-watermarks	CLI and library to strip visible (Gemini) and invisible (SynthID, C2PA, EXIF) AI watermarks from images
3D Rendering	NeRF Tools	2022	nerfstudio	A tool for manipulating Neural Radiance Fields (NeRF) and rendering the scenes out as video
Diffusion Models	Image Generation	2026	Sana	Efficient high-resolution image synthesis with linear diffusion transformer — fast 4K generation on laptop GPUs
Gaussian Splatting			ml-sharp	Apple’s ML-SHARP (Sharp Learned Attention Reduction and Pruning) framework
	Web Interface	2026	ml-sharp-web	Web playground for creating Gaussian Splats using Apple’s SHARP model.
General	Tools	2024	upscayl	an AI-based image upscaler
Generative AI	3D Asset Models	2025	Hunyuan3D-2	a 3D textured asset generation model
	Diffusion Models		miniDiffusion	a minimalistic implementation of diffusion models in Python
	Frame Prediction		FramePack	a next-frame (next-frame-section) prediction neural network structure that generates videos progressively.
	Image Generation Models		Lumina-Image-2.0	Another image generation model
	Video Diffusion		TurboDiffusion	A video diffusion acceleration framework claiming 100-200x end-to-end speedups (SageAttention/SLA/rCM)
	Video Generation Models	2024	HunyuanVideo	A pretty impressive open source video generation model
	Web Interface	2025	gpt-image-1-playground	a simple web-based interface for generating images using GPT-IMAGE-1
Image Generation	Apple Optimization	2022	CoreML Stable Diffusion	Apple’s optimizations for CoreML
	Apps	2025	wavespeed-desktop	A desktop application for generating images that also supports Z-Image
	Diffusion Acceleration	2024	NitroFusion	a high-fidelity, fast (single-step) SDXL diffusion model
		2022	Fast Stable Diffusion	Another tactic to accelerate inference
	Implementations	2026	flux2.c	A pure-C FLUX.2 implementation with optional BLAS/MPS acceleration and zero Python dependencies. Focused on efficiency and portability.
		2025	z-image-turbo-mlx	A high-performance implementation of Z-Image using MLX acceleration
			z-image-mps	An optimized implementation of Z-Image for Apple Silicon using MPS
	Tools		AmazingZImageWorkflow	A comprehensive workflow for generating images using Z-Image
	Vector Graphics		NeuralSVG	An Implicit Representation for Text-to-Vector Generation
	Web Interface	2022	Stable Diffusion WebUI	Nearly always the best, bleeding edge WebUI for SD
Multi-modal Models	Samples	2024	ml-mgie	instruction-based image self-editing
Multimodal AI	Vision Language Models	2026	MLX-VLM	package for inference and fine-tuning of Vision Language Models and Omni Models on Mac using MLX with support for images, audio, and video
Stable Diffusion	Apps	2023	swift-coreml-diffusers	Hugging face’s own app, using Swift and CoreML for Apple Silicon
		2022	Draw Things	Pre-packaged app for iOS, downloads and allows re-use of .ckpt files.
			DiffusionBee	Pre-packaged app for macOS (M1 and Intel)
	CGI	2023	Blender-ControlNet	A Blender plugin to generate ControlNet inputs for posing figures
		2022	dream-textures	A Blender plugin for texturing models based on a text description.
	Implementations	2023	OnnxStream	Stable Diffusion XL 1.0 Base on a Raspberry Pi Zero 2 (or in 298MB of RAM)
	Libraries	2024	sd4j	a Java library for Stable Diffusion that uses ONNX
	Models		SDXL-Lightning	an SDXL flavor that works on only a few steps
		2023	Upscale Model Database	Too wide a choice, perhaps
	Reference	2024	comflowy	a set of reference workflows and documentation for ComfyUI
			flux	minimal inference examples for FLUX.1 models
	Tools		comflowyspace	a ComfyUI desktop wrapper
		2023	ComfyUI-AnimateDiff-Evolved	An AnimateDiff integration for ComfyUI
			ComfyUI	pretty impressive node-based UI
			InvokeAI	A polished UI
			stable-diffusion.cpp	stable diffusion inference on the CPU, in pure C++
			ComfyUI-Manager	A component manager for ComfyUI
			Opendream	A layer-oriented, non-destructive editor
		2022	imaginAIry	Works well on Apple Silicon, pure CLI interface to all SD models. Does not reuse .ckpt files, however, so requires separate disk cache.
Upscaling	Video Enhancement	2025	video2x	a tool for upscaling videos using RealESRGAN and other models

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/3d/printing?utm_content=atom 2012-05-18T23:30:15+00:00 2026-05-19T15:54:57+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com I bought a Prusa kit on October 2014, and have been merrily twiddling its various bits over the years with considerable delight, since it’s a nice, slow(ish) hobby.

