Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

• EWatch: a programmable ESP32-S3 smartwatch

Nov 2, 2026 39 min

1051: Mourning the Death of Code

Show notes

Scott and Wes tackle your potluck questions, from passing context between Claude Code and Codex to whether AI-generated skills are any good. Plus high-fidelity Figma builds, WebSerial reconnects on an ESP32, AG-UI vs WebMCP, a listener who thinks Syntax is too pro-AI, and Scott’s minimal Pi setup.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

• Ask a Potluck Question

• 01:05 How Do You Pass Context When Switching Coding Agents?

• dex

• 06:40 Are AI Generated Skills Even Good?
• 11:53 Getting AI Agents to Nail High Fidelity Figma Designs
• 17:45 What Technical Skills Should I Focus On Without a CS Background?
• 20:50 Be Curious: The Photo Frame Hardware Business Example
• 25:13 Is Syntax Too Pro-AI? Responding to a Listener’s Criticism
• 30:55 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 31:38 Handling WebSerial Reconnects When Flashing an ESP32

• 34:57 Mourning the Death of Code: Feeling Guilty About Hard Won Skills
• 41:44 AG-UI vs WebMCP: Two Approaches to Agent Integration
• 47:12 Scott’s Pi Agent Setup: Start Minimal and Add What You Need

• omp

• 51:46 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Scott: Cat6 Ethernet Cables
• Wes: Wall-mount Boom Arm

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Oct 28, 2026 58 min

1050 - Everyone Is Hacking Their TV

Show notes

Wes, Scott, and CJ run through the week’s biggest web dev news: everyone’s hacking their TVs, VoidZero open-sourced its Void framework with Cloudflare deploys, OpenCode got hacked, and Anthropic built its own git replacement. Plus DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Cloudflare’s security audit skill, Krea 3, a local LLM speed tester, and Killswitch, an esoteric language designed to break coding agents.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
• 00:44 CJ Hacks a Round Thrift Store Photo Frame
• 02:18 VoidZero Open Sources the Void Framework
• 06:58 Jev Adds Image Support to Its Decision API
• 11:18 Local Security Cameras: Frigate and Custom Wyze Firmware
• 17:41 LLM Speed: Try Local Models Before You Buy Hardware
• 21:00 Everyone Is Hacking Their TVs With Clean Your TV
• 24:51 Are These the Final Days of Hardware Hacking With LLMs?
• 29:24 Reverse Engineer Everything: Skills for Agentic Hacking
• 31:42 Hacking a Tonal and Building a DIY Digital Resistance Gym
• 37:24 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 38:34 OpenCode Console Hacked: What Happened and Who’s Affected
• 41:31 Black Market API Tokens and Distillation Attacks
• 44:13 Should Everyone Get Access to Cyber Models?
• 47:48 Managing API Keys With Varlock and 1Password
• 48:45 Anthropic Builds Its Own Git Replacement
• 55:15 What Are We Losing in the Agentic Era?
• 01:04:26 Killswitch: A Programming Language Built to Break LLMs
• 01:06:53 Cheng Lou Turns JavaScript Code Into a Neural Net
• 01:09:30 Antfu’s Furigana Font for Reading Japanese
• 01:12:32 Guitoro: Strum a Guitar in the Browser
• 01:17:39 Playing Snake on Network Switch Lights

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Oct 26, 2026 1 hr 20 min

1049: WTF is a Software Factory?

