Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats
Full Stack Developers Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski dive deep into web development topics, explaining how they work and talking about their own experiences. They cover from JavaScript frameworks like React, to the latest advancements in CSS to simplifying web tooling.
1041: What are normies using AI for?
Scott and Wes talk about how non-developers are actually using AI today. They also cover the stuff they don’t think holds up, like AI-staged listings and automated marketing.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:38 Welcome to Syntax! Wes’ post about using AI 01:50 Finding Parts With AI: Van Buckles and Weird Bolts 03:59 Brought to you by Sentry! 04:37 Fixing Printers, Drivers, and Annoying Home Network Stuff Skylight Calendar 05:32 Rescuing E-Waste: Flashing a Broken Skylight Calendar 08:42 Red Tape, Permits, and Filling Out Awful PDF Forms 09:57 Self-Hosting Made Easy: Updating Your NAS and Docker Containers 11:18 Fighting Home Assistant Rot With Agents 13:20 Inbox and...1040: Developing for the iPhone Duo
Scott, Wes, and CJ break down developing for the iPhone Duo with the Device Posture and Viewport Segments APIs, plus the React 19.3 release and Pi’s new Radius platform. Also on deck: Tailwind joining Shopify, Shopify going back to native, Homebrew 7, Aeropeek, and Meta’s Muse Agent.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:05 React 19.3 05:30 Pi announces Radius 15:26 iPhone Duo Initial Reactions iPhone Duo for developers 22:35 Developing for the iPhone Duo Viewport Segments API Device Posture API WebKit Standards Positions Jen Simmons’ post 32:16 Syntax Meetup in SF 32:52 Brought to you by Sentry! 33:10 Tailwind Labs is joining Shopify 35:36 Native is the...1039: Should You Quit Your Job?
Scott and Wes dig into a listener mailbag full of AI questions: how to bill freelance work when the tools make you faster, whether coding still matters in interviews, and if the AI bubble is about to pop. Plus sandboxing your agents, managing block-based CMS chaos, and what it takes to leave a stable job when you’re risk averse.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:09 Freelance Billing in the Age of AI: Who Gets the Speed Savings? 04:33 Value Based Pricing and Leveling Up Your Skills 06:37 Will Writing Code Become Irrelevant in Job Interviews? Ghostty, Superlogical Better Au...1038: OpenAI Releases GPT 6 Astra
Wes and CJ dig into OpenAI’s GPT‑6 Astra; the massive jump in computer use, the wild Blender MCP 3D demos, and whether all the AGI talk actually holds up. Plus Hugging Face’s robot duck, Vitest 5 and the arrest behind the shai‑hulud supply chain attacks
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:52 30 Years of JScript: How Microsoft Cloned JavaScript 03:28 Ryan Dahl’s Fight to Free the JavaScript Trademark 05:48 The Rise of Micro Ducks and DIY Robotics 13:58 VeriSign Is Killing Third Level .name Domains 18:31 How Many Domains Do You Own? Registrar Pricing and Transfers 21:00 GPT-6 Astra Is Here: Is T...1037: WebMCP is here (and you should care)
Scott and Wes talk about WebMCP with Sarah Drasner and Dominic Farolino from the Chrome team, which is the new W3C standard that lets your site hand real tools to an agent. They cover the security model, headless and multi-tab agents, and how to wire it into an app you’ve already shipped.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:46 Welcome to Syntax! 01:18 What Is WebMCP and How Is It Different from MCP? 02:32 WebMCP for UI: Enabling Agents to Use Websites Directly 06:05 Brought to you by Sentry! 06:43 Is This Just a Chrome Thing? W3C Standards and Open Development 11:49 We...1036: Cursor & OpenAI Break Up
The messy breakup is official; as of November 12, OpenAI's models are getting pulled from Cursor, and we're digging into who's really to blame (and why Wes called it). Plus pnpm 12 goes full Rust, Mitchell Hashimoto drops Superlogical, ~700 AI agents attack Hugging Face, and Zod 4.5's compiled schemas get up to 9x faster.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:33 pnpm 12 Rust Re-Write 02:45 Zod 4.5 brings Schema Compilation Zod 4.5 launch post 05:22 Brought to you by Sentry! 07:14 Cursor OpenAI Break Up Michael Truell’s post 15:35 vGPU - WebGPU library for agents TypeGPU Main differences between vgpu and TypeGPU 22:32 Om...1035: Why everyone is moving to Stylex?
