The G2 version pairs with an iPhone over BLE 5.x, shows dual per‑eye micro‑LED canvases, and can be steered with a companion R1 ring and finger gestures. Because the lenses contain their own micro‑LED modules, the picture is always private and self‑contained, and the lenses are capable of 576×288 ‘canvas’ instances plus bespoke UI containers for text, images, and virtual controls.

Developers can sideload apps via evenhub-cli, package them as .ehpk bundles, and run them inside the even-dev simulator. Homebrew-built tooling has emerged alongside community reverse-engineering: the even-g2-notes repository gathers architecture, BLE/session, display, input, page lifecycle, device APIs, error codes, UI patterns, and packaging docs plus several example apps (chess, reddit, weather, Tesla, Pong, Snake) that demonstrate canvas rendering, image containers, and remote services.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Apps	2026	EvenChess	Chess HUD for the G2 that runs Stockfish via a WASM worker, includes Bullet Blitz and academy drills, and is built with Vite/TypeScript plus the Even Hub SDK.
		Reddit client	Reddit reader for Even G2 glasses; use swipes/taps to browse posts and comments from configurable subreddit feeds, built with the EvenHub SDK and TypeScript.
		Tesla (Even G2)	Tesla dashboard with 35+ commands (climate, charging, security, windows), live map, and a proxy server that keeps the Tessie token server-side for secure remote control.
		Weather (Even G2)	Forecast widget that pulls Open-Meteo data for weekly, hourly, precipitation, and wind screens, uses shadcn/ui for the settings UI, and works inside the four-container limit per page.
Documentation		even-g2-notes	Reverse-engineered reference covering architecture, BLE/session handling, dual micro-LED displays, input events, packaging, and sample apps for the Even G2.
Games		Pong (Even G2)	Pong clone with character-grid rendering, Redis-backed global win count, and Vercel serverless API; runs as a fast text-mode game with flicker-free frame pushes.
		Snake (Even G2)	Classic Snake built with the Even Hub SDK; uses 28×10 text grid, swipe controls, and Redis-backed best-score API plus simple UI rebuild logic to keep latency low.
Infrastructure		even-dev simulator	Unified Even Hub simulator that launches G2 apps via start-even.sh, manages built-in and cached external apps (chess, reddit, weather, etc.), and knows how to refresh dependencies.

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/com/apple/tv?utm_content=atom 2007-04-15T08:29:48+00:00 2026-03-10T21:50:43+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Apple’s Apple TV is the company’s media-centric set-top box, originally shipped in 2007 as a streaming appliance and now evolved into a hub for tvOS apps, AirPlay, and HomeKit-aware home entertainment.

The hardware has changed a lot over the years, yet the missing remote control experience inspired a number of companion tools that bring deeper integration with the macOS ecosystem.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Applications	2026	ItsyTV	Native macOS menu bar remote for Apple TV with D-pad navigation, app grid, now-playing controls, pairing helpers, and per-device hotkeys.

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/com/apple/homekit?utm_content=atom 2017-12-23T11:31:00+00:00 2026-03-10T21:50:43+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com HomeKit is Apple’s home automation solution, which revolves around the Home Accessory Protocol (HAP).

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Applications	2026	Itsyhome (macOS)	Native macOS menu bar client that bridges HomeKit and Home Assistant with Pro features (webhooks/SSE, deeplinks, cameras, iCloud sync).
Audio	2025	homebridge-homepod-radio	A Homebridge plugin to stream radio stations to AirPlay 2 devices including HomePods
Bridges		homebridge-easy-mqtt	A Homebridge plugin to bridge MQTT devices to HomeKit
	2024	matterbridge	A Matter plugin manager
Gateways	2017	homekit2mqtt	A straightforward two-way bridge between HAP and MQTT
		homebridge	a very popular bridge with many plugins for specific devices
Libraries	2024	HomeSpan	a HomeKit Library for the Arduino-ESP32
	2023	Arduino-HomeKit-ESP	Arduino library version of espressif’s official esp-homekit-sdk
		Home Accessory Architect	ESP8266 and ESP32 support for a very wide range of device capabilities via simple JSON scripting
		esp-homekit	Apple HomeKit accessory server library for ESP-OPEN-RTOS.
	2017	HAP-NodeJS	a very popular HAP implementation
		HAP-Java	HAP implementation for Java
		HomeControl	a full HAP implementation in Go
		pyhomekit	A set of Python libraries that implement part of the core protocol
		HAP-python	A fuller HAP implementation that allows for easy subclassing
		homekit_python	Another library and set of utilities
Specifications	2020	Secure Video Unofficial Specification	A list of states, characteristics and other details that are necessary for secure video support
	2018	Official HomeKit Accessory Protocol Specs
Video	2020	hkcam	a Go-based solution to have a Pi Zero serve as a HomeKit camera
	2019	homebridge-camera-rpi	A NodeJS Homebridge setup to have the Pi serve as a HomeKit camera