I’ve since been using quite a few more printers, and this page has a few resources I’ve found useful.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
CAD	2025	Chili3D	a 3D CAD application for online design
Guides	2014-07	Troubleshooting Pictorial Guide
		Calibration Guide
		Print Quality Troubleshooting Guide
Management	2016-07	OctoPi	My current solution for both submitting jobs and minding the printer remotely using a Raspberry Pi
Slicing	2015-02	Slic3r	A Perl STL to gcode translator
		Cura	The nicest slicer software for the Mac.
	2025	AutoForge	a Python Hueforge helper
		S4_Slicer	a generic non-planar slicer that uses the S3 algorithm
		Kromacut	an open-source Hueforge alternative
Tools	2014-07	RepRap Utilities	A bunch of tools to do useful calculations
	2023	FusionGridfinityGenerator	a Gridfinity plugin for Fusion 360
	2024	Spoolman	A spool manager for OctoPrint and Klipper/Moonraker
	2025	Skapa	generate 3D printable models for IKEA SKADIS pegboards
		PrintGuard	a local AI print failure monitoring system that can run on a Raspberry PI 4
	2026	tracefinity	generate custom Gridfinity bins from tool photos with local or Gemini-assisted tracing
Viewers	2014-07	thingiview	JavaScript STL file viewer

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/apps/tailscale?utm_content=atom 2024-03-28T17:30:00+00:00 2026-05-19T06:30:09+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Tailscale is a centrally-managed overlay network VPN service that provides seamless connectivity across your devices no matter where they reside, with a few interesting features:

• Support for direct access to other LANs (and outbound Internet connections) via “exit nodes”
• Support for every single operating system I use (including both major mobile platforms)
• Ability to run an exit node on the Apple TV
• Availability of an alternate central management service.

I have been using it for a couple of years as a way to remotely access my home machines (and other stuff) when traveling, and have been very happy with it.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Server	2024	headscale	a self-hosted Tailscale control server
Tools	2026	tailsnitch	a security auditor that scans tailnets for misconfigurations and risky access controls
		microlink	a Tailscale-compatible VPN client for ESP32 with Wi-Fi and cellular support
UI	2024	trayscale	a system tray icon for Linux desktops
		tailscale-systray	another system tray icon for Linux desktops

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/05/18/1320?utm_content=atom 2026-05-18T13:20:00+00:00 2026-05-18T14:54:22+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com I know this blog has strayed a fair distance from its Mac-centric origins, but I’ve been keeping a mental list of all the things that are broken, missing or inexplicably neglected in Apple’s software, and it’s gotten long enough that writing it down feels like a public service¹.

This isn’t about Liquid Glass or grand design failures–those are well documented elsewhere. This is about the small stuff. The papercuts that, individually, you learn to live with, and collectively make you wonder whether anyone at Apple actually uses their software.

Despite the somewhat surprising length of this post after stitching together all the notes, I’m actually focusing on the things I hit every week (not trying to put together an exhaustive catalogue), and others will have their own lists–and that’s part of the problem.

Apple Mail is the first app open every day and the one I find hardest to defend, and I’ve been defending it for twenty years (longer if you remember the original NeXT mail client).

The broader story is one of abandonment. Mail.app used to be extensible–there was a plugin API that third parties used to build genuinely useful tools (GPGMail, SpamSieve, Act-On, all manner of filing and productivity helpers), and I used it to, among other things, have HJKL keybindings.

Apple deprecated that API, replaced it with a (much more restrictive) MailKit surface in 2021, and proceeded to lock MailKit down so hard that barely anyone shipped an extension.

And then they quietly stopped mentioning it. The result is that Mail is now less extensible than it was in 2010.

In particular, in this age of desktop AI agents, I come time and again across the fact that AppleScript support in Mail has been left to rot. I wrote about getting raw message source via AppleScript years ago, and even then it was a workaround for missing functionality.

Today the dictionary is unchanged, the bugs are unchanged, and the “Apply Rules” menu option–which used to let you re-run rules on selected messages–no longer works consistently on multiple selections, if it works at all.

And searching for messages is such a mockery of a user experience that I’m not even sure how to describe it–suffice it to say that it never searches solely inside the folder I’m in and that it often fails to find messages that I know are there, even with the most basic criteria.

And then there are the basics that have simply never arrived on iOS:

• There is no way to filter messages on an iPad. Not “limited filtering”–none. You cannot create a rule, you cannot sort by sender, you cannot batch-select by criteria.
• Smart folders don’t exist on any iOS version (no, the stupid Categories thing doesn’t count). They’ve been on the Mac since… 2004?
• And, of course, there is no way to have Mail rules sync from the Mac to iOS. For a company that talks endlessly about ecosystem coherence, this is bizarre.
• Download progress is opaque. When Mail is pulling thousands of messages from an IMAP server, the feedback is either nothing or a tiny spinner.
• Apple Intelligence in Mail amounts to a summary button that occasionally produces useful one-liners.

There’s no smart filing, no suggested rules, no priority inbox–nothing that would actually reduce the cognitive load of managing email. Gmail had most of this a decade ago.

I wrote an entire blogpost about how bad it is these days, and if I had the patience, I could probably write twice as much.

But I’ll just add that the performance is abysmal if you have thousands (or millions) of small files, and that things like asimov (or manually setting the right extended attributes manually for excluding development folders, something I routinely forget to do) shouldn’t exist, because it should work properly in the first place:

• It should have much more transparent progress indications
• It should never fail silently
• It should recover gracefully from failures
• It really should suggest automatic exclusions and have a proper UI that is not “Add this huge top-level folder” for exclusions

Again, this isn’t rocket science. I installed Borg Backup the other day on some of my Linux VMs, and it is so good that it defies explanation how Apple still hasn’t gotten this right.

Craig Hockenberry recently wrote up an experience that captures the problem perfectly: his iPhone’s Spotlight index corrupted, search stopped working across App Library, Mail, Notes, Messages and Settings, and after trying every remedy he could find online–forced restarts, language changes, toggling Siri, developer mode reindexing–the only “fix” was a full device backup and restore.

Which took hours, broke Apple Pay, reset FaceID for two dozen apps, wiped TestFlight builds, and generally made his life miserable for days.

On the Mac, rebuilding the Spotlight index is a one-line terminal command that somehow I keep not memorizing despite needing it once a month. On iOS, that affordance doesn’t exist.

“It just works, my ass” was Craig’s summary, and it’s hard to improve on it.

