Maggie Appleton

Staff Research Engineer at @GitHubNext. But actually a designer. Writes about design, dev, & anthropology.

Also on Bluesky 🦋 @maggieappleton.com

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@dangroshev Oh I should have thought to check Carlin. I’ve listened to some of his other ones and generally like his marmitey approach

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

Saw War Horse at the National Theatre this weekend. Wild, gorgeous puppetry and stage design.

Very strong recommend: https://t.co/tI5me7MojB

The kind of production that makes you forget where you are. Came away sobbing, couldn’t really get myself back into reality for a while

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

Made me realise I’ve never learned much about the British in WWI. I know the basics of who fought who, when. But never heard first hand accounts of the trenches, chemical warfare, tanks vs machine guns. Wasn’t on the curriculum.

Now starting on Robert Graves’ Goodbye to All That

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@nikolasklein @sarahjcohen1 Congratulations! 🥂

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@brian_lovin You’re exactly right. I got ahead of myself there. Let’s back up and start again. This isn’t just a good idea, it’s a great idea – and now is exactly the right time to do it.

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@amadeus Yes! Wow good eye

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

I'm just a girl, standing in front of an agent, asking it why in the f🍊🍉k this diff is drowning in useEffects

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@geoffreylitt @mschoening Ha! Perfect name. Can’t wait to listen to all of these

[Geoffrey Litt @geoffreylitt]

@mschoening and I are starting a podcast where we nerd out about human-AI collaboration and malleable software.

In this episode: is HTML actually better than Markdown? and an alternative to Software Factories...

Watch on YT: https://t.co/O2DwUTWm4o

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@benspringwater Well this is gorgeous

[Ben Springwater @benspringwater]

I'm getting this framed and hanging above my desk.

To be of use, by Marge Piercy

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

The only appropriate follow up is to invoke your bespoke skill that explains useEffect to your agent

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@erinfoox Maybe I was too attached to the theory I had already built up in my head about what was happening. Came in with bias based on Claude's clues. But it was so much better than my theory...

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

Even after getting Claude to hint at the twist ending for me, I was still not prepared for the level of twist. Next level surprise at the end. A very good read!

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

Obsessed with “Yesteryear”. Well written, funny, a necessary critique of the tradwives.

I asked Claude for the gist of the twist ending before reading, because it’s labelled “thriller” and I am too soft to read anything truly horrifying.
But it’s not that kind of thriller…

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@nbaschez Oh nice that you have direct editing. Overall this is great. Meeting people where they are is underrated.

Yeah Ace is still in development, soon moving to early preview. We're just starting to figure out patterns like these too. Throwing things at walls and seeing what's sticky

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

Directionally correct, and a clever hack to expand the constraints of a CLI tool. But still only single player and working within CLI limitations.

Excited we're doing the larger vision of this in Ace. Multiplayer, docs as first-class primitives inside an agentic coding workspace

[Nathan Baschez @nbaschez]

Introducing Roughdraft!

A new open source project designed to make collaboration with agents better.

The idea is to bring commenting and suggested changes to markdown (e.g. plan docs) in a nice interface.

Free, local, etc.

👉 https://t.co/J3YOOpL5ES 👈

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

The kind of quality feedback I can only get on X about my writing

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@JohnThilen @joshuaday @brian_lovin Incredible response. 10/10. No notes.

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@Willrftaylor Unless Slack does a major business pivot and decides developers are their primary users. And then redesign everything to serve developers. Until then we're not solving the same problems as them.
The only similarity is live multiplayer chat, everything else is pretty different

[Maggie Appleton @Mappletons]

@Willrftaylor We're not competing with Slack, or replacing it. Ace is a developer tool. First-class primitives are the coding agent, diffs, PRs, coding, microVMs, live previews, CI/CD visibility, skills, MCP, et al.

You keep Slack, you hopefully move from Codex/Claude CLI or desktop into Ace