Meta’s StyleX compiles thousands of styles into a few reusable class names at build time—zero runtime, fully type-safe. Scott and Wes break down why it’s suddenly everywhere, and why it might be the best CSS tool for AI agents.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! Syntax Ep 650 San Francisco Syntax Meetup 02:18 What Is StyleX and How Does It Work? 04:27 The Difference Between StyleX and Other CSS Scoping Methods 06:03 What People Are Saying: StyleX Is Superior for AI Agents Jared Palmer Adam Hutchinson Aiden Bai Syntax Ep 658 11:30 Type Safety and Design System Constraints 12:46 No Runtime Depend...1034: Omarchy Quattro Release
Grokbot actually earns its keep, Cursor takes a swing at GitHub with Origin, and Omarchy Quattro ships pre-wired for nine coding agents. Plus: the GitHub outage post-mortem, a compromised Rust crate, native app vibe-coding with Dactyl, and CAD skills for your AI via nurb.dev
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:26 Brought to you by Sentry.io 00:37 Grok’s New Agentic App: Grokbot 12:51 GitHub’s Major Outage and Postmortem 16:42 Cursor’s Origin: A GitHub Competitor 22:59 Omarchy: The Linux Distro for Nerds 29:21 CachyOS: Another Arch-Based Alternative 31:12 The $10 Million Omarchy Foundation 34:54 Dactyl: Native iOS and Android Development in the Browse...1033: 8 New CSS, JS and HTML Features You Should Know
Scott and Wes run through eight new CSS, JS, and HTML features landing in browsers; including the relative alpha() color function, the progress() function for calculating values between units, Promise.allKeyed(), and native camera and microphone elements. They also get into an upgraded attr(), shrink-to-fit containers, and text-box-trim for finally killing that annoying extra space above your text.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! Wes’s Demo Site 00:22 CSS Alpha() Relative Color Function Google Groups 02:25 Brought to you by Sentry.io 02:48 CSS CSS Progress() Function: Calculate Values Between Units 05:09 Promise.allKeyed(): Object-Based Promise Resolution 06:55 Camera and Microphone HT...1032: Stripe Buys OpenRouter for $7B
Scott and CJ break down Stripe's $7B acquisition of OpenRouter, the SvelteKit 3 release candidate, and their first look at TanStack Charts. Plus Zed's new Delta editor, stealing reasoning traces from proprietary LLM APIs, why dark mode toggles only need two states, and all 43 quintillion Rubik's cube states in your browser.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 02:20 SvelteKit 3 Release Candidate 07:43 Video editor recs Casey Faris 09:58 TanStack Charts First Look TanStack Charts TanStack Charts implementations of every official shadcn/ui chart 14:24 Ponytail AI Tool 17:22 Zed Delta Editor Introducing Delta 23:44 Stripe acquires OpenRouter for $7B+ 29:27 Stealing Reasoning...1031: My Coding Skills Are Atrophying
Scott and Wes answer your questions about coding in the AI era, atrophying skills from too much autocomplete, whether it’s finally time to leave VS Code, chasing flow state with agents, and which single AI subscription is worth your money. Plus: AT Protocol vs Solid, making your AI config portable across tools, and bringing Shadcn-level UX to server-rendered frameworks.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:57 AI-Generated Code: Are My Skills Atrophying? 06:03 Is It Time to Move On from VS Code? 13:19 Hitting Flow State with AI Coding See Wes’ Post on X 19:15 AT Protocol vs Solid: Decentralized Web...1030: AI Assistant Hacks Gym
An AI assistant goes rogue and hacks a gym website, a $9k surprise Cloudflare bill lands in someone’s inbox, and AI subscriptions start promising unlimited usage. Plus Meta’s Muse Glimmer, Agent Plugins, Kimi K3 in Copilot, and a pile of CSS chaos.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 02:30 Celld: self host distributed durable objects 07:57 $9k Cloudflare Bill 13:43 Ogygia - SSR islands for SvelteKit 18:49 Brought to you by Sentry.io 19:51 Standard Code - Unlimited Use AI Subscription 29:17 New Meta Model Muse Glimmer 36:12 AI Assistant Hacks Gym 46:49 This Week in AI 54:50 Prime Agent RLM harness 01:01:02 Agent Plugin Spec...1029: The Workflow of the Future With Zed
Nathan Sobo joins Scott and Wes to explain why Zed was built in Rust, how GPUI works, and what happens to editors once agents write most of the code. They also talk about DeltaDB, Zed’s new Git-compatible version control system, and Delta, the collaborative agentic editor it powers.