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/blog/2026/03/08/2130?utm_content=atom 2026-03-08T21:30:00+00:00 2026-03-12T14:40:31+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com We’re three months into 2026, and coding agents have been a big part of my time since last year–things have definitely intensified, and one of my predictions has already panned out: agents are everywhere.

My advice for people getting into this remains the same:

In the music hobby, there’s a thing called GAS–Gear Acquisition Syndrome–where people get obsessed with buying the latest gear even if they don’t know how to use it. I see quite a lot of that in the AI space right now, so I’d rather recommend starting with mature, well-supported tools:

• VS Code with GitHub Copilot is still the best entry point–you can compare Claude, GPT and Gemini side by side, and it affords real control over the agent’s environment (plus it’s designed for enterprise use).
• Mistral Vibe and Gemini CLI both have daily free tiers with enough fail-safes to experiment safely. (I still recommend sandboxing, but it’s less critical than it was a few months ago.)
• OpenCode is the fully free route, but the models have fewer guardrails and can take weird turns–definitely sandbox this one.

I can’t in good conscience recommend spending hundreds on Anthropic or OpenAI subscriptions right now–the market is saturated, and both are shipping desktop tools (Claude Code, Codex) that will likely come with cheaper tiers. The “use boring technology” adage applies here too.

Of course by now I’ve built my own tools and keep improving upon them, but that’s a long-term project, and I don’t think it’s the best starting point for most people.

I never run agent tools on a machine with personal data–that’s why I built agentbox in the first place. You may not need to be as strict about it as I am, but VS Code supports dev containers on any platform, and both Anthropic and OpenAI are shipping sandboxes with their tools, so there’s really no excuse.

There are rather a lot of misconceptions about data privacy, and things like OpenClaw don’t help matters (I’m still gobsmacked people give it direct access to their e-mail). Even with enterprise-hosted models that don’t train on your data, “don’t run untrusted code on a machine with personal data” is a principle worth keeping.

Like I was quipping the other day, AI is the new digital advertising–and yet people are giving it more access to their data than they give ad networks, which is just baffling.

And speaking of OpenClaw–the “local AI” fallacy needs addressing. None of these things are really “local” in any meaningful sense–the gap between local and cloud models is huge, and even tens of thousands of dollars in hardware won’t get you close to frontier capabilities.

“Fast, Good, Cheap: pick two” still applies, and it’s easy to get bitten by technology advances: I built a server for local AI three years ago and it’s already obsolete.

And there is an almost weekly hype cycle around local models that I think is totally unwarranted in practice. For instance, Qwen is promising, but the local quantizations match last year’s cloud models at best, and the gap keeps widening.

I keep coming across people who say AI generates rubbish code, and I think it’s usually one of two things: wrong tools (VS Code does much more than provide a UI–it curates context and feeds models your code structure), or wrong approach (they’re quite literally “holding it wrong”). I wrote about the expectation gap two years ago and the fundamentals haven’t changed.

Part of it is inflated expectations, of course. Frontier models like Opus 4.6 and GPT-5.4 are very capable, but they need skill to use effectively, and they never produce perfect code on the first try. You have to know how to use them, and that takes practice.

I’ve been refining how I work with them since last year, and although things have evolved quite a bit, the core principles remain the same.

Every project starts with a SPEC.md that I iterate on with the LLM, 20-questions style, until it covers the essentials–goals, functional specs, non-functional specs, technical specs, and acceptance criteria.

I prefer SPEC.md over PRD.md because it emphasises specification over requirements–I want the agent to follow it, not interpret it freely.

This isn’t a prompt–it’s a living document that evolves with the project. And agents love specs–feeding one an actual ECMA-376 spec document got me to 60% compliance in days, with no hallucinated APIs.

I complement specs with SKILL.md files–guidelines for coding, tooling, or domain-specific tasks. I have a growing collection in agentbox, and every new project starts with a make init that adapts them to the local spec.

You can also fold these into .github/copilot-instructions.md (which VS Code picks up automatically), but standalone skills are tool-agnostic.

The properly interesting bit is that agents now write their own skills–piclaw built its own hot-reload, backup, and web scraping skills after I’d guided it through the process a few times. Early days, but that’s where this is headed.