Show notes

Scott and Wes talk with Adam Jacob about software factories: what they actually are, why they’re unique to each team, and how to build trust in agent-generated code. They dig into Swamp Club, black box testing, domain driven design, adversarial review for accessibility, and whether unit tests still earn their keep.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
• 01:10 What Is Swamp Club and Adam Jacob’s Background
• 02:37 Scott’s Personal Automations: Cleaning Folders and Filing Sentry Bugs
• 03:28 Where Does This Fit If You Already Run Claude Code?
• 07:22 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 07:46 Swapping Models and APIs: Flipping the Agent Loop Inside Out
• 09:40 Pricing and Bringing Your Own Inference
• 10:18 What Is a Software Factory, Really?
• 14:50 Shipping 2,500 PRs a Month: Trust, Automation, and Black Box Testing
• 16:55 Software Factory or Slop Factory? A Perception Problem
• 19:06 How Big Companies Can Start: Give Five People Permission to Break the Rules
• 24:16 Who Has Actually Pulled This Off So Far?
• 25:54 What Do You Do With 10,500 Engineers?
• 28:56 The Vibe Coded Adobe Suite: When Does This Stop?
• 30:24 Personal Software: What If Software Got Smaller, Not Bigger?
• 33:51 Testing With AI: Black Box, Integration, and Deleting Your Unit Tests
• 39:03 How Do You Validate Trust in a Factory?
• 39:30 Domain Driven Design Gives Your Agent a Vocabulary
• 43:12 Adversarial Review: Accessibility, Lighthouse, and Fixing the Machine
• 46:17 Why Skills Alone Aren’t Enough
• 49:00 Figuring It Out Together: Engineers, Not the Labs, Know Their Systems
• 53:53 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Adam: Dell XPS-14 running Linux with Omachy, Lorna Shore

Shameless Plugs

• Adam: Swamp Club, Swamp Club Discord

Hit us up on Socials!

• T4T5: AirDrop fully reverse-engineered on Linux

Oct 21, 2026 58 min

1048: Deno Is Dead

Show notes

Deno is shutting down and the team is heading to Cloudflare — Scott, Wes, and CJ break down what that means for the runtime, JSR, and workerd. Plus OpenCode 2.0 on durable objects, TanStack Start 1.0, SubQ Snap, Gemini 4 Argon, and Wes’s accidental $50 photo frame movement.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

• Gemini 4 Argon is out

• 01:31 Deno Is Shutting Down: The Team Joins Cloudflare
• 06:23 Why Bun Spelled the End of Deno
• 12:24 OpenCode 2.0: Durable Objects, Code Mode and Hot Reloading Plugins

• OpenCode 2.0
• Ryan Vogel runs OpenCode 2.0 inside a tweet

• 20:24 Where Should Your Agent Actually Run?
• 21:41 Talorys: A Personal AI Agent on the Cloudflare Free Tier
• 22:42 I Accidentally Started a $50 Photo Frame Movement
• 27:05 Agent Driven Open Source: Dozens of Pull Requests From Bots

• Simeon Griggs hacks his Peloton

• 35:11 SubQ Snap: A Cheaper, Smarter Decision Model Than Jev
• 41:26 AirDrop Reverse Engineered: Continuity on Linux

• 44:47 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 45:24 TanStack Start 1.0 Is Officially Stable

• TanStack announces Start 1.0 is officially stable
• fsearch
• FinderSearch
• Kuro: Tinycast file search is now 15–90× faster

• 55:23 The FFF vs fsearch Twitter Drama

• Dmitriy Kovalenko compares fff to fsearch

• 59:34 Model Roundup: Hands On With Gemini 4 Argon
• 01:08:01 Zen Garden: Ranking Models on Their 3D Taste
• 01:12:49 Muse Wonder From Meta

• Meta AI on Muse Spark open weights

• 01:15:15 EmbeddingGemma 2 and Why Embeddings Power Better Search

• Sundar Pichai introduces EmbeddingGemma 2

• 01:18:32 Claude Haiku 5.5 Gains Thinking Levels

• Claude announces Haiku 5.5
• Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5

• 01:20:19 Grok Bot Leaks a CEO’s Bank Balance Into Company Slack

• Shane Mac: An AI agent posted my bank balances in Slack

• 01:24:18 CJ’s Whirlwind Tour: A Commodore 64 Keycap Font
• 01:25:08 Lightbulb Computer: A Projector Screwed Into Your Ceiling
• 01:29:11 Recomps and Decomps: Running PS5 Games on Linux and Windows
• 01:32:23 Open Source Photoshop Clones and the Whole Craft Suite
• 01:35:25 Audacity 4 and the Case for Forking Old Open Source Apps
• 01:36:35 PS2 and PSP Games Recompiled to WebAssembly
• 01:37:39 Bootstrap 6 Alpha Brings Back Real Buttons
• 01:39:39 Wrapping Up the Live Stream

