Overview

January 2026 was dominated by an intense burst of creative and technical energy, with AI-assisted development and n8n automation taking centre stage. Alongside hands-on project work — producing several new web apps in rapid succession — the month also featured sharp commentary on Apple’s evolving design direction and a steady stream of tool discoveries. A recurring thread throughout is honest self-reflection: celebrating what works, calling out what doesn’t, and continuously learning from both.

1. 🤖 AI-Assisted Development & Claude Code

Claude Code emerged as the defining tool of January. Multiple web applications went from idea to production in a matter of days, almost entirely driven by AI-generated code. A password-protected photo-sharing site was built over a single weekend, and the Microblog Poster front-end gained Markdown support, drag-and-drop uploads, and a live preview mode. A custom RSS reader — RSS Flow — also reached near-completion during the month.

The experience was not without friction. A first negative encounter with Claude Code resulted in a broken dashboard and depleted API credits, serving as a grounding reminder that AI-generated code still requires careful oversight. A separate post reflected on the practical shift from programmer to specification writer — the new skill is articulating precisely what the AI should build, not writing the code itself. The month also saw Claude Code effectively replacing any previous plans to learn Apple Shortcuts for automation.

Simon Willison was cited twice: once on the point that AI-assisted development still demands real experience and skill, and once on his discovery that the Claude desktop app uses Apple’s Virtualization Framework — a striking moment of AI reverse-engineering itself.

Key themes: Rapid prototyping, specification writing, AI code quality, learning curve, tool replacement.

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2. ⚙️ n8n Automation & Workflows

n8n cemented its role as the backbone of the personal automation stack. The month’s most complex workflow to date combined Tinylytics AI-generated insights with a meta-summarization step, injecting the results directly into daily notes. A full Craft-to-Ghost publishing pipeline was also built: the workflow handles Markdown conversion, image uploads, and draft creation in Ghost — eliminating several manual steps from the publishing process.

Other notable automations included hourly summarization of the Micro.blog timeline sent to a Discord server, and a system for automatically backing up all n8n workflows to a GitHub repository. Discovery of n8n’s AI Agent node was flagged as a turning point — using it as an entry point for external triggers opens up significantly more powerful workflow architectures.

Two practical lessons emerged from the cost of running LLM-powered workflows at scale: monitoring alerts were added to detect failures early, and LLM model choices were deliberately downgraded to reduce monthly bills. Planning also began for a Mailbrew replacement — an RSS and web content summarizer — though architectural decisions around scheduling and model choice remained open at month’s end.

Key themes: Workflow complexity, LLM cost management, publishing automation, backup infrastructure, AI Agent node.

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3. 🌐 Web Apps & RSS Flow

The RSS Flow project — a personal RSS reader web app built from scratch — was a central thread running through the second half of the month. Work focused on feed quality, ensuring post titles were correctly propagated through the feed pipeline before a short demo was shared publicly. By month’s end, RSS Flow and the Microblog Poster were being integrated together as a unified tool, with both apps polished ahead of a planned vacation.

The pace of app-building led to a telling observation: building a custom RSS reader was beginning to feel like a credible replacement for a paid Inoreader subscription. A new website — digests.numericcitizen.me — was also launched to host AI-generated monthly summaries of blog content, another self-built tool in a growing personal ecosystem. A small anecdote highlighted the unpredictability of side projects: a planned YouTube video session turned into an extended photo app refinement session instead.

Key themes: Personal software ecosystem, RSS tooling, self-hosted replacements, app integration.

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4. 🍎 Apple: Design, Products & Business

Apple’s design direction received sustained scrutiny throughout January. The macOS Tahoe icon changes sparked a measured response about how design trends shift and the challenges of maintaining visual consistency across a large platform. A sharper, briefer critique followed directly, and Apple’s new Creator Studio bundle attracted several pointed criticisms covering icon choices and questionable bundling strategy. Friends encountered in person were bluntly critical of recent Apple software updates — a reminder that design shifts carry real user cost.

Specific software concerns included a visual bug in iPadOS 26.3 beta that had gone unfixed across multiple releases, and the conspicuous absence of Photomator from Apple announcements. On the hardware side, Apple Watch backup restoration during upgrades was called out as a longstanding unfixed problem, and iCloud Drive was flagged as a poor choice for storing active GitHub repositories due to CPU overhead and file-count explosion.