Show Notes
00:00 Start 00:35 Welcom to Syntax 01:13 The Journey to Zed: Building the Ultimate Tool 03:26 Why Rust was chosen for Zed? 06:29 Brought to you by Sentry! 07:07 Building a UI from scratch in Rust GPUI 15:55 AI’s role in coding and development 18:42 The role of text editors in the age...1028: Cloudflare Wallets
Cloudflare is rolling out crypto wallets with claimable handles as identity, and a real React compiler finally landed for regular hooks-based code. Plus: OpenAI's pricing war, Vue Vapor benchmarks, GitHub's new npm malware scanning, and an active supply chain attack hitting 868 packages.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:02 Shai Hulud is back! New Shai-Hulud announcement Attacked keyv packages 05:27 GitHub scans your npm packages for malware 06:42 Your agent has a wallet now Make your own Cloudflare wallet announcement blog post X402 payments 12:10 Yet another React compiler? Ripple.ts Inferno.js Dominic Gannaway’s launch post Oc...1027: The Rise of the Design Engineer
Scott and Wes tackle your questions on the rise of the design engineer, why AI still lacks “taste” (and why it’s about more than just looks), and how to actually write tests in the age of AI-assisted coding. Plus: is AI a bubble about to burst, keeping coding agents efficient in massive codebases, introducing kids to AI, a Linux life update, and more!
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:18 The Rise of the Design Engineer Role 08:39 Why AI Has No Taste: It’s Not Just How It Looks 14:28 Brought to you by Sentry.io 14:52 Testing in the AI E...1026: OpenAI Agent Hacks Hugging Face
A rogue OpenAI agent allegedly hacks Hugging Face, the React Compiler lands in Rust, and a fresh Rust full-stack framework ships. Scott, Wes, and CJ also dig into Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement, Claude Opus 5, and the campaign to kill the cookie banner.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:03 React Compiler Ported to Rust 06:39 Vercel releases TS to Native Compiler 19:26 Standard Agent Zen Garden 29:14 In-House LLM at Netflix 34:14 Brought to you by Sentry.io 35:15 Anthropic to pay $1.5B over book piracy 38:06 Open Weights and American AI Leadership 40:27 Kimi K3 Weights Released 44:26 Claude 5 Context Engineering 45:40 Writing Code For Ag...1025: The Open Web's second chance (w/ Dan Abramov)
Dan Abramov joins Scott and Wes to explain AT Protocol, the open standard quietly rebuilding the social web. They get into how it actually works, why it’s way bigger than just Bluesky, and why Dan calls it one of the most interesting ideas on the internet right now.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:45 Welcome to Syntax! 01:46 Introduction of Dan Abramov 02:55 Understanding AT Protocol and Its Importance 06:41 The Relationship Between AT Protocol and Bluesky 08:22 Identity and Hosting in AT Protocol 11:29 Brought to you by Sentry 11:54 Use Cases for AT Protocol 13:08 How Content is Managed in AT Protocol 19:12 Public Da...1024: Open Models Replace Big AI
