Syntax &#8211; Tasty Web Development Treats

1048: Deno Is Dead Oct 19, 2026

Show notes

Deno is shutting down and the team is heading to Cloudflare — Scott, Wes, and CJ break down what that means for the runtime, JSR, and workerd. Plus OpenCode 2.0 on durable objects, TanStack Start 1.0, SubQ Snap, Gemini 4 Argon, and Wes’s accidental $50 photo frame movement.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
- Gemini 4 Argon is out
01:31 Deno Is Shutting Down: The Team Joins Cloudflare
06:23 Why Bun Spelled the End of Deno
12:24 OpenCode 2.0: Durable Objects, Code Mode and Hot Reloading Plugins
- OpenCode 2.0
- Ryan Vogel runs OpenCode 2.0 inside a tweet
20:24 Where Should Your Agent Actually Run?
21:41 Talorys: A Personal AI Agent on the Cloudflare Free Tier
22:42 I Accidentally Started a $50 Photo Frame Movement
27:05 Agent Driven Open Source: Dozens of Pull Requests From Bots
- Simeon Griggs hacks his Peloton
35:11 SubQ Snap: A Cheaper, Smarter Decision Model Than Jev
41:26 AirDrop Reverse Engineered: Continuity on Linux
- T4T5: AirDrop fully reverse-engineered on Linux
44:47 Brought to you by Sentry.io
45:24 TanStack Start 1.0 Is Officially Stable
- TanStack announces Start 1.0 is officially stable
- fsearch
- FinderSearch
- Kuro: Tinycast file search is now 15–90× faster
55:23 The FFF vs fsearch Twitter Drama
- Dmitriy Kovalenko compares fff to fsearch
59:34 Model Roundup: Hands On With Gemini 4 Argon
01:08:01 Zen Garden: Ranking Models on Their 3D Taste
01:12:49 Muse Wonder From Meta
- Meta AI on Muse Spark open weights
01:15:15 EmbeddingGemma 2 and Why Embeddings Power Better Search
- Sundar Pichai introduces EmbeddingGemma 2
01:18:32 Claude Haiku 5.5 Gains Thinking Levels
- Claude announces Haiku 5.5
- Introducing Claude Haiku 5.5
01:20:19 Grok Bot Leaks a CEO’s Bank Balance Into Company Slack
- Shane Mac: An AI agent posted my bank balances in Slack
01:24:18 CJ’s Whirlwind Tour: A Commodore 64 Keycap Font
01:25:08 Lightbulb Computer: A Projector Screwed Into Your Ceiling
01:29:11 Recomps and Decomps: Running PS5 Games on Linux and Windows
01:32:23 Open Source Photoshop Clones and the Whole Craft Suite
01:35:25 Audacity 4 and the Case for Forking Old Open Source Apps
01:36:35 PS2 and PSP Games Recompiled to WebAssembly
01:37:39 Bootstrap 6 Alpha Brings Back Real Buttons
01:39:39 Wrapping Up the Live Stream

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1047: Adobe has a big problem Oct 14, 2026

Show notes

Someone just clean-room ported seven Adobe apps to Rust, and Wes is shocked at how good it is. Scott and Wes break down what it gets right, what’s still missing, and why copying software is easy but inventing what comes next is the hard part.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
00:12 Adobe Is in Trouble: A Clean Room Port of the Entire Suite
- ArtCraft
02:22 Scott’s Long Running Adobe Grudge Since 2017
03:42 Figma Is Not a Raster Tool: Why Every Alternative Falls Short
04:40 Opening Real Photoshop Files: Masks, Half Tones and Blend Modes
- PhotoCraft Github
06:30 What Clean Room Porting Actually Means
09:54 A Familiar Interface, Entirely Built in Rust
10:15 Don’t Trash the Whole Thing Over One or Two Bugs
12:14 What’s Missing: Artboards and the Tiny UI Interactions
13:53 Where Are the Vibe Coded Photoshops? Four Months Later
14:33 Figma’s Locked Down MCP and the Backlash
17:22 Dylan’s Clap Back at Anthropic’s Own Closed Ecosystem
18:08 The Real Photoshop Replacement Will Be a New Way of Working
21:35 Good UI Is Still the Moat
22:28 Caring About Your Project Past Two Days
23:05 Audio Crackles and Paper Cuts: The Bugs Only Humans Chase
24:56 Brought to you by Sentry!
26:28 Copying Is Easy: The Hard Part Is Inventing What Comes Next
27:28 DaVinci Resolve Keeps Shipping Useful Releases
28:26 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

Scott: KWS V2 Rack
Wes: Insta360 Luna

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1046: The Pi Updates are insane Oct 12, 2026

