tl;dr: everything in taro.codes is handwritten. No AI.

I think it goes without saying I use AI. There's probably no one left not using it, and honestly, with good reason: it's simply amazing.

Until late last year, I was pretty much anti-AI. Team stochastic-parrots¹. During December, I started leading a project that was mainly AI focused, and forcing myself to use it changed my perspective completely.

More recently, I started experimenting with Ollama and building small applications that use AI, rather than just using Codex/Claude. It's been a lot of fun, and I'll write a bit about these experiments soon².

But, for now, I just wanted to make it clear: everything I write is handwritten. I've used AI for feedback regarding my writing and, even thought the feedback was technically correct, I didn't enjoy the experience. I've decided I'd rather make mistakes in how I write, but keep my own voice, rather than have some sort of perfect writing.

I also hand-write most JavaScript, TypeScript, CSS and HTML. I've done it for so long that AI doesn't provide any net speed-up in those areas.

I no longer think there's anything inherently wrong with vibe-coding. Fable is mind-blowingly good, and most frontend and backend applications are simple enough. I wouldn't hire devs that vibe-code for high-impact software (fintechs, health, whatever), but a straight-forward CRUD isn't too big of a deal.

I'm not judging how other people do their code — if it works, it works. I just don't find a net benefit to using it myself.

I also mostly write Rust by hand, since practice makes perfect, and I want to reach the same level of productivity with Rust that I have with JS/TS.

But the main message I'm trying to communicate with this is: everything in taro.codes is hand-written. I don't even use AI for feedback.

I don't know whether that's a good or a bad thing. It just is.