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Oct 19, 2026 1 hr 40 min

1047: Adobe has a big problem

Show notes

Someone just clean-room ported seven Adobe apps to Rust, and Wes is shocked at how good it is. Scott and Wes break down what it gets right, what’s still missing, and why copying software is easy but inventing what comes next is the hard part.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
• 00:12 Adobe Is in Trouble: A Clean Room Port of the Entire Suite

• ArtCraft

• 02:22 Scott’s Long Running Adobe Grudge Since 2017
• 03:42 Figma Is Not a Raster Tool: Why Every Alternative Falls Short
• 04:40 Opening Real Photoshop Files: Masks, Half Tones and Blend Modes

• PhotoCraft Github

• 06:30 What Clean Room Porting Actually Means
• 09:54 A Familiar Interface, Entirely Built in Rust
• 10:15 Don’t Trash the Whole Thing Over One or Two Bugs
• 12:14 What’s Missing: Artboards and the Tiny UI Interactions
• 13:53 Where Are the Vibe Coded Photoshops? Four Months Later
• 14:33 Figma’s Locked Down MCP and the Backlash
• 17:22 Dylan’s Clap Back at Anthropic’s Own Closed Ecosystem
• 18:08 The Real Photoshop Replacement Will Be a New Way of Working
• 21:35 Good UI Is Still the Moat
• 22:28 Caring About Your Project Past Two Days
• 23:05 Audio Crackles and Paper Cuts: The Bugs Only Humans Chase
• 24:56 Brought to you by Sentry!
• 26:28 Copying Is Easy: The Hard Part Is Inventing What Comes Next
• 27:28 DaVinci Resolve Keeps Shipping Useful Releases
• 28:26 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Scott: KWS V2 Rack
• Wes: Insta360 Luna

Hit us up on Socials!

• Cloudflare’s Programmatic configuration

Oct 14, 2026 35 min

1046: The Pi Updates are insane

Show notes

Scott, Wes, and CJ break down the latest Pi updates, including durable long-running agents, Codemode, and MCP support, then debate whether pull requests are dead in favor of issues. Plus Supabase picks up Turso, Screen Studio 4 drops, JavaScript Composites bring value-based equality, and a stack of new AI models from Google, OpenAI, Cloudflare, and more.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax Weekly
• 00:46 https://example.com/ gets a facelift

• Oliver Dunk’s post
• IANA’s reply

• 04:37 The death of pull requests

• Sindre Sorhus’ post
• Dave Kiss’ post
• SWC’s post
• Andreas Kling’s post
• Yusuke Wada’s post
• Wes’ NiimBlue PR
• JSON Alexander

• 12:46 pi v1.0
• 24:14 Brought to you by Sentry!
• 25:08 Turso Joining Supabase
• 28:13 Screen Studio Updates

• Screen Studio 4.0 upscaling

• 33:24 Svelte 3.0 Release
• 35:32 Effect 4.0
• 38:14 Alchemy

• 42:59 Foldkit
• 44:10 OpenAI Dev Day Announcements
• Dots
• Rahim Nathwani’s reply regarding Luna
• Plugin Extensions
• Sites in ChatGPT
• 56:40 Cloudflare Clef Decision Model
• 01:01:25 Gemini 4 Argon

• Google’s announcement post

• 01:09:04 Flux 3 Image Model
• 01:11:50 Claude Mods
• 01:13:44 Muse Gadgets

• Nat Friedman’s post

• 01:17:27 Nvidia Lyra 2.0 World Model
• 01:27:30 Game Recomps and Decomps
• 01:30:54 JS Composite Type
• 01:35:00 RFC 1149 Auction

• First implementation of the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol

• 01:37:49 eslint cssicorn
• 01:39:15 Syntax Meetup

Hit us up on Socials!