MCP tools work better than skills for chaining–models struggle to chain skills together, whereas MCP narrows context and presents clear next steps. But for teaching how rather than what, skills are still invaluable.

After doing the prep work, I go into a loop I’ve been tightening for months:

From the SPEC.md, I create a PLAN.md–not a flat TODO checklist, but a structured breakdown the agent can reason about (what’s done, what’s blocked, why). It updates the plan as it goes, which also refreshes model context. No reliance on built-in planning tools (which are patchy across models), and the plan is always in the repo for me to review.

The loop itself is pretty simple:

• I break down work into focused chunks–scaffolding, data model, API, etc.
• The agent writes code, lints, tests, documents, and updates the PLAN.md.
• I review and steer–correcting, feeding it more context, or pointing at examples.

There is also an “advanced mode” where I break up the PLAN.md into multiple Kanban-like tickets and we then play “20 questions” again for that ticket alone and the LLM asks me about it to refine the scope, but I realize most people just don’t have the patience for that even though it massively improves what gets done and how.

The most important bit of the loop–and the one most people get wrong at first. Effective steering isn’t about reprompting and hoping for the best; it’s about funnelling the agent’s attention to the right context:

• TDD-like tests–describe expected behaviour, ask the agent to make them pass. My most reliable workflow, especially when porting across languages.
• Linting and static analysis via Makefile or CI–the agent self-corrects. I aim for 80% coverage as a quality bar.
• Steering by example–pointing at existing code that demonstrates the right approach.
• Switching models–Claude still writes dodgy tests (ok, fine, it forgets all sorts of corner cases), so I use Codex models for test and security audits.

Yes, that’s proper work. But it’s no different from managing humans, and it gets easier with practice.

Some languages are inherently better for agents–not in terms of popularity (any agent can do decent Python), but because strong types and annotations help models understand intent and self-correct.

In my experience, Go, Rust and TypeScript work much better than Swift (too many revisions, too-opinionated frameworks). Go in particular reinforces context through explicit function and interface references, and TypeScript has excellent tooling for enforcing good practices–which is why I’ve been using both a lot more recently.

My sandboxing approach is working well, and I don’t see myself changing it anytime soon. But I’ve been slowly extending my agents’ reach–piclaw, which started as a weekend hack, is now a fully-fledged agentic assistant on my phone, and I’ve been giving it more autonomy as I learn to trust the guardrails.

The next frontier (boy, is this a pompous term, but I guess corporate speak is sneaking in this late in the evening) is getting agents to collaborate–sharing context and skills to work as a group. I have some ideas about how to do it, but that’s a matter for another post.

Speaking of which, it’s pretty much finished UX-wise:

And I made it a point of letting piclaw release v1.0.0 by itself, which was kind of fun:

It’s pretty much feature complete mobile-wise, too:

• I can log in via TOTP or Passkeys (WebAuthn), which is probably the only real use I ever found for them.
• The UI is very nice to use on both the iPhone and iPad, and I can now edit files on desktop as well (I added a CodeMirror-based workspace editor in a moment of creeping featuritis, and it has turned out very useful).
• I added lots of little quality-of-life features like a context usage indicator, thinking level display, and history navigation.
• Most of the internals seem sound, with all the rough corners I found fixed.

I’m still (ironically) struggling with Azure OpenAI Integration, especially since GPT-5.3 Codex and 5.4 have a few twists in their API responses that are causing some issues, but I think I have most of the kinks worked out now.

And, since I can’t leave well enough alone, I also backported most of it to vibes and am working on a way for piclaw instances to talk to each other and share information.

Yes, I am building a little agent society. I must have drunk too much of that OpenClaw Kool-Aid… But still, it’s an interesting thing to play with, even if my priority this weekend was getting an ARM SBC up and running with a custom Debian image that piclaw built for itself–which is something I never expected to be doing when I started this project.

I’m sort of expecting Sarah Connor to burst through the door at any moment and tell me I have to stop.