Search on iOS is slow, inconsistent, and returns incomplete results across every app that relies on it. On macOS it’s marginally better but still loses to most third-party tools, solely because Spotlight completely made a mess of the user experience and Finder, well, can’t even find itself sometimes.

This, again, is something that I come across every single time I need to manage personal time, and that is essential if we want any form of serious AI assistants to work (or integrate with Apple stuff).

But I’ll cut right to the point: the Calendar app has barely changed since iOS 7, and the parts that have changed are worse.

• Event metadata parsing is broken. If someone sends you a calendar invite with a video call link, Calendar will sometimes pick it up, sometimes not, and sometimes create a phantom “location” that’s actually a URL fragment.
• There’s no way to see a compact list of upcoming events without also seeing the full calendar grid.
• Calendar sharing within a family is functional but graceless.
• CalDAV support is just… not there. It sort of works, but ever since Apple decided to move both Calendar and Reminders to CloudKit (or whatever), all you will get (for Reminders, at least) are the leftover entries that they left in the store before the migration.

Oh, and need I mention that Siri is terrible at calendar operations, including the extremely basic “at what time did my wife book dinner”?

I know. Most of the parts about some apps above are also about automation, and I did post about this in my Siri for Families piece, but it deserves a dedicated entry because in this age of Codex and Claude being able to control your desktop, it rankles.

• Shortcuts actions break between OS versions. Not occasionally–routinely.
• AppleScript is unmaintained, and despite what I wrote earlier, is now presumed dead.
• There is no cross-platform automation story whatsoever. No, Shortcuts is not useful there, save for the laudable exception of being able to use my iPhone to automate switching watchfaces (which is something very few people are likely to use).
• Accessibility sort of works, but it is so clunky in practice that some of the workarounds I’ve seen implemented in Claude and Codex border on the hilarious.

The bottom line, for me, is that Siri Shortcuts integration is shallow compared to what Android offers through intents, or what Windows offers through COM automation (or even Win32, which surprisingly still works so well that it took me 15 minutes to do an agent tool).

In keeping with Apple’s inability to make the iPad truly useful, iOS has no hypervisor support today–it was removed in iOS 16.4, and nothing has effectively replaced it since. The result is that you can’t run a Linux VM on an iPad, and you can’t run Docker containers on it either, which means that the entire ecosystem of local LLMs, coding agents, development environments and monitoring tools that I rely on for work and play is completely inaccessible on the iPad.

macOS has had Hypervisor.framework since… Yosemite, and Apple Silicon Macs run Linux VMs beautifully–but on iPad and iPhone, the entire concept doesn’t exist, and we are forced to run half-assed emulators like ios-linuxkit (which I’ve been banging on for a month as a way to prove my point).

This matters to me because a huge amount of the software I use daily–local LLMs, coding agents, development environments, monitoring tools–runs in containers or lightweight VMs. I can do all of this on an EUR 50 ARM board running Linux. I cannot do any of it on an EUR 1,400 iPad Pro with an M4 chip, without jumping through hoops to get AltStore to run on it so that UTM can pretend it has proper virtualization.

I know that Apple doesn’t care about this now that they feel buoyed by the MacBook Neo’s runaway success, but I am actually looking forward to trying out a GoogleBook solely because Google has reasonably decent support for running Linux userlands on ChromeOS and Android, and I want to see how that compares to the iPad’s non-existent support.

I could possibly write a book about this by now, considering that I’ve been at this for many, many years. HomeKit could be so much better, but it is also a part of the Apple experience where the gap between promise and reality is most painful.

Yes, Matter is coming, etc., etc., but a new protocol will never solve any of the shortcomings of the Home app:

• Scene chaining doesn’t exist.
• If-this-then-that logic is barely functional.
• Presence detection is flaky and not granular enough for room-level logic.
• There is no scripting layer. Shortcuts can trigger HomeKit actions, but HomeKit automations can’t call Shortcuts.
• Adaptive lighting is half-baked.
• Multi-home support is a mess.

I’ve papered over most of that with Node-RED and Homebridge, and of course Home Assistant can do all of the above, but, again, my main point is that it shouldn’t need to exist for people who’ve bought into the Apple ecosystem.

At this point, Apple should just buy Homey and can their entire HomeKit stack.

The Watch deserves its own entry because it’s the device where Apple’s failure to prioritise timekeeping is most absurd, and with the rebirth of Pebble, I was reminded of how awesome smartwatch UX can be and how Apple never even got close.

In particular, the “Smart” Stack (the thing you get when you swipe up from the bottom) is never aligned with what I actually want to see, or what is up on my calendar.

The Pebble’s timeline view remains the high-water mark for watch UX–one button tap, chronological day view, no widget carousel.

Apple’s Calendar app on the Watch tries to replicate the iPhone calendar grid on a 45mm screen, which is about as useful as reading a newspaper through a keyhole.

A watch should be the single best device for time-aware context. Instead of building a timeline, Apple built a widget carousel.

I once spent a week building a CalDAV client to talk to iCloud Reminders and Calendar, and the experience was a masterclass in Apple’s backwards-compatibility approach: it works, except when it doesn’t.

• Newer Reminders lists silently migrate to CloudKit and disappear from CalDAV entirely.
• Apple Notes is completely gone from IMAP–all content is now behind CloudKit’s protobuf CRDT format, which Eric Migicovsky recently reverse engineered
• Calendar event recurrence expansion doesn’t work properly through CalDAV.
• App-specific passwords are required if you want to have third party clients sort of work, but limitations are documented nowhere.

The pattern mirrors a lot of my gripes about the original iCloud services: Apple builds new infrastructure, migrates data silently, leaves old APIs running but progressively useless, and provides no supported path for third-party access.