Oct 12, 2026 1 hr 40 min

1045: Who can actually max out 5 AI subscriptions?

Show notes

Scott and Wes answer listener questions about what replaced blogging, what to do while your AI agent works, and who should pay for token costs. They also cover keeping agents from going off the rails, getting your team excited about AI, and staying motivated when AI takes the fun out of coding.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Intro
• 00:40 Welcome to Syntax!
• 01:37 What’s the Modern Day Equivalent of Blogging?
• 08:35 What Should You Be Doing While Your Agent Works?

• Vibe Stretch

• 13:23 Brought to you by Sentry!
• 14:02 How Much Should Your Employer Cover for Token Spend?
• 18:32 Tracking What You Actually Burn with Codex Bar
• 20:26 How Do You Code HTML Emails in 2026?
• 25:22 How Do You Keep an Agent From Going Off the Rails?

• Swamp Club

• 30:23 Steering an Agent Mid Turn: Which Harness Does It Best?
• 32:44 How Do I Get My Engineers Interested in AI?
• 35:48 Beyond Telegram: Better Interfaces for Non Coding Agents
• 38:41 Staying Motivated When AI Takes the Fun Parts of Coding
• 41:55 Killing Rogue Node Processes and Restarting Your Machine
• 44:12 Custom Internal Harnesses: Worth It or a Token Hog?
• 47:47 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Scott: Driving Rogue
• Wes: Amazon Basics Electric Screwdriver

Hit us up on Socials!

Oct 7, 2026 52 min

1044: Ruby on Rails is Dead

Show notes

Scott, Wes, and CJ ask whether Ruby on Rails is really dead (and whether Rust is just Rails you don't have to read), then dig into Meta's new Muse agent, which is free, comes with its own VM, and is already reading messages nobody asked it to. Plus: upm, a tiny TypeScript npm replacement, Opus 5.5 moonlighting as a motion designer, Tart VMs on Apple Silicon, and a foundry for gloriously bad web fonts.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome
• 01:11 upm is a tiny fast npm

• Pooya Parsa’s launch post

• 07:34 Zuck cooked with Muse

• Mark Zuckerberg’s post
• Safety and Security in Muse
• Privacy concerns
• Ray Wong’s post

• 19:21 Ruby on Rails is Dead
• 27:55 loco - Rails for Rust
• 31:06 Brought to you by Sentry!
• 33:12 How should new developers learn?
• 41:40 Opus 5.5 First Impressions

• Stephan Livera’s motion graphics with Opus 5.5
• Kenn Ejima’s single prompt motion graphics
• Andras Bacsai’s Coolify motion graphics
• Tyler Shukert’s Supabase motion graphics
• Ben Vinegar’s Modem motion graphics
• Wes’ gym builder
• GFX

• 58:27 Tart - virtualization toolset for Apple Silicon
• 01:01:43 jevgrep

• is-jeven

• 01:06:49 SHOW ME YOUR RACK
• 01:09:04 Chrome gets responsive iframe resizing
• 01:10:25 Bastardica - bastard web font foundry
• 01:14:23 Sonnet 5.5 Released
• 01:16:37 OpenAI Dev Day
• 01:20:02 Syntax SF Meetup

Hit us up on Socials!

Oct 5, 2026 1 hr 21 min

1043: I’m Using GPUI For Everything

Show notes

Scott and Wes ditch Electron and Tauri for GPUI, the GPU accelerated Rust UI framework from the Zed team. They get into its React-like API, styling that feels a lot like Tailwind, GPUI Kit components, the community fork drama, and the tiny desktop apps Scott has built with it.