A huge week for open models: Inkling (the first big US open-weight model since Gemma 4), Qwen 3.8, and Kimi 3 all dropped. Plus Vue 3.6 RC + Vapor Mode, the slow death of Stack Overflow, a decoy font that blinds AI, and the usual grab bag of fun links.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:44 Welcome to Syntax 03:01 Vue.js 3.6 RC Released Vue.js 3.6-RC.1 09:50 Brought to you by Sentry 10:35 Rift - new worktree alternative Rift Explaining Rift tweet 17:46 Every new browser feature MDN Plus Browser features updates CSS ’text-fit’ property 23:09 Kimi K3 Released Kimi K3 release tweet Kimi K3 blog post Openrouter effe...1023: Mosh, Caddy & Tailscale: A Remote Dev Deep Dive
Running your dev process off your main machine doesn’t have to mean the cloud. Scott and Wes break down how to host projects on a box you can reach from any device, close your laptop mid-build, and keep long-running processes alive. They cover Scott’s stack (Mosh, Caddy, Tailscale, Zed, and terminal AI agents like Claude Code), the annoyances of mobile TUIs, and whether it beats staying local.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:36 Welcome to Syntax! 01:56 Benefits of Remote Development 07:50 Process for Remote Development 09:34 Tech Stack for Remote Development Mosh instead of SSH Caddy for domains and rout...1022: Bun re-written in Rust, Zig team big mad
CJ and Scott break down the biggest week in web dev: TypeScript 7 ships with a 10x-faster native port, Bun gets rewritten in Rust (much to the Zig team’s dismay), and Better Auth joins Vercel. Plus GPT-5.6 first impressions, Odin 1.0, Cloudflare’s new Workers cache and drag-and-drop deploys, and the OpenCode 2 beta.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:21 CJ upgraded his homelab network 02:09 TypeScript 7 is 10x faster 11:19 Bun Rust rewrite drama Zig creator criticizes rewrite 28:18 GPT 5.6 Impressions Ashley Peachock on X Matt Shumer on X 40:58 Better Auth Acquired by Vercel 49:51 Grok Build CLI is stealing your code Inte...1021: We got addicted to an AI model we can't talk about
Dax Raad, co-founder of OpenCode, joins Scott and Wes to talk remote dev servers, OpenCode 2.0, and why his team is “addicted” to AI models they’re not even allowed to name yet.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:43 Welcome to Syntax! 01:22 Remote Development Environments and Their Benefits Dax’s post Latitude.sh exe.dev 06:24 The Setup: Tmux and Long-Running Sessions 07:15 Brought to you by Sentry! 08:12 Integrating AI with Personal Projects 11:21 Open Code 2.0: Features and Improvements 17:15 Software Engineering Methodology and Design Philosophy 21:33 Model Routing and AI Integration 23:58 The Evolution of AI Models 26:23 Comparing Open Source and Proprietary Models 28:27 Cost Implications of AI Mo...1020: Do You Read The Code?
