# Writing · Jay Shah

All posts on https://jshah.dev, newest first.

## Posts

- [Everyone Should Have a Personal AI Wiki](https://jshah.dev/ai/2026/08/31/everyone-should-have-a-personal-ai-wiki/) (31 Aug 2026 · AI): A personal wiki that an AI compiles and maintains, built on Karpathy's pattern, and how to set one up yourself.
- [What Playing Poker Taught Me](https://jshah.dev/poker/risk/psychology/2026/07/01/what-playing-poker-taught-me/) (01 Jul 2026 · Life): Lessons about risk, variance, and reading people from four years of playing poker seriously.
- [Just Talk to It](https://jshah.dev/ai/workflow/2026/06/25/just-talk-to-it/) (25 Jun 2026 · AI): Why I dictate my prompts to LLMs instead of typing them, and why the results are better.
- [Six Components That Make Interfaces Feel Alive](https://jshah.dev/design/2026/06/22/components-that-feel-alive/) (22 Jun 2026 · Design): Six live, interactive UI components I came across exploring popular UX libraries, and the small detail that makes each one feel good.
- [The AI Headcount Equation](https://jshah.dev/ai/2026/06/15/the-ai-headcount-equation/) (15 Jun 2026 · AI): A look at the real costs of adopting AI: the headcount cuts that fund it, the extra output you get back, and why the payoff is so hard to measure.
- [The Iterative Developer in the AI Era](https://jshah.dev/ai/developer-tools/workflow/process/2026/05/19/the-iterative-developer-in-the-ai-era/) (19 May 2026 · AI): Why shipping an imperfect first draft works so well with AI tooling, and what a company must do to support it.
- [My AI Dev Workflow](https://jshah.dev/ai/developer-tools/workflow/2026/04/07/my-ai-dev-workflow/) (07 Apr 2026 · AI): A layered AI development setup: Claude Code as the foundation, with custom skills, plugins, MCP servers, and multi-agent orchestration on top.
- [Collaboration vs Innovation](https://jshah.dev/business-strategy/collaboration/innovation/culture/2022/06/20/collaboration-vs-innovation/) (20 Jun 2022 · Teams): Constant collaboration and breakthrough innovation pull against each other. How to get the best of both.
- [Early Learnings as a Staff Engineer](https://jshah.dev/staff-engineer/career/development/2021/11/28/early-learnings-as-a-staff-engineer/) (28 Nov 2021 · Career): Observations from my first six months as a staff engineer, on alignment, influence, and impact.
- [The Zettelkasten Method](https://jshah.dev/note-taking/software/2021/10/09/the-zettelkasten-method/) (09 Oct 2021 · Notes): A note-taking method for retaining and recalling what you learn, and the software that makes it work.
- [Build for the User](https://jshah.dev/software/philosophy/application/design/2021/05/10/build-for-the-user/) (10 May 2021 · Craft): A short list of questions that keep your software focused on what actually works for the people using it.
- [Encapsulate for Easy Refactors](https://jshah.dev/ruby/rails/refactor/2020/12/14/encapsulate-for-easy-refactors/) (14 Dec 2020 · Ruby): How encapsulating logic today makes tomorrow's refactor easy, shown by extending a Rails role into its own model.
- [A Developer's Guide to Processes](https://jshah.dev/developer/guide/processes/threads/2020/08/24/a-developers-guide-to-processes/) (24 Aug 2020 · Systems): What a process actually is: memory layout, states, the control block, process creation, and interprocess communication.
- [My Essential Mac Applications](https://jshah.dev/mac/applications/software/2020/06/08/my-essential-mac-applications/) (08 Jun 2020 · Tools): The Mac apps I rely on every day, grouped by productivity, entertainment, and development.
- [Thread Safe Connection Pool in Ruby](https://jshah.dev/rails/ruby/connection_pool/threads/2020/05/26/thread-safe-connection-pool-in-ruby/) (26 May 2020 · Ruby): Building a thread-safe connection pool with class instance variables, a Mutex, and the connection_pool gem.

## Topics

- [AI](https://jshah.dev/writing/ai/) (5 posts)
- [Ruby](https://jshah.dev/writing/ruby/) (2 posts)
- [Career](https://jshah.dev/writing/career/) (1 post)
- [Craft](https://jshah.dev/writing/craft/) (1 post)
- [Design](https://jshah.dev/writing/design/) (1 post)
- [Life](https://jshah.dev/writing/life/) (1 post)
- [Notes](https://jshah.dev/writing/notes/) (1 post)
- [Systems](https://jshah.dev/writing/systems/) (1 post)
- [Teams](https://jshah.dev/writing/teams/) (1 post)
- [Tools](https://jshah.dev/writing/tools/) (1 post)