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

• GPUI

• 01:24 Electron, Tauri, and the Trouble With Web Views
• 04:05 Enter GPUI: Why We Don’t Take Money to Talk About Tools
• 05:32 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 05:59 What GPUI Is: GPU Accelerated, Cross Platform, Native All the Way Down
• 06:50 A React Like API in Rust: Divs, Flex, and Chained Methods
• 09:35 Components, Props, and State in GPUI

• Scott’s GPUI Demo Gist

• 11:21 How Much of CSS Does GPUI Actually Reimplement?
• 12:52 Flexbox Everywhere, But Where Is CSS Grid?
• 14:17 Where Does Your App Logic Live? No RPC Layer Needed
• 15:53 Render vs RenderOnce: Stateful and Static Components
• 16:57 GPUI Kit: The shadcn of GPUI
• 18:46 GPUI CE: The Community Fork and Ecosystem Tension
• 21:29 Apps Scott Built With GPUI: Gendo, File Bro, and Mr. Space
• 22:48 Why Tiny Utility Apps Should Stay Tiny
• 24:25 File Bro: File Automations a la Hazel
• 25:27 Mr. Space: Building a macOS Window Manager
• 27:05 The Downsides: No Native UI Elements and No Browser DOM

• Scott’s Rust Best Practices Skill

• 29:56 Testing GPUI Apps With Jev and the Accessibility Tree

• gpui-agent

• 30:39 GPUI Mobile: Experimental, But It Works

• GPUI Kit Mobile Docs
• gpui-mobile

• 31:52 Final Verdict: GPUI for Personal Desktop Software

Hit us up on Socials!

Sep 30, 2026 33 min

1042: Is the Jev Hype Overblown?

Show notes

Is Jev actually a leap forward for classification or just hype and fake demos? We dig in, plus Claude Code’s new AGENTS.md support, TinyCast (the free, open-source Raycast alternative), an iPhone Fold simulator in Xcode, and a stack of dev tools you’ll want to try

Show Notes

• 00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
• 01:17 The iPhone Fold Simulator and Foldable Web APIs

• Features behind a flag
• Syntax Meetup in San Francisco

• 07:03 Claude Code Finally Supports agents.md

• Changelog

• 11:42 Using Your Claude Subscription Inside PI
• 13:07 Raycast Pricing Changes and the Rise of Tinycast
• 18:24 Our Most Used Raycast Features
• 21:22 Browser Hopping: Back on Helium After Ditching Dia
• 22:12 1Password’s Redesign and Reliability Problems
• 23:11 Jev Explained: A Model That Only Answers Questions
• 31:59 CJ’s Jev Chat Bot Demo With MCP Tools
• 36:09 The Kevs in the Room: Open Source Jev Alternatives

• Cloudflare’s Kev
• Jared Palmer’s Kev

• 45:39 What We’ve Actually Built With Jev So Far

• Jev Benchmarks

• 51:59 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 52:55 GPUI Kit: Building Native Rust Desktop Apps
• 58:07 Antfu’s DevFrame: A Framework for Building Dev Tools
• 59:45 Where Is the Line on Using AI in Video Editing?

• Runwayml Upscaling

• 01:06:00 AI Upscaled Security Photos and Internet Detectives
• 01:08:07 Qwen Image 2.1 and Real Transparent Backgrounds
• 01:10:18 AI Generated Posters Don’t Have to Be Horrible
• 01:13:28 Orca: A GUI for Wrangling Your Fleet of Agents
• 01:15:37 Grok 4.7 First Impressions and Its Pricing
• 01:18:58 Waiting on Google and Microsoft’s Big Models

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Sep 28, 2026 1 hr 22 min

1041: What are normies using AI for?

Show notes

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 Calendar Management for a Family of Six
• 18:05 AI in Real Estate and Property Staging

• Real Estate Canada subreddit

• 21:10 Using Agents for Video Editing and Multicam Automation
• 23:53 GFX.computer: Building Better Infographics
• 25:59 Things That Won’t Hold Up: Generated Text and Automated Marketing
• 30:27 Home Lab Management Over Tailscale and SSH
• 32:46 3D Printing Parts With Nurb: Stands, Cases, and Airflow

• Nurb

• 34:51 MCP Servers for Software You Only Use Occasionally
• 36:58 Travel Planning: Great at Logistics, Terrible at Taste
• 39:31 Proposals and Job Applications: Everybody Sounds the Same
• 42:14 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Scott: Nomadix Backpack
• Wes: Silicone chair socks

Hit us up on Socials!