Show notes

Scott, Wes, and CJ break down the latest Pi updates, including durable long-running agents, Codemode, and MCP support, then debate whether pull requests are dead in favor of issues. Plus Supabase picks up Turso, Screen Studio 4 drops, JavaScript Composites bring value-based equality, and a stack of new AI models from Google, OpenAI, Cloudflare, and more.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax Weekly
00:46 example.com gets a facelift
- Oliver Dunk’s post
- IANA’s reply
04:37 The death of pull requests
- Sindre Sorhus’ post
- Dave Kiss’ post
- SWC’s post
- Andreas Kling’s post
- Yusuke Wada’s post
- Wes’ NiimBlue PR
- JSON Alexander
12:46 pi v1.0
24:14 Brought to you by Sentry!
25:08 Turso Joining Supabase
28:13 Screen Studio Updates
- Screen Studio 4.0 upscaling
33:24 Svelte 3.0 Release
35:32 Effect 4.0
38:14 Alchemy
- Cloudflare’s Programmatic configuration
42:59 Foldkit
44:10 OpenAI Dev Day Announcements
Dots
Rahim Nathwani’s reply regarding Luna
Plugin Extensions
Sites in ChatGPT
56:40 Cloudflare Clef Decision Model
01:01:25 Gemini 4 Argon
- Google’s announcement post
01:09:04 Flux 3 Image Model
01:11:50 Claude Mods
01:13:44 Muse Gadgets
- Nat Friedman’s post
01:17:27 Nvidia Lyra 2.0 World Model
01:27:30 Game Recomps and Decomps
01:30:54 JS Composite Type
01:35:00 RFC 1149 Auction
- First implementation of the Carrier Pigeon Internet Protocol
01:37:49 eslint cssicorn
01:39:15 Syntax Meetup

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1045: Who can actually max out 5 AI subscriptions? Oct 07, 2026

Show notes

Scott and Wes answer listener questions about what replaced blogging, what to do while your AI agent works, and who should pay for token costs. They also cover keeping agents from going off the rails, getting your team excited about AI, and staying motivated when AI takes the fun out of coding.

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
00:40 Welcome to Syntax!
01:37 What’s the Modern Day Equivalent of Blogging?
08:35 What Should You Be Doing While Your Agent Works?
- Vibe Stretch
13:23 Brought to you by Sentry!
14:02 How Much Should Your Employer Cover for Token Spend?
18:32 Tracking What You Actually Burn with Codex Bar
20:26 How Do You Code HTML Emails in 2026?
25:22 How Do You Keep an Agent From Going Off the Rails?
- Swamp Club
30:23 Steering an Agent Mid Turn: Which Harness Does It Best?
32:44 How Do I Get My Engineers Interested in AI?
35:48 Beyond Telegram: Better Interfaces for Non Coding Agents
38:41 Staying Motivated When AI Takes the Fun Parts of Coding
41:55 Killing Rogue Node Processes and Restarting Your Machine
44:12 Custom Internal Harnesses: Worth It or a Token Hog?
47:47 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

Scott: Driving Rogue
Wes: Amazon Basics Electric Screwdriver

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1044: Ruby on Rails is Dead Oct 05, 2026

Show notes

Scott, Wes, and CJ ask whether Ruby on Rails is really dead (and whether Rust is just Rails you don't have to read), then dig into Meta's new Muse agent, which is free, comes with its own VM, and is already reading messages nobody asked it to. Plus: upm, a tiny TypeScript npm replacement, Opus 5.5 moonlighting as a motion designer, Tart VMs on Apple Silicon, and a foundry for gloriously bad web fonts.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome
01:11 upm is a tiny fast npm
- Pooya Parsa’s launch post
07:34 Zuck cooked with Muse
19:21 Ruby on Rails is Dead
27:55 loco - Rails for Rust
31:06 Brought to you by Sentry!
33:12 How should new developers learn?
41:40 Opus 5.5 First Impressions
58:27 Tart - virtualization toolset for Apple Silicon
01:01:43 jevgrep
- is-jeven
01:06:49 SHOW ME YOUR RACK
01:09:04 Chrome gets responsive iframe resizing
01:10:25 Bastardica - bastard web font foundry
01:14:23 Sonnet 5.5 Released
01:16:37 OpenAI Dev Day
01:20:02 Syntax SF Meetup

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1043: I’m Using GPUI For Everything Sep 30, 2026