Yes, it got updated recently. No, it is neither good nor fast nor consistent when you use vim daily, and that is why I use Ghostty. Like a lot of other core Mac tools, I have feelings about it, some of which I cannot express politely.

I write Swift because I have to, not because Apple makes it easy.

The language itself has been through enough breaking revisions that code from three years ago often won’t compile without changes. SwiftUI is worse–views that worked on iOS 17 already behaved differently on 18 and now seem broken in 26, and the abstraction leaks the moment you need anything beyond a list and a navigation stack.

The result is a UI framework that feels modern in tutorials and feels like debugging a black box in production. I’ve lost count of how many times I’ve had to drop to UIKit to work around a SwiftUI layout bug that, once I start searching for it, I realize has been reported for years and yet nobody at Apple acknowledges.

And then there’s the $99/year developer fee, which Apple charges you for the privilege of running your own code on your own hardware. Not to publish on the App Store–just to run an app on a device you already paid for. The certificate expires annually, and if you don’t renew, your sideloaded apps stop launching. In 2026, on hardware I own, I need a subscription to run my own software.

The App Store itself is a whole separate set of papercuts–review delays, opaque rejections, the 30% cut, the inability to distribute updates outside the store–but those are well-documented grievances.

The one that gets me is simpler: the entire developer toolchain assumes you are building a product for sale, not a tool for yourself. Xcode doesn’t have a “just let me run this on my phone” mode that doesn’t involve provisioning profiles, entitlements, and a certificate chain.

Until I started using Codex, every personal project started with ten minutes of ceremony. Now I never even open Xcode.

I still have an iPhone 6 in a drawer, and every time I pick it up I’m reminded of what a phone that fits in your hand actually feels like. It’s delightful to hold–thin, light, one-handable without gymnastics, and the screen is perfectly usable for everything I actually do on a phone.

Every iPhone since has been bigger, heavier, and harder to use one-handed, and the Max/Plus variants are actively hostile to anyone with normal-sized hands or normal-sized pockets. Apple keeps making the screens taller and the bezels thinner, but the fundamental ergonomic regression–that phones stopped being things you hold comfortably and became things you grip–has never been acknowledged, let alone reversed.

The iPhone SE was the last concession to people who wanted a small phone, and Apple killed it. The Mini lasted two generations before being quietly shelved. The message is clear: you will hold the slab and you will like it.

Every one of these is fixable. Most have been fixable for years. The pattern isn’t technical inability–it’s neglect.

Apple has the engineers, the money, and the platform control. They’ve chosen not to, repeatedly, and I suspect writing about it won’t make any difference, but as someone who has been using Macs since the System 6 days and writing about OSX here since the very beginning, I like to keep a scorecard.