Auto-accept on, brain off? We’re getting into whether anyone actually reads the code they ship anymore — then it’s HTTP’s first new method in 16 years (meet QUERY) and OpenAI’s compute-hungry “Sol Ultra” tier landing in Codex. Bring your hot takes and hang out with us live.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:31 Welcome to Syntax! 01:44 World Cup Chat 03:21 Do you read the code? Theo’s take Primeagen’s take Dax’s take notch’s take David Fowler’s take David Cramer’s take 16:50 Query: NEW HTTP Method RFC 10008: The HTTP QUERY Method The new HTTP QUERY method explained 22:39 G...1019: LGTM, Ship It: The AI Code Review Problem
This episode tackles the growing pains of AI-assisted development, from the struggle of reviewing thousands of lines of agent-generated code to the mounting technical debt when teams merge PRs without meaningful human review. Scott and Wes also dig into local models, whether jujutsu really beats git, how freelancers should price work in the AI era, and getting your team on board with external libraries.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:45 Understanding AI-Generated Code 06:24 The Challenges of Code Review in AI Development 11:21 What the heck are local models? CJ’s Guide to Local AI 16:09 Exploring New Tools: Jujutsu an...1018: Google fires Workspace CLI Creator
Google fires the engineer behind its Workspace CLI tool, OpenAI previews GPT-5.6 with three new model tiers, and Astro 7 lands with a full Rust rewrite. Plus: Coinbase cuts token costs with smarter routing, and more in this week’s Syntax Live
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:34 Welcome to Syntax! 01:46 Google fires Workspace CLI Creator 12:30 GPT 5.6 Is Coming 19:59 GLM 5.2 Released 23:23 Astro 7 Rust Re-write 32:46 Cursor Announces iOS App 35:08 Scott’s Workflow: Herdr + Mosh + Termius + Tailscale 40:33 Coinbase Reduces AI Cost with Model Routing 44:22 wayfinder-router - Local AI Routing CLI 48:16 Token efficiency in models and harnesses Martin Woodward on X 52:34 performativeUI - reac...1017, We need to stop calling it “AI”
Scott and Wes raid the listener mailbag to settle the pnpm vs. npm debate, decode how web standards sneak into your browser, and ask the big one: is “AI” even intelligent, or just fancy autocomplete? Plus Stack Overflow nostalgia, the Shadcn head-scratcher, and why big design systems are sleeping on modern HTML.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:44 Welcome to Syntax! 01:51 Exploring CSS Component Approaches 07:30 Brought to you by Sentry 08:09 The Advantages of PNPM over NPM 12:31 Nostalgia and Growth through Stack Overflow Wes’ Stack Overflow Scott’s Stack Overflow 19:13 The Evolution of Podcasting and Video Content 23:34 Understanding the Proposal Process...1016: More Bots Than Humans
Wes, Scott, and CJ break down the latest web dev news. From AI agents and coding tools to Deno Desktop, Nub, and predictive UX. They also discuss bot-filled social media, remote work debates, and a slick 3D bookstore experience.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:35 Welcome to Syntax! 01:43 Codex Design Smell 03:55 More Bots Than Humans Bot vs Human Post-smoke test software era 12:38 Social Media Is Nothing But Bots 19:55 Brought to you by Sentry 20:38 Vercel Launches Agent Framework Introducing Flue Flue Introducing eve eve 36:14 We Want Local AI Agents 47:22 Deno Desktop Deno Desktop App 01:01:40 Nub Replaces Bun Introducing Nub Nub 01:06:04...1015: Browsers and UIs are dead. Everything is chat
Is the web dead, or just evolving? Wes Bos breaks down his JS Nation Amsterdam talk on agentic interfaces, why chat won’t replace everything, how Web MCP lets agents interact with your existing sites, and what “Clicks and Clankers” really means for the future of UI.
