Ion Alpha

Dev for 20yr. Building a unified AI-native system for creators. Research, dev, and distribution in one place. Local-first. Own forever. Stealth for a while :)

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@caps_raunak Use it or lose to it.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@mitchellh The Ralph loop and the model are doing a great deal of heavy lifting. What exactly was it doing for those 4 hours, and what model did you use?

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@starter_story Inspiring! It's why I cut all my living expenses and went part-time to work on my business. Ownership is the goal :) that solo bootstrap journey is brutal though!

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@samanthajeanneb Why would you even try to do anything great if you didn't think it was possible? You have to be deluded.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@SimonHoiberg I have all of those (and a lot more) integrated into a single interface and system with AI able to manage it all via built-in tools :) let me know if you're interested!

I agree, I'm self-hosted/own your data all the way, with optional bits of 3rd party integrations.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@nicklaunches It helped me build a couple of things that should have taken me over 30 years, so yeh I'd say it made me a whole lot faster :) not at shipping, though!

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@thenowhereway What I'm already building :) my dream game and dream "operating system" for my business and life. Still have tokens to spare!

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@lowkeymattyt It's such a bittersweet reality. We now have this incredible automation at our fingertips but can't truly celebrate or enjoy it because of the parasitic systems we've allowed to rule our lives.

What did we really think the end game was?

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@soham_nayak04 i.e. build something that other people are already buying. :) I suppose the trick is to find alignment of that and what you want/like/need. Scratch your own [validated] itch.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@caps_raunak The systems we've built make us worthless without money, not the tech. Blame them.

We should be celebrating it! We're only tense because it threatens wage slavery.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@copyconstruct The lesson is to give Claude/AI debugging tools :)

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@mbusigin @0xSero @chairmanmeow42 Agree, and as the models have better quality baselines this will only become more true.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@0xSero Anyone who rails on AI for quality hasn't worked in dev long enough :) rarely have I seen a codebase where quality was made a priority over getting features out. It's worse outside of OSS where practically everything is sacrificed for short-term gain.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@jjpcodes Thankfully the SDK is fine for custom UIs, systems and harnesses on top (not circumventing CC).. for now. You can build alternatives to cowork desktop that go far beyond, question is will they start shutting down or restricting those use cases. Provider agnostic is the only way.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@doodlestein @yacineMTB ..and add as a skill or command. I frequently run a /quality command to keep claude in check.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

It uses CDP. Playwright connects to Chrome DevTools Protocol via Electron.

"Direct system integration" refers to what Electron provides beyond CDP: window management, file system access, screen recording, clipboard, password vault with project-level isolation, multiple isolated browser contexts. CDP is sandboxed to the browser, Electron bridges to the OS.

The accessibility snapshot is an abstraction layer on top. Instead of CSS selectors or XPath, it generates short refs like e5, e23 for interactive elements. AI says "click ref e5", more reliable since selectors break when DOM changes.

Stack: Claude → MCP HTTP → Go backend → WebSocket → Electron → Playwright/CDP → Browser

Not replacing CDP, it's CDP + Electron system APIs + an AI-friendly ref system for DOM interaction.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

Rough example of Claude Code controlling the embedded browser. This is a big advantage over browser extensions as this is directly integrated with the rest of the system.

Uses simplified annotated DOM to avoid dumping loads of context into the AI for decisions.

Just a POC.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@DennisonBertram @iannuttall @flaviocopes Yep! :D it's a nightmare. Thankfully, AI can help a great deal with it. Still takes a decent amount of time and iteration to get it right.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@DennisonBertram @iannuttall @flaviocopes Yeh it works very well at the moment with pre-warmed sessions in interactive mode. It's just piping stuff back and forth, I think it's about reducing that gap as much as possible.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@DennisonBertram @iannuttall @flaviocopes It takes a lot of work on top! They may even be pre-warming sessions for responsiveness. Here's a quick overview of what I had to do.

[Ion Alpha @ionalpha_]

@ThePrimeagen Predatory? The whole point of their subscription is you get tokens at a much cheaper rate. If you then extract the API key to circumvent that.. what do you expect?

It's not predatory at all, it's clear and expected and in their ToS.