And right now, it’s neither looking good nor reassuringly future-proof, unless, of course, you happen to love Liquid Glass.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Books	2020	Fundamentals of Piano Practice	Lots of pracice tips (and tuning of physical pianos)
DAWs		Non	a lightweight DAW for Linux
	2020-01	Waveform Free	free DAW that runs on Linux (including the Raspberry Pi)
	2022	Ardour	A cross-platform Open Source DAW that runs on ARM64
		Qtractor	A Linux DAW based on Qt
		Reaper	A cross-platform Open Source DAW that runs on ARM64
	2023	DawDreamer	a Python environment that allows you to host and run VSTs
		zrythm	a cross-platform DAW
DIY		picoTracker	An RP2040 hardware tracker (PCB)
Editors	2021	MuseScore	likely the best open source music score editor out there
Environments	2022	Glicol	an interesting music language with a Rust audio engine as back-end
	2024	Csound	a music programming language
		glicol
	2025	Strudel	a music programming language that runs in the browser
Hardware	2023	PicoADK-Hardware	a RP2040 based Audio Development Kit with 32 Bit Audio Output.
	2024	MicroDexed-touch
		Tulip Creative Computer	A MicroPython-based ESP32 synth and sequencer that also has a desktop simulator
	2025	pico-midi-looper	a MIDI looper based on the RP2040 that supports Bluetooth MIDI
Instruments	2019-12	Layers	free orchestral music VST
	2020	minibit	a VST for chiptune instruments
		SunVox	a cross-platform modular synth that includes a tracker
	2020-05	Zebralette	free VST
		PianoBook	Free downloadable EXS24 and Kontakt sampled instruments (mostly pianos)
	2021	Surge	a pretty popular free VST for Mac, Windows and Linux
	2022	sfzinstruments	Various public domain instruments in SFZ format
	2023	GrandOrgue	a sample-based church organ simulator
		vmpc-juce	an MPC emulator front-end writte in JUCE
		visualtracker	an open source modular sequencer with graphical user interface based on Pure Data
		Triple Cheese	a free VST synth
		Pendulate
	2024	WaveTracker	a new open source tracker for Windows (and Linux/WINE) that uses wavetable synthesis and sampling
	2025	OB-Xd	a free VST synth that emulates the Oberheim OB-X
		Diapasonix	an interesting RP2350 based instrument
		terpstrakeyboard	a virtual microtonal keyboard webapp
Libraries	2023	popsicle	a Python library that tries to wrap JUCE
		pedalboard	a Python library for working with audio, also with VST support
		webaudiofont	A browser-based GM set of musical instruments
	2026	mahler.c	a small C99 library for Western music theory covering intervals, chords, scales, and key signatures with enharmonic correctness
Patches	2021	MobileMusic Pro Free Packs	covers multiple iOS apps
		PatchStorage	Patches and samples for a number of iOS apps, including Moog synths.
		Northern Film Orchestra Orchestral Swells	a set of orchestral samples for Kontakt and DecentSampler
Resources	2025	awesome-strudel	a set of strudel compositions
Samples	2020	BBC sound effects	copyrighted but free for personal/educational use
	2021	FreeSound	Creative Commons licensed samples and loops
	2023	sampled	A collection of sampled instruments, loops and impulse responses with open licenses
	2024	SoundFonts4U	a collection of SoundFonts
Scores	2019-06	El Atril	free sheet music
		Mutopia	Free classical and contemporary sheet music
	2020	IMSLP	The Petrucci Public Domain Music Library
		The Mayron Cole Piano Method	has a number of simple piano scores for kids
Sequencers	2022	Ossia Score	a sequencer for audio-visual artists, designed to create interactive shows leveraging DMX, OSC, MIDI, etc.
	2023	Midinous	a node-based MIDI sequencer for generative music
	2024	seq24	A family of minimalist MIDI sequencers
Synths	2020	Vital	MPE support
	2021	Ensembles	a FluidSynth-based arrangement workstation for Linux
		MT-32 Pi	a baremetal MIDI synthesizer for the Raspberry Pi 3 or above, based on Munt, FluidSynth and Circle.
		Bespoke Synth	a cross-platform software modular synthesizer with a node-based UI
	2022	MicroDexed	Dexed for the Teensy 3.x/4.x microcontroller
		MicroDexed-touch	Dexed for the Teensy 4.x microcontroller, with a touchscreen UI, a sequencer and a tracker
		MiniDexed	Dexed running on baremetal Raspberry Pi
		teensy-juno	a Teensy 3.x/4.x-based polyphonic synthesiser, modeled after the Juno 106
		sfizz	A sample based VST instrument that takes SFZ files
		Helm	a free cross-platform software synth that can be used as a VST
	2024	Cardinal	a plugin based on VCVRack
	2025	Amy	a music synthesizer library for microcontrollers
Tools	2019-06	Musical Chord Progression Arpeggiator
	2020	NeuralDX7	a neural network that generates DX7 sysex patches
		ADLplug	a VST that provides a number of FM synth plugins to emulate YMF26XX chips
		RNNoise VST	no builds for macOS
		stochas	a plugin/VST for stochastic pattern generation
		Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard	useful for monitoring device or as a source image for video overlays
		Blue Cat Freeware Plugins	a set of free VST/AUs for both Mac and Windows, including a frequency analyzer
	2021	alda	a text-based programming language for music composition
		Elk Audio OS	A Linux distro with a low-latency kernel and Raspberry Pi support for audio HATs
		nanostudio-2-sample	SFZ to Obsidian patch converter
		pianoplayer	a fingering generator for sheet music
	2022	JJazzLab-X	Automatic backing track generator
	2024	Patchbox OS	a Raspberry Pi OS for audio projects
		midihum	MIDI humanisation with machine learning
	2025	norns.el	an Emacs interface for developing on the Monome Norns
	2026	miditui	Interactive terminal DAW with mouse-enabled piano roll/timeline, per-track mute/solo controls, insert-mode composing, soundfont playback via rustysynth, autosave, and WAV export.
Trackers	2022	deflemask	another tracker, also available for iOS and Android. Has very little MIDI capability and no Audio Unit support.
		schismtracker	a reimplementation of Impulse Tracker
		furnace	another modern tracker for macOS, Linux and Windows
	2023	nitrotracker	A Fasttracker II style tracker for the Nintendo DS
		bintracker	a cross-platform chiptune music tracker written in Chicken Scheme
		PLEBTracker	a terminal-based tracker
		furnace	a multi-system chiptune tracker
	2024	LittleGPTracker	a fork of the original LGPT
	2025	nitroustracker	a Fasttracker II-style tracker for the Nintendo DS
Tutorial	2021	Learning Music	One of Ableton’s great online tutorials on the basics of electronic music
		Learning Synths	Another Ableton online tutorials on the basics of electronic music

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/notes/2026/05/17/2120?utm_content=atom 2026-05-17T21:20:00+00:00 2026-05-17T21:20:00+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com The weather has gone a tad cloudy again, which provided me some relief from my allergies–but not enough for proper overnight rest, so yet again I arrived at Friday afternoon totally exhausted.

Still, the early mornings were pretty decent to get some writing and coding done, and my sinuses are indeed marginally better.

Despite having wasted hours of my week trying to get my homelab back into shape, I still managed to churn out ios-linuxkit and polish the default terminal app a bit (it now has nicer theming, font settings and external folder mounts), and I’ve been instrumenting the emulator to do hot-block statistics and adding a proper profiling layer for deciding on future optimizations.

And I have picked up a few apps to test it on. The first is Terax, a little “AI terminal emulator” written in Rust and Tauri, which works pretty well (with a few bugs due to the different ways it uses PTYs):

Code will be up soon–I want to do a bit more testing and polish both the integration and the UX, since Tauri made a bit of a mess of the iPad layout.

I’ve been neglecting my ARM64 SheepShaver build, but I did find the time to fiddle with the Cydintosh code–I got it to build for the displays I had a few weeks back, but the resistive touchscreens were so awful that I immediately decided to order capacitive (and bigger) ones:

I’m still playing around with these in my own fork, and will have a bit more to share soon.

Thanks to a colleague of mine, piclaw is getting a new “visual” UI–and yes, I know what it reminds you of. It’s great, and it will be the default for the upcoming desktop builds, which will be a good test of my patience for packaging and testing stuff.

I should probably have spent less time at a computer this weekend, though…

These live here so the main Agentic Systems page can focus on frameworks, platforms, and infrastructure.