On the business side, Apple’s record quarterly earnings were noted alongside analysis of the Google Private AI Compute partnership. Intel’s shift away from consumer chip production was examined for downstream effects on iPhone pricing. A leaked report on a smaller Dynamic Island for iPhone 18 Pro prompted speculation about the feature’s eventual elimination. Positive news came in the form of Halide co-founder Sebastiaan de With joining Apple’s design team.

Key themes: Icon design controversy, software quality, Apple Watch friction, iCloud storage limits, AI partnerships, iPhone hardware roadmap.

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5. ✍️ Blogging, Writing & Personal Reflections

The year opened with an ambitious post mapping out 2026 priorities: four international trips, tech hardware upgrades, and a personal anniversary. A revised personal profile was published, reframing the author’s identity around the roles of creator, digital nomad, and curator. A citation of JA Westenberg made the case for blogging as a tool for intellectual independence — timely given the month’s burst of publishing activity.

Reflecting on the first ten days of the year, a post noted significant accomplishments across multiple projects in an unusually short time, capturing the sense of momentum that characterised January. A personal defaults list — comprehensive, timestamped — provided a useful snapshot of the current software stack. Manton Reece’s distinction between open source (power for developers) and open platforms (power for everyone) was shared as a thought worth sitting with.

Key themes: Personal goals, identity, blogging philosophy, year-in-review momentum, open platforms.

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6. 🔍 LLMs: Observations & Critical Perspectives

Several posts stepped back from hands-on use to examine LLMs more critically. The consistency problem was a recurring frustration: without carefully managed saved prompts, getting repeatable results from the same model is genuinely difficult. OpenRouter was assessed as a convenient multi-model gateway but raised concerns around output inconsistency when switching models mid-workflow. An anecdote about an AI timeline summary misreading a post about camera firmware illustrated the practical limits of current summarization.

A notable short post observed that Stack Overflow visits among developers have dropped sharply — a quiet milestone marking how thoroughly LLMs have displaced the traditional developer Q&A workflow. The AI Paradigm diagram was shared as a visual attempt to map how modern AI architectures differ conceptually from traditional computing.

Key themes: Output consistency, model switching, summarization errors, developer workflow disruption.

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7. 🛠️ Tools, Apps & New Discoveries

A handful of new tools caught attention during the month. Ghostty made a strong first impression as a terminal emulator — praised for its split-window mode and clean design. Tinylytics continued to earn strong praise as a privacy-respecting analytics service. Digg returned in public beta with a redesigned interface, noted with cautious interest. Screens for Mac by Edovia was subscribed to for remote desktop access, with observations about both the Liquid Glass UI and unexpected battery drain. ClawdBot — a Discord-connected Claude AI bot — was set up on a Mac mini with deeper exploration deferred until after a trip. Aeronaut was briefly tested as a Bluesky client and found to be a clear improvement over the official app. Miniroll, a new blogroll tool, was flagged as a great idea worth following.

Key themes: Terminal emulators, analytics, remote desktop, Discord bots, social clients, blogrolls.

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Mentioned Apps, Products & Services

AI & Automation: Claude, Claude Code, n8n, OpenRouter.ai, ClawdBot, Apple Intelligence, Google Private AI Compute

Development & Hosting: Vercel, GitHub, GitHub Pages, RSS Flow

Content & Publishing: Craft, Ghost, Micro.blog, Aeronaut

Analytics & Monitoring: Tinylytics

Productivity & Utilities: Raindrop.io, Inoreader, Screens for Mac (Edovia), Apple Shortcuts, iCloud Drive

Developer Tools: Ghostty, Stack Overflow, Miniroll

Social & Communication: Discord, Digg, Bluesky

Apple Products & Platforms: iPhone 18 Pro, MacBook, Apple Watch, HomePod, iPad, iPadOS 26.3, macOS Tahoe, iOS 26, Apple Creator Studio, Halide, Photomator

Other: Intel, MacUpdater / MacUpdate

Digest covers 69 posts published in January 2026 · Generated February 13, 2026