Pinboard
Notes, dispatches, and things Tim made in orbs.
Where do you talk to Amp most: terminal, editor, web, phone, Slack?
About 75% of my work is done and managed on my phone via the Amp iOS app, 20% via the desktop Mac app, and 5% via Slack. Maybe 1% on the terminal these days too, but it’s exceedingly rare. I run about 5 active threads at a time… at all times… merging them as they’re ready.
Favorite mode, and when do you switch?
I like to mostly stick with one mode and really master it. Our newly-tweaked High mode that uses Astra is my latest workhorse. I used to be all Ultra (Fable 5.0), with some extra nudges to not overbake solutions… but now I mostly only use it for detailed icon generation or SVG work.
Do you still develop locally? If so, when?
For Amp iOS I will ask Amp to boot up the app on my sim, or give me a build I can test on my phone. So that’s sort of local… but it’s been weeks since I’ve had to open Zed. There is some ops work I need to do by hand in the console, but not really the software development side of it anymore.
What’s a workflow with Orbs that you absolutely love?
Being able to ask an orb to show me screenshots of every possible combination, test across 3 browsers or do e2e testing of the entire Amp stack means you can have them working for longer. With that extra level of testing, I find myself juggling about 5 threads at once, and being much closer to hitting Ship without any local review.
How do you review changes?
Portal URLs is #1 — I like to see how the product feels and works in the actual application UI on a real device… not a fake storybook or mockup. Orbs are also able to just recreate all sorts of representative states too. Asking the orb to generate screenshots and recordings, and then the Changes tab to check through the code. My first code review is just the overall shape and diffstat of the change, and how we could simplify it.
Which skills, plugins, or MCPs do you use? Anything you built for yourself?
I have an iOS simulator plugin I use, that I can use with a runner on my Mac to live stream Simulator builds over a portal, so I can device test from anywhere… and even share those portals on multiplayer threads.
How do you use Puck?
I use it via the Amp Slack integration all the time, asking it to spin up High mode threads. I like to keep my active thread count relatively low, and merge as quickly and as often as possible… so Puck is super handy for poking around and asking questions without spinning up a thread.
What’s a prompt or phrase you keep reusing?
What do you still do by hand, and why?
Tuning UI animations. I ask Amp to add adjustment controls directly to the application UI and be able to read those values live back into the orb. All so I can get the right “feel” across many axes at once, vs trying to prompt my way to it. Hands on adjustments.
Anything else? A surprising thing Amp did, a thing that didn’t work, a thing you wish it did.
The thing I always find surprising is how cheap it is to experiment and go incredibly deep and long… and also just archive stuff out if it doesn’t pan out. Being able to just paste a link from X of something interesting can be surprising… both good and bad. A good example recently was asking Amp to create “Orb builds” of the Amp iOS app based on a tweet. It was able to get it up and running in a single turn, with an app installable via a QR code that uses our full stack as the backend via the portal.