Show notes

Scott and Wes ditch Electron and Tauri for GPUI, the GPU accelerated Rust UI framework from the Zed team. They get into its React-like API, styling that feels a lot like Tailwind, GPUI Kit components, the community fork drama, and the tiny desktop apps Scott has built with it.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
- GPUI
01:24 Electron, Tauri, and the Trouble With Web Views
04:05 Enter GPUI: Why We Don’t Take Money to Talk About Tools
05:32 Brought to you by Sentry.io
05:59 What GPUI Is: GPU Accelerated, Cross Platform, Native All the Way Down
06:50 A React Like API in Rust: Divs, Flex, and Chained Methods
09:35 Components, Props, and State in GPUI
- Scott’s GPUI Demo Gist
11:21 How Much of CSS Does GPUI Actually Reimplement?
12:52 Flexbox Everywhere, But Where Is CSS Grid?
14:17 Where Does Your App Logic Live? No RPC Layer Needed
15:53 Render vs RenderOnce: Stateful and Static Components
16:57 GPUI Kit: The shadcn of GPUI
18:46 GPUI CE: The Community Fork and Ecosystem Tension
21:29 Apps Scott Built With GPUI: Gendo, File Bro, and Mr. Space
22:48 Why Tiny Utility Apps Should Stay Tiny
24:25 File Bro: File Automations a la Hazel
25:27 Mr. Space: Building a macOS Window Manager
27:05 The Downsides: No Native UI Elements and No Browser DOM
- Scott’s Rust Best Practices Skill
29:56 Testing GPUI Apps With Jev and the Accessibility Tree
- gpui-agent
30:39 GPUI Mobile: Experimental, But It Works
- GPUI Kit Mobile Docs
- gpui-mobile
31:52 Final Verdict: GPUI for Personal Desktop Software

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1042: Is the Jev Hype Overblown? Sep 28, 2026

Show notes

Is Jev actually a leap forward for classification or just hype and fake demos? We dig in, plus Claude Code’s new AGENTS.md support, TinyCast (the free, open-source Raycast alternative), an iPhone Fold simulator in Xcode, and a stack of dev tools you’ll want to try

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!
01:17 The iPhone Fold Simulator and Foldable Web APIs
- Features behind a flag
- Syntax Meetup in San Francisco
07:03 Claude Code Finally Supports agents.md
- Changelog
11:42 Using Your Claude Subscription Inside PI
13:07 Raycast Pricing Changes and the Rise of Tinycast
18:24 Our Most Used Raycast Features
21:22 Browser Hopping: Back on Helium After Ditching Dia
22:12 1Password’s Redesign and Reliability Problems
23:11 Jev Explained: A Model That Only Answers Questions
31:59 CJ’s Jev Chat Bot Demo With MCP Tools
36:09 The Kevs in the Room: Open Source Jev Alternatives
- Cloudflare’s Kev
- Jared Palmer’s Kev
45:39 What We’ve Actually Built With Jev So Far
- Jev Benchmarks
51:59 Brought to you by Sentry.io
52:55 GPUI Kit: Building Native Rust Desktop Apps
58:07 Antfu’s DevFrame: A Framework for Building Dev Tools
59:45 Where Is the Line on Using AI in Video Editing?
- Runwayml Upscaling
01:06:00 AI Upscaled Security Photos and Internet Detectives
01:08:07 Qwen Image 2.1 and Real Transparent Backgrounds
01:10:18 AI Generated Posters Don’t Have to Be Horrible
01:13:28 Orca: A GUI for Wrangling Your Fleet of Agents
01:15:37 Grok 4.7 First Impressions and Its Pricing
01:18:58 Waiting on Google and Microsoft’s Big Models

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1041: What are normies using AI for? Sep 23, 2026

Show notes

Scott and Wes talk about how non-developers are actually using AI today. They also cover the stuff they don’t think holds up, like AI-staged listings and automated marketing.

Show Notes

00:00 Intro
00:38 Welcome to Syntax!
- Wes’ post about using AI
01:50 Finding Parts With AI: Van Buckles and Weird Bolts
03:59 Brought to you by Sentry!
04:37 Fixing Printers, Drivers, and Annoying Home Network Stuff
- Skylight Calendar
05:32 Rescuing E-Waste: Flashing a Broken Skylight Calendar
08:42 Red Tape, Permits, and Filling Out Awful PDF Forms
09:57 Self-Hosting Made Easy: Updating Your NAS and Docker Containers
11:18 Fighting Home Assistant Rot With Agents
13:20 Inbox and Calendar Management for a Family of Six
18:05 AI in Real Estate and Property Staging
- Real Estate Canada subreddit
21:10 Using Agents for Video Editing and Multicam Automation
23:53 GFX.computer: Building Better Infographics
25:59 Things That Won’t Hold Up: Generated Text and Automated Marketing
30:27 Home Lab Management Over Tailscale and SSH
32:46 3D Printing Parts With Nurb: Stands, Cases, and Airflow
- Nurb
34:51 MCP Servers for Software You Only Use Occasionally
36:58 Travel Planning: Great at Logistics, Terrible at Taste
39:31 Proposals and Job Applications: Everybody Sounds the Same
42:14 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

Scott: Nomadix Backpack
Wes: Silicone chair socks

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