Field	Category	Date	Link	Notes
	Skills	2026	image-blaster	Image-to-world skillset for Claude; analyses images and generates structured world descriptions.
Code Agents			SwiftUI Expert Skill	SwiftUI expert guidance covering modern APIs, state management, performance, and iOS 26+ Liquid Glass patterns
			threejs-skills	Three.js skill files for Claude Code covering core APIs, geometry, materials, lighting, loaders, shaders, postprocessing, and interaction
			framedex	a local-first Claude Code skill and CLI for indexing video archives with sidecar descriptions
			Humanizer	Claude Code skill that rewrites AI-sounding text to read more naturally using Wikipedia-based writing anti-patterns
			hyperframes	an HTML-based video rendering framework/skill built for agents
			visual-explainer	an agent skill that turns complex terminal output into styled self-contained HTML pages with interactive Mermaid diagrams
Prompting			baloney-detection-kit	Drop-in prompt/skill that applies a 6-step critical thinking protocol (Sagan, Karpathy, Lifton, Popper) to counter LLM agreeableness bias

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/ai/agentic?utm_content=atom 2025-12-23T10:00:00+00:00 2026-05-17T18:54:18+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Notes and resources on building and operating agentic AI systems, covering orchestration frameworks, task routing, memory, and evaluation approaches that extend baseline LLM capabilities.

Reusable instruction packs, workflow recipes, and prompt modules live in Agentic Skills.

OpenClaw-specific projects and lightweight variants live in OpenClaw Ecosystem.

Pi.dev is the home of the Pi coding agent and its ecosystem of extensions, adapters, and clients. See the Pi.dev Ecosystem page for the curated project list.

Field	Category	Date	Link	Notes
	Tools	2026	zerostack	Minimalistic coding agent in Rust, optimised for low memory footprint and performance.
Agent Frameworks	Frameworks		liteagent	minimal Python async agent loop ported from pi-mono, exposing streaming, steering, follow-ups, and sequential tool execution on top of LiteLLM.
			HVE Core	enterprise prompt engineering framework for GitHub Copilot with constraint-based workflows, validated artifacts, and RPI methodology
		2025	FlashLearn	a simple interface for incorporating Agent LLMs
			agno	a lightweight library for building Multimodal Agents
			crewAI	framework for orchestrating role-playing, autonomous AI agents (multi-agent automation)
			AgentKit	build multi-agent networks in TypeScript with deterministic routing and rich tooling via MCP
			Agent Framework	Microsoft open-source agentic framework
	Samples	2026	Cloudflare Agents Starter	starter template for building AI chat agents on Cloudflare Workers with tools, scheduling, and real-time streaming
	Tools		Agent Lightning	training and optimization toolkit for AI agents across frameworks
Agent Knowledge	Frameworks	2025	firm	an ontology framework for structuring agent knowledge about businesses
Agent Memory	Tools	2026	beads	a distributed, git-backed issue tracker and memory system experiment for AI agents
			claude-mem	a persistent memory compression system for Claude Code with search tools
		2025	AgenticMemory	a tool for creating and managing memory in LLMs
			letta	a tool for creating and managing memory-backed agents
Agent Platforms	Platforms	2026	Rivet	Actor-based agent platform that bundles state, storage, workflows, scheduling, and WebSockets into self-hostable Rust binaries or managed cloud runtimes, letting each agent run as a persistent, stateful primitive with built-in persistence and tooling.
		2025	HelixML	an interesting enterprise-grade agentic platform with tools for integration and observability
			Sim	open-source platform to build and deploy AI agent workflows
	Tools	2026	OpenYak	open-source desktop AI assistant that runs locally with MCP support, for file management, data analysis, and office automation without cloud uploads.
Agent Systems	Frameworks		Squad	AI agent teams for any project, built in TypeScript.
		2025	pixelagent	an agent engineering blueprint
		2024	pipecat	yet another LLM agent framework
	Samples		TinyTroupe	a multiagent persona simulation
	Tools	2026	CallMe	minimal Claude Code plugin that calls your phone/watch via Telnyx or Twilio (plus OpenAI/ngrok) when a task stalls or needs your input
			baudbot	always-on, Slack-connected multi-agent dev assistant that runs tasks end-to-end on Linux
			OneCLI	credential vault and HTTP gateway for AI agents that stores secrets once, injects them transparently into outbound API calls, and keeps raw keys out of agent context.
			Pinchtab	HTTP browser-control bridge that lets any agent drive Chrome via a compact, stealthy API, with snapshot/text modes, token-efficient read flows, and persistent sessions
			rtk	Rust Token Killer CLI proxy that compresses command output before it reaches your Claude Code session, saving ~60‑90% of LLM tokens on git/status/test workflows with ultra-compact summaries and hook-first install.
			gogcli	CLI for Google APIs (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Chat, etc.) with OAuth credential management, headless flows, and JSON/TSV/compact output modes tailored for agent interactions and automation.
			Argus	VS Code extension that discovers Claude Code sessions, visualizes costs/performance, and surfaces rule-based findings to debug and tune agentic workflows without leaving your editor.
		2025	R2R	production-ready AI retrieval system for agentic RAG via a REST API
		2024	plandex	yet another long-running agent tool for complex coding tasks
		2023	Auto-GPT	an attempt to provide ChatGPT with a degree of autonomy
Code Agents	Samples	2026	TinyProgrammer	A Raspberry Pi device that continuously writes, runs, watches and reflects on small Python programs using an LLM
		2025	amplifier	a technology demonstrater for agentic coding
		2024	devlooper	a program synthesis agent that autonomously fixes its output by running tests
	Tools	2026	kimi-cli	CLI tool for interacting with the Kimi AI assistant
			Godogen	Claude Code pipeline (using two cooperative skills) that converts plain-language game descriptions into complete Godot 4 projects with generated art, code, and visual QA via screenshot analysis.
			ATLAS	A local coding assistant and test-time inference pipeline that wraps frozen Qwen models in self-verified repair and benchmarking infrastructure
			axe	lightweight CLI for defining focused LLM agents in TOML and running them from the terminal, pipes, cron jobs, CI, or git hooks with skills, memory, and sub-agent delegation.
			Sidecar	terminal UI for agentic development workflows with git, task, workspace, and conversation management
			tui-use	A PTY automation tool that lets AI agents drive REPLs, debuggers and full-screen TUI apps from the terminal
			Codex CLI	OpenAI’s lightweight agentic coding CLI for the terminal
		2025	Toad	a unified terminal UI to run coding agents via ACP
			goose	a local AI agent focused on development tasks
			quibbler	a critic for coding agents that can also work as an MCP
			mistral-vibe	Mistral’s agentic coding CLI
Developer Resources	References	2026	Context7	a curated database of context for several development stacks
Personal Assistants	Tools		nanobot	an ultra-lightweight personal AI assistant with multi-provider support
			Sitegeist	browser-sidebar AI assistant for Chrome/Edge that collaborates on web automation, extraction, navigation, form filling, and research using your own model/provider credentials with local-first data handling.
Research Agents	Samples	2025	STORM	LLM-powered knowledge curation system that researches a topic and generates a full-length report with citations
		2023	gpt-researcher	a simple agent that does online research on any given topic
	Tools	2026	autoresearch	Autonomous research harness that lets Claude/Codex agents edit train.py, run 5‑minute training passes, and iterate on models via human-written program.md instructions, logging each experiment the next morning.
Sandboxing Environments			amla-sandbox	A WASM-based sandbox with capability enforcement for running agent-generated code safely. Provides isolation without Docker and reduces tool-call overhead.
			Agent Safehouse	macOS sandbox-exec wrapper that builds deny-first policies for Claude/Codex/AMP workflows so coding agents only touch the files and integrations they need.
			yolobox	a containerized sandbox for running AI coding agents safely
			nah	context-aware safety guard for Claude Code that classifies tool calls, blocks or confirms dangerous actions, inspects reads/writes for secrets and exfiltration, and can optionally consult an LLM for ambiguous cases.
			Capsule	a secure runtime for orchestrating agent tasks in isolated WASM sandboxes
			shuru	local-first microVM sandbox for AI agents on macOS using Apple’s Virtualization.framework
			Cua	A sandboxing toolkit and agentic platform for running agents in isolated environments. Covers Docker, QEMU, and Apple Virtualization for benchmarking, safe code execution, and UI automation.