Show Notes
00:00 Intro 00:33 Welcome to Syntax! 00:46 Wes’s Talk: Agentic Interfaces at JS Nation 01:37 Is the Web Dead? Chat vs. Traditional UI 03:13 No UI, Voice UI, and the Smart Home Vision 04:00 What Is Web MCP and How It Works 05:10 Clicks and Clankers: When to Click vs. Prompt 06:57 The Future of Shopp...1014: Anthropic doesn’t use AI
Scott, Wes, and CJ reunite fresh off a trip to Amsterdam to chat conferences, burnout, and whether Anthropic actually uses AI. They also dig into a packed bag of sick picks and tech news, including HTML streaming in Chrome, an image-to-ASCII generator, and a wild Arch Linux supply chain attack.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 02:15 Anthropic Doesn’t Use AI Thariq’s Tweet Tweet Response 06:15 Taste and Vision in Prompting Output 10:50 Wes and Scott’s Slide Decks 18:05 Amsterdam Trip Recap 26:09 Are Conferences worth it? 27:21 Amsterdam Trip Recap 31:17 Fable 5 First Impressions 33:45 Fable 5 and Mythos 5 Banned 41:45 IRL Events Are Gr...1013: Cloudflare Acquires VoidZero
Live at JSNation in Amsterdam, Scott, Wes, and CJ break down Cloudflare’s acquisition of VoidZero, the company behind Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, and Oxc. They dig into why this is genuinely exciting, not scary, covering what it means for the open source tooling you already use, Cloudflare’s growing tip-to-tail stack, and why infrastructure might be the one thing LLMs can never sherlock
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! Live from JS Nation Amsterdam 00:35 The Big News: Cloudflare Acquires VoidZero 01:06 First Reactions: Is This a Good Thing? 01:57 Vite+ Overview: Who’s Using It 03:07 Why Would Cloudflare Want This? ...1012: Who Decides What Ships on the Web?
Scott and Wes sit down with Jake Archibald from Mozilla to unpack how web standards actually get made at Firefox. From browser features and developer feedback to the drama around the Prompt API. They discuss Interop 2026, the future of web APIs, and what it’s really like shaping the web after a career spanning both Google and Mozilla.
Show Notes
00:00 The Importance of Sunscreen 02:29 Welcome to Syntax! 04:35 Transitioning from Google to Mozilla 06:00 Brought to you by Sentry.io 06:43 Mozilla’s Current Position and Development Priority HTML Sanitizer API 08:35 Feature Implementation and Developer Feedback 13:12 JPEG XL and AVIF...1011: tmux + Terminal Maxxing with Ben Vinegar
Scott and Wes sit down with Ben Vinegar, former Syntax GM and founder of Modem.dev, to geek out over terminal-maxxing, from SSH-based development and tmux workflows to AI-powered coding agents. Ben also demos two of his open source tools: Hunk, a slick terminal code reviewer with 4k+ GitHub stars, and TermDraw, a terminal-based diagramming tool that posts directly to your agent.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:49 Introduction to Modem and AI Project Management 01:40 Exploring Terminal Usage and Productivity 04:26 Setting Up Remote Development Environments 08:38 The Power of TMUX in Development 11:20 What makes TMUX splitting different? 12:46 Integrating...1010: No one cares anymore?
On this episode, Scott and Wes dig into the messy reality of modern front-end work, from struggling to find skilled devs and navigating team chaos to questioning code quality, testing, and even whether AI is stealing the joy of programming.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax 01:06 The Challenge of Finding Skilled Front-End Developers 05:11 Understanding Design Mode and Its Applications 10:33 Navigating Team Dynamics and Code Quality 12:37 The Importance of Testing Strategies 13:39 Learning and Growing as a Developer 18:11 Consolidating Multiple Animation Libraries 21:16 Draw UI with Code Only 22:38 Avoiding Interview Scams 26:40 Embracing Change in Tech Careers 32:21 Why People Don’t Do...1009: 54% AI-Generated and Climbing — State of AI
Scott and Wes react to the freshly released State of AI 2026 survey, covering everything from skyrocketing AI adoption and the rise of coding agents to the pain points, job security fears, and big philosophical questions developers are wrestling with right now.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:06 Introduction to the State of AI in Web Development 02:47 Survey Insights: AI Coding Adoption and Sentiment 06:55 Models and Providers: Usage and Sentiment Analysis 09:14 Paid Agent Usage: Who’s Paying for What? 11:31 Agents and Assistants. 15:21 Personal Experiences with AI Tools 20:33 Paid Agent Usage 22:36 Programming Languages: Trends in AI Coding 23:54 Image Generation To...Diffs, Trees, and VS Code 2.0
Scott and Wes sit down with Alex Sexton and Amadeus De Marzi from Pierre Computer to dig into the gnarly performance challenges behind building blazing-fast code review tools, covering virtualization, progressive rendering, and why GitHub’s UI feels so sluggish. They also chat about how major AI coding tools like Claude, Codex, and Cursor are adopting Pierre’s diffs library, plus the role of web components, benchmarking, and what it takes to build “VS Code 2.0.”
