AI in complex codebases, running local LLMs, and frontend complexity

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Welcome, Developers! 👋

This week: cracking AI's complex codebase challenge with context management techniques, Claude Code's journey from Spotify controller to $500M tool, running LLMs locally for privacy, the HTML renaissance fighting frontend over-engineering, and why your images are probably way too big.

From our sponsor: WorkOS

How To Keep User Access From Breaking at Scale

As your app grows, managing “who can do what” becomes complex. Hard-coded roles and scattered permissions slow you down and fail to meet enterprise demands for fine-grained access.

WorkOS RBAC is the fastest way to implement structured, scalable permissions. Define roles, group permissions, and update access for entire user groups in a single step.

With developer-friendly APIs, a powerful dashboard, and native integrations for SSO and Directory Sync, WorkOS gives you enterprise-grade access control out of the box.

Integrate RBAC with WorkOS

🔖 The Reading Room

Articles we have hand-picked for you:

Getting AI to Work in Complex Codebases

While Stanford studies show AI tools struggle with production codebases and create rework cycles, this team cracked the code using "frequent intentional compaction" techniques. By managing context windows at 40-60% utilization and treating specs as the new source code, they got Claude to handle 300k LOC Rust projects and ship weeks of work in days.

By Dexter Horthy →

How Claude Code is built

Claude Code started as a simple AppleScript tool to control Spotify, but adding filesystem access created a "mindblowing" agent that could explore codebases autonomously. Within days, 50% of Anthropic's engineering team was hooked, leading to the tool that now generates over $500M annual run-rate revenue.

By Gergely Orosz →

Easiest way to run LLMs locally

This is a beginner-friendly guide on how anyone can self-host their own LLM, why you should do it, and other useful things to know about LLMs in general. Local LLMs might not replace your subscriptions, but they are a great offline, private tool to have.

By Zain Zaidi →

Frontend complexity and the HTML renaissance

Modern frontend development has become absurdly complex, with developers treating simple UI components like hardcore engineering problems. Open source libraries reinvent the same HTML elements thousands of times, creating vendor lock-in and maintenance burdens. A generation of developers lacks basic HTML knowledge due to over-abstraction.

By Ollie Williams →

Your Images Are (Probably) Oversized

Most developers serve massively oversized images even when using NextJS Image components. A simple hero image went from 3MB to 31kB just by adding the sizes attribute, demonstrating how responsive images with proper srcset and sizes can dramatically reduce bandwidth waste and improve performance.

By Reason Under Pressure →

⏳ Back in Time

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🔗 The Link Lounge

Unordered finds from around the web:

Find something cool? You can send us links to feature here via email.

🧰 The Toolbox

Tools and products we're excited about today:

Perplexity API

Perplexity released the API that powers its search engine giving developers access to a global search infrastructure covering hundreds of billions of webpages.

Learn more →

Helium

Helium is a light JavaScript library that makes HTML interactive using simple attributes like @click, @react, and @bind, requiring no build step or complex setup for dynamic web functionality.

Learn more →

GitHub Copilot CLI

GitHub Copilot CLI is now in public preview. It aims to offer terminal-native development, GitHub integration, agentic capabilities, and MCP extensibility with full user control over execution.

Learn more →

Arcane

Arcane is a modern, user-friendly Docker management tool that provides a unified interface to manage containers, images, volumes, and networks, built with Go and SvelteKit for self-hosted deployment.

Learn more →

How To Keep User Access From Breaking at Scale

As your app grows, managing “who can do what” becomes complex. Hard-coded roles and scattered permissions slow you down and fail to meet enterprise demands for fine-grained access.

WorkOS RBAC is the fastest way to implement structured, scalable permissions. Define roles, group permissions, and update access for entire user groups in a single step.

With developer-friendly APIs, a powerful dashboard, and native integrations for SSO and Directory Sync, WorkOS gives you enterprise-grade access control out of the box.

Integrate RBAC with WorkOS

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