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/05/16/1130?utm_content=atom 2026-05-16T11:30:00+00:00 2026-05-19T06:24:32+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com I’m done waiting for Apple to fix things. And one of the things I think should exist is a decent way to run Linux binaries on my iPad.

And after almost six months messing about with ARM emulation in various forms, I can finally do something about it.

Put bluntly, the lack of hypervisor support on iOS should be an embarrassment to Apple–an EUR 1400 iPad Pro with an M4 chip can’t run Docker, can’t run a VM, can’t do any of the things I do daily on an EUR 50 ARM board. Apple has the hardware support, the kernel entitlements, and has chosen to keep it locked away.

ios-linuxkit is my answer to that, or at least as much of an answer as you can get without Apple’s cooperation. It’s a Linux runtime for iOS that provides a working AArch64 userland on iPhone and iPad–shells, compilers, package managers, language runtimes, the lot–without JIT, without RWX memory, without MAP_JIT, without any of the things Apple won’t let you have.

The base is the ish-arm64 branch of iSH, which implements a threaded-code interpreter (they call it “Asbestos”) that translates ARM64 Linux instructions through precompiled gadget dispatch. No runtime code generation means no App Store policy violations, which means it can actually ship. The trade-off is performance–you’re not getting native speed, you’re getting “fast enough for a shell and some compilers.”

It’s fast in human terms, although my use of Go and Bun mask a lot of the underlying limitations.

The timing comes down to converging interests: I have been deep in emulation land since the holidays, and even though the ish-arm64’s “gadget” emulator is quite a different beast from the naïve block-level JITs I’ve been bolting onto BasiliskII and SheepShaver, I have been developing all of them on the Orange Pi 6 Plus board I have been testing for a few months, so they share roughly the same approach:

• Bolt on a VNC server (or an emulated console) so I can connect to it from my iPad
• Build out several test harnesses (build, base smoke tests, tracing harnesses and automated application testing)
• Figure out what to do (this is the hard part, and I’ve learned quite a bit across the various emulators)
• Figure out where it breaks (Go, Java, etc.) and why
• Hand out the drudgery (like test runs and automated fixes) to a piclaw instance in clearly defined piecemeal specs so I get nice reports and debugging output I can review in a clean web UI

I wouldn’t have had the time or energy to do this without Codex, but I certainly wouldn’t have been able to do it without the Orange Pi as a test bed. Having an ARM 12-core SBC with 16GB RAM I could devote to this, despite a tad constraining (I would have preferred 32 so I could run more builds and test matrices concurrently) was a major enabler here.

The fork started as a bring-up exercise, but has turned into something more focused: making the runtime stable and tested enough that you can actually develop on it. The current validation gate has 82 core tests passing on Alpine ARM64, with workload coverage across Go, Rust, Bun, Node, Python, Java, Zig, and a few others.