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 04:00 The Need for Better Infrastructure 05:53 Understanding Diffs and Trees diffs.com Trees by the Pierre Computer Co 08...1007: 8 Tech Choices to Lock In Before Agentmaxxing
Wes and Scott talk about the foundational decisions that make AI-assisted coding actually work—database schemas, validation, routing, CSS structure, and more. They explore why consistency matters more than specific tools, and how a little upfront planning can keep agents from turning your codebase into chaos.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 03:19 Planning your database schema before AI touches it 06:08 Picking a validation strategy that won’t drift 07:18 Mapping your routing structure and auth flow 08:48 Brought to you by Sentry.io 10:52 Locking in your CSS methodology and UI framework 13:31 Choosing how your client and server communicate 15:03 Creating a fo...1006: Can AI Make Good Design?
Wes and Scott talk about whether AI can actually create good design, or if it just remixes the same patterns over and over. They dig into AI-generated UX, design systems, YouTube thumbnails, Google’s design.md spec, programmatic design, and the tools designers are actually using today.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 03:20 Can AI actually make you creative? 08:52 Why AI-generated YouTube thumbnails all look the same 10:34 Can good design be extrapolated from patterns? 13:46 Google’s design.md and AI steering documents 16:57 Can AI make good UX? 19:37 Brought to you by Sentry.io 21:03 Can good design be prog...1005: Programatic and Skill based Video Creation with Remotion
Scott and Wes are joined by Jonny Burger, creator of Remotion, to talk about the explosion of programmatic video, going from 125k to 800k installs per day, and how AI and a new HTML-in-Canvas Chrome spec are changing the game. They dig into monetization, the wild world of video slop, motion graphics workflows, and the new Media Bunny tool.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! Remotion has skills! 02:20 Monetization Strategies and Sustainability Remotion Pro 04:40 The Impact of AI on Video Creation 07:46 User Demographics and Use Cases 09:49 The Future of Video Editing Workflows 13:14 HTML in Canvas: A Game...1004: TanHacked
Scott and Wes break down the “Mini Shai-Hulud” supply chain attack that compromised TanStack and other popular npm packages through a clever GitHub Actions cache poisoning exploit; a self-propagating worm that stole credentials and persisted through Claude Code hooks and VS Code tasks. They also cover how developers can protect themselves using pnpm’s security defaults, dev containers, and other practical defenses.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:25 Understanding the Shai-Hulud Worm Post Mortem of Shai Hulud Attack 02:47 Mechanics of the Attack: GitHub Actions and Cache How the attack happened Who Was Involved in the Attack Several npm la...1003: Skills Skills Skills
Scott and Wes chat all things agent skills for web developers, sharing their favorites for everything from CSS animations and HTML generation to logo extraction, marketing copy, and video creation. Whether you’re just getting started with AI-powered development or looking to level up your workflow, this episode is packed with practical skills you can put to use today.
Show Notes
00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:33 Hot Tip Skill 05:55 CSS Motion Systems 08:17 Agent Browser Skill 09:30 HTML Skill 12:01 Extract Logos Skill 13:34 Dex Task Skill 14:50 Remotion and Hyper Frames Skills Syntax Episode 550 with Remotion 16:22 Discussion on AI and Design Skills 18:50 Ma...1002: The Real Pricing of LLMs
In this potluck episode of Syntax, Wes and Scott answer your questions about LLM usage-based pricing, security risks from malicious code in interviews, staying current in a fast-moving dev landscape, a new CSS linter, managing Node environments and tooling without losing your mind, and more!
