James Kerr

Follow for posts on Ruby, Rails, Hotwire, UI, and personal finance.
Dad of 3
Founder of Tend - calm your household finances (

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

Transaction view improved, looks better on your phone too.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

It's common to have tables with a prefix in my rails apps. For example, I have these in Tend.

funds
fund_targets

The screenshot shows a trick to avoid repeating "fund" in the associations.

Now instead of -> fund\.fund_targets
I can just write -> fund.targets

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

I'm geeking out of this claude code skill for pre-processing images in my rails app

I called it /img

When you give a file, it will:

- Gather the size and height with sips
- Compress and convert to webp with cwebp
- Look at the image to generate alt text
- Print the erb snippet to paste

Here's the full skill: https://t.co/OMNUFYCjsN

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

I got rid of my free-trial.

Tend has two plans now.

Free Plan:
All features + bank syncing for all accounts at a single bank

Paid Plan:
All features + bank syncing at all your banks

AI said this should be my copy angle: "Tend is free, forever — no trial, no expiry. Connect your bank and start planning."

...pretty good mr. robot 🤖

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

"Let it rip" I love that phrase.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

This is what I want my annual budget to look like.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

Maybe progress bars will match the color of the categories.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

HOURS LATER...

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

The meta-tags gem is great.

Two methods you need to know:

display_meta_tags
set_meta_tags

Lovely

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

Hotwire devs 👉 "Outlets"

If you haven't already you've got to check out "outlets".

I've been using hotwire for 2 years and just discovered this wonderful feature.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

How do I configure claude to not spend minutes thinking? I've toyed around with /effort but it still takes so long.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

Is this what people mean when they say "send it!!!"

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

Only a few UI interactions require no delay.

UI's only feel sluggish when you make the user wait for something they're not expecting to wait for.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

I don't mind this coding style. No classes, just structs and module functions. Behavior, then value objects returned.

When I come back to this in 6 months it won't take long to re-learn it.

And I can rest knowing this stuff is not used all over the place.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

I ventured into OpenCode for the last month or two and now I'm back to claude. The other models couldn't keep up, and paying per token for claude is pricey.

I like the TUI of claude more than opencode.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

"One Line Fix"

This would be another great newsletter name.

[James Kerr @specialCaseDev]

"Unprompted"

This would be a great name for a newsletter on coding with AI.