And since I’ve seen quite a few people trying to run AI coding agents on iOS, there’s a separate set of AI CLI harness tests that installs, runs and does cursory tests on most current agent tools (spoiler: Claude Code was a complete and utter pain to get to run. Everyone else’s mostly “just worked” after a few cycles of JS runtime/kernel call cleanup passes, theirs was just broken).

The harness testing is AI-driven–I pointed piclaw at it with a custom gdb skill and let it grind through failures, fix them, and re-run. The strategy is mine (which syscalls to prioritise, what the “gadget” fixes should look like, where to invest in performance), but the mechanical detection/fix loop is the kind of thing that would have taken months by hand.

Because I think it is a thing that should exist, yes, but also because I want to run things like gi (which is still WIP) on my iPad.

Especially Go binaries, which never ran in the original iSH. And despite my love for remote sessions, I don’t want to run all of it on a server, nor via a UI proxied from somewhere else–I want to do some of it locally, in a terminal, with my workspace on the device.

Bun, V8 and Go work. Alpine’s apk means I can easily get pretty much every single CLI tool I need to work too, without the compromises a-Shell (which I still love, by the way) imposed. And since I have been hacking away at my own flavor of Ghostty in rcarmo/ghostty-web, I was able to swap the dated iSH terminal with something that looks right.

It’s not fast (well, it is, much faster than the original, but not native fast). It’s not a replacement for HyperKit on iOS (if we ever get it back). But it’s mine, I can fix it and make it faster to some degree, and works for me.

And since I have zero intention of bringing it to the App Store myself (or even paying Apple $99 for the privilege of running it on my own hardware without plugging my iPad into my laptop weekly, which is something the EU should really ding on Apple for), I am going to maintain it and add more fixes, keeping it open source so that other people can build better, more polished tools.

You’re welcome.

Update, May 19: I’ve since ported Terax, an AI “terminal” to it and have started poking at the Asbestos emulator to see if I can both speed it up and fix a few more corner cases around Go compilation, which is still very slow.

Field	Category	Date	Link	Notes
Generative Audio	Models	2023	bark	a text-prompted genereative audio model
Speech Agents	Tools	2026	RCLI	an on-device Apple Silicon voice agent for macOS that combines STT, local LLM inference, TTS, 38 local actions, and document RAG in a low-latency TUI/CLI.
			dograh	Open source voice agent platform.
		2025	Asterisk-AI-Voice-Agent	An Asterisk-based AI voice agent project integrating telephony with voice AI workflows.
Speech Recognition	Libraries		WhisperKit	a Swift package that integrates Whisper with Apple’s CoreML
	Models	2024	WhisperLive	a real-time text-to-speech system based on Whisper
			moonshine	a family of models optimized for fast and accurate automatic speech recognition on resource-constrained devices. Designed to run efficiently on smaller hardware.
		2023	distil-whisper	a distilled version of whisper that is 6 times faster
		2022	whisper.cpp	a C++ implementation of whisper that can run in consumer hardware
			whisper	a general purpose speech recognition model
	Tools	2026	TypeWhisper	A macOS dictation and transcription app that can use Apple’s speech stack as well as other local on-device engines, with optional prompt-driven post-processing.
			Handy	An offline, cross-platform speech-to-text app built with Tauri that transcribes locally. Uses Whisper and Parakeet models without sending audio to the cloud.
			Ghost Pepper	a 100% local macOS hold-to-talk speech-to-text menu bar app with WhisperKit transcription and local LLM cleanup.
			dictate	a Go-based local voice-to-text tool for Linux terminals that streams whisper.cpp transcription to stdout, files, or keystroke injection for dictating into focused terminal apps.
		2024	audapolis	an editor for spoken-word audio with automatic transcription
		2023	insanely-fast-whisper	An opinionated CLI for audio transcription
	Transcription Tools	2026	buzz	A cross-platform Whisper desktop app that works quite well on the Mac (including speaker diarization)
		2025	OpenTranscribe	an open-source all-in-one recording transcription and diarization stack
Speech Synthesis	Implementations	2026	pocket-tts.c	A minimal, dependency-free C scaffold for Pocket-TTS, aimed at CPU-only TTS. Includes a tiny CLI in the flux2.c style.
	Models		sopro	a lightweight text-to-speech model
		2025	csm	a speech generation model from Sesame that generates RVQ audio codes from text and audio inputs.
			Orpheus-TTS	an open-source text-to-speech system built on Llama-3b
			chatterbox	a text-to-speech model that can generate expressive speech with a variety of styles and emotions.
		2024	ChatTTS	a text-to-speech model designed specifically for dialogue scenarios, with decent prosody
			Real-Time-Voice-Cloning	a PyTorch implementation of a voice cloning model
			WhisperSpeech	a text-to-speech system built by inverting Whisper
		2023	StyleTTS2	A text to speech model that supports style diffusion
			silero-models	Multi-language neural text-to-speech models
	Resources		Training a voice for piper TTS	a detailed walkthrough of how to customize a voice model
	Tools	2026	Voicebox	an open-source voice cloning studio with DAW-like features, local-first voice synthesis powered by Qwen3-TTS, multi-track timeline editor, and REST API
			pocket-tts	A lightweight text-to-speech (TTS) application designed to run efficiently on CPUs that supports voice cloning
		2025	voice-pro	a toolkit for doing speech processing and voice cloning
			abogen	a tool for generating audiobooks from text using the Kokoro open weights model
			edge-tts	a text-to-speech module that leverages the Microsoft Edge TTS API
			podcastfy	a tool for generating podcasts from text
		2024	OpenVoice	a tool that enables accurate voice cloning with multi-lingual support and flexible style control.

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