Sep 23, 2026 47 min

1040: Developing for the iPhone Duo

Show notes

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 Future of Mobile at Shopify
• 40:23 Herdr remote agents
• 46:13 Homebrew 7 Released
• 50:55 Meta Muse AI Agent
• 01:00:19 Scott’s Switzerland Trip

• ZurichJS Conference

• 01:07:25 Mic FX from Teenage Engineering
• 01:10:46 Three.js conference Badge

• More amazing badges

• 01:13:29 Don’t let anyone take away your big box of cables
• 01:16:22 Aerospace Tiling Manager

• AeroPeek

• 01:24:26 Scott’s new backpack
• 01:26:52 Claude, change this button to blue
• Hacker News post
• 01:31:23 Knap markdown template language

• Comark plugin

Hit us up on Socials!

• The AI Bubble Survives on $1.65 Trillion in Hidden Debt

Sep 21, 2026 1 hr 34 min

1039: Should You Quit Your Job?

Show notes

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 Auth

• 11:05 Finding Human Answers in a Sea of AI Slop
• 14:57 Trust and Community Are the New Currency
• 15:49 Nobody Watches Conference Talks Anymore

• AI Engineer

• 18:18 Is the AI Bubble Going to Pop?

• 24:07 Where Is All the Software AI Was Supposed to Build?
• 26:19 AI Fatigue: When All You Do Is Review Code

• True Cost of AI Coding

• 30:03 Managing Large Block Based CMS Systems

• Fimo
• Sanity

• 38:57 Taking the Leap: Leaving a Stable Job as a Risk Averse Dev
• 43:45 Sandboxing Your Agents Instead of Running YOLO Mode

• CJ’s Video: Every Developer Should Know This
• Docker

• 45:38 Will AI Companies Fingerprint and Ad Target You?

• Colemak
• Web Audio API
• Brave on X

• 49:36 Labeling YouTube Exclusive Episodes for Podcast Listeners
• 52:16 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Scott: Sandpaper Pads, Jellyfin, Apps2Samsung
• Wes: Hisense TV

Hit us up on Socials!

Sep 16, 2026 1 hr 1 min

1038: OpenAI Releases GPT 6 Astra

Show notes

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 This Actually AGI?

• Exploding 3D Rendering
• Formula 1 Rendering
• Astra in Three.JS

• 23:40 Computer Use: Letting AI Draw Our Thumbnail in MS Paint

• Astra Using MS Paint

• 33:10 Can AI Edit Video? The DaVinci Resolve MCP Hype
• 40:18 Blender, 3D Workflows and the Death of Educational Content
• 47:45 Audacity 4: A Long Overdue Facelift
• 52:31 Ripping CDs and Owning Your Music Library Again
• 55:35 Vitest 5: Faster Tests, Benchmarks and Trace View
• 59:45 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 01:00:24 Prompt Injecting Claude Opus 5 With a Malicious Zip File
• 01:05:46 The Shai-Hulud Hackers Got Arrested: How They Slipped Up
• 01:09:15 The VS Code Documentary Is Out (and Wes Is In It)
• 01:11:14 216 Million Spy TVs: LG Is Watching and Listening

• Disconnect Your LG TV Now

• 01:17:05 Roku, Walmart and What Your Data Profile Really Knows
• 01:19:12 Google AI Mode Shows Products 21% More Expensive
• 01:22:31 Agentic Shopping and the Sameness of AI Taste

Hit us up on Socials!

Sep 14, 2026 1 hr 25 min

1037: WebMCP is here (and you should care)

Show notes

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 WebMCP Security: Annotations, Hints, and Multi-Layered Defense
• 15:26 Best Use Cases: E-Commerce, Video Editing, and Complex UIs
• 16:27 The WebMCP Challenge: 5,000 Entries and Creative Applications
• 19:20 Headless WebMCP: Running Agents in the Background
• 22:43 Multi-Tab Scenarios: Using WebMCP Across Multiple Sites
• 24:23 WebMCP and Security: Safe Origin Policy and Agent Containment
• 28:09 Performance and Core Web Vitals for the Agentic Web
• 38:11 The Future of Web Monetization: Ads, Commerce, and Agent Payments

• Universal Commerce Protocol
• x402

• 40:53 Building an Agent Platform: Extensions, Harnesses, and Browser Vendor Roles
• 45:19 Support from Anthropic, Safari, Firefox, and Other Players
• 49:11 Getting Involved: Origin Trial, Community Feedback, and the W3C Spec

• Ora

• 52:45 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

• Scott:
• Wes:
• Dominic: Steven Pinker: The Sense of Style
• Sarah: Vintage Story

Shameless Plugs

• Scott:
• Wes:
• Dominic: X account
• Sarah: 25% discount with code Community25 at AGNTCon

Hit us up on Socials!

Sep 9, 2026 57 min

1036: Cursor & OpenAI Break Up

Show notes

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 Omarchy Security Issues and Linux Chat

• Omarchy
• Security issue in Omarchy
• Close three paths from an unprivileged session to root commit
• CachyOS

• 36:38 Scott Bought an M5 Ultra Mac Studio
• 44:45 Superlogical is a new terminal multiplexer
• 48:31 Zurich JS
• 48:55 Katamari Object Library
• 52:05 ThreeUI - Three.js library
• 55:36 Hugging Face Hack Analyzed / Updates

• METR & Redwood Research investigation
• Brief independent investigation of agents’ behavior
• About the Hugging Face attack
• Postmortem of the HuggingFace hack

• 01:00:46 llms.txt used to pwn devs
• 01:03:56 Running Isolated Code Poll
• 01:05:47 OpenShot 4.0 - OSS Video Editor

• Blick editor

• 01:09:06 Lake America
• 01:11:24 Ox Alpha is GLM 5.3

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Sep 7, 2026 1 hr 12 min

1035: Why everyone is moving to Stylex?

Show notes

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 Dependency: All Computed at Build Time
• 13:49 Brought to you by Sentry.io
• 14:13 Reusable Styles: Import, Export, and Auto-Import
• 17:53 Composability and Overriding Styles With JavaScript Objects
• 18:24 It Sucks to Write by Hand
• 19:25 Modern CSS Properties and Waiting for Implementation
• 20:58 Nested CSS and Nested Selectors Are Tricky
• 22:24 Alternatives: Panda CSS and CSS Modules

• Syntax Ep 807

• 24:41 The Auto-Complete Experience: Why StyleX Shines for Agents

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Sep 2, 2026 27 min

1034: Omarchy Quattro Release

Show notes

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 Browser
• 44:19 Nurb: AI-Powered 3D CAD Design
• 49:36 Security Stories: Supply Chain Attacks and Model Cheating
• 49:43 Rust Supply Chain Attack
• 51:34 Every Model Cheats: AI Benchmark Findings
• 53:13 Felony Bench: Ranking AI Models by Crimes Committed
• 54:19 Casio’s Smart Dumb Watch
• 58:43 Everything I Own Is Owned: Reverse Engineering USB Devices with AI
• 01:08:05 The Mystery 0x Alpha Model
• 01:13:48 Dactyl Returns Something

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Aug 31, 2026 1 hr 16 min

1033: 8 New CSS, JS and HTML Features You Should Know

Show notes

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 HTML Elements
• 09:24 Advanced CSS Attr() Function: Props for CSS
• 11:25 CSS Sibling-Index() and Sibling-Count() Functions
• 13:56 CSS Shrink-to-Fit Container
• 15:36 CSS Text-Box-Trim and Text-Box-Edge

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