• GPU-accelerated rendering via GPUI with Metal on macOS, so the UI stays smooth even while updating multiple splits.
• Branching undo tree, auto-save every 300 ms, and a diary-style folder structure that deposits new notes into ~/Documents/ghostmd/diary/YYYY/MM/DD/.
• Always-visible file tree sidebar with fuzzy (Cmd+P) and content search powered by ripgrep, plus agentic search (Cmd+Shift+F) that can ask Claude natural-language questions about your notes.
• Ghostty-style tabs and splits, command palette (Cmd+Shift+P) for runtime theme switching, 19 built-in themes, session persistence, and JetBrains Mono for consistently readable text.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Development	2012	pi3d	A simple wrapper atop the OpenGLES libraries that have been floating around
	2019	dockerpi	a Docker image using QEMU to boot a Raspbian environment on Intel machines
Education	2020	PiNet	A boot server and management solution for classrooms
Emulation	2012	Emulator binaries	prebuilt MAME, MESS, etc
	2013	Chameleon	An impressive emulator bundle
Firmware	2016	rpi-open-firmware	Open source VPU firmware
GUI	2022	slint	a GUI toolkit that can run in MCUs like the Pi pico and the ESP32
Graphics	2012	pyopengles	Uses the EGL and OpenGLES libraries to draw 3d graphics from inside Python with hardware acceleration.
	2020	epaper.js	an ePaper display control hack that converts HTML to a monochrome PNG
	2021	lazycast	a Miracast server for the Pi
Hardware		Piunora	A tiny-but-mighty open-source carrier board for the Raspberry Pi CM4
	2025	DisplayLink on Raspberry Pi	instructions to get DisplayLink USB monitors working on the Pi 5
Media	2013	RasPlex	A nicely packaged Plex front-end
Music	2019	Orac	a modular synth engine
Networking	2023	pihole-readonly-rootfs	a read-only setup to run Pi-Hole
	2024	pifi-openwrt-raspberry-pi	an OpenWRT-based project to quickly turn a Pi into a powerful travel router.
Operating Systems	2013	Moebius	A cut-down version of Raspbian with minimal footprint
	2014	inferno-rpi	A native port of the Inferno OS
	2015	resinOS	A Docker-centric distro for embedded devices
	2018	interim	a minimalist operating system with a LISP shell
		gokrazy	A minimal Go userland for the Pi 3 (aarch64)
	2020	Elementary OS	Unofficial builds of Elementary for the Raspberry Pi 4
	2021	Chromium OS Builds
		Writing a bare metal operating system for Raspberry Pi 4	Very comprehensive. May be enough to bootstrap things like Inferno or the Java HaikuVM on it.
		circle	A C++ bare metal environment
			a C++ bare metal programming environment for the Raspberry Pi
		hello system	a Mac-like BSD desktop environment that also runs on the Pi (no installation images, though)
	2022	DietPi	An optimized Debian distribution with lower resource usage and support for other SBCs
	2023	arm-tutorial-rpi	a tutorial on bare metal programming for the Raspberry Pi
	2026	raspios-docker	Automated multi-architecture Raspberry Pi OS Lite Docker images (rolling arm64/armhf plus immutable YYYYMMDD tags) pushed to Docker Hub.
Photography	2018	A Guide to Recording 660FPS Video On A $6 Raspberry Pi Camera
	2025	raspindi	an NDI camera streamer for the Raspberry Pi
Radio		sdrberry	an SDR solution with an lvgl interface
Reference	2012	Using OpenGL ES 2.0 on the Raspberry Pi without X windows	The first coherent summary I came across
		Qt on Raspberry Pi	Notes on installing QtonPi
		Setting up Scratchbox2 and QEMU	A good guide almost unbearably spoiled by screenshots of text instead of commands you can easily copy and paste to a console. Useful, but infuriating.
	2020	Read-Only Raspberry Pi	Adafruit’s notes on configuring jessie for a read-only filesystem
		Jeff Geerling's notes on USB boot and TRIM	Useful to enable TRIM on external SSDs
	2021	Rolling your own minimal embedded Linux for the Raspberry Pi	Includes notes on audio and X setup. Has a few omissions (ignores the read-only overlay filesystem).
	2024	extreme-pi-boot-optimization	optimizing boot processes and energy consumption for a solar-powered camera.
References	2012	Raspberry Pi Tuning	Notes on removing most of the gunk in the standard distro
Software	2014	PiWall	A simple videowall solution
		dispmanx_vnc	A VNC server that shares your the framebuffer
Thin Clients	2015	PiNet	A Linux-centric thin-client solution for classrooms
		WTware	A Windows/Remote Desktop oriented thin-client distro
Tools	2012	Debian Lenny and Squeeze armel images for QEMU	I’ve used these for a while now, and they’re quite useful for testing (even if compiling is dog slow).
		rpi-update	a simple firmware updater
	2024	RaspberryPi_WebRTC	a low-latency home security camera using a Raspberry Pi and WebRTC
		pi-ci	a virtual machine setup for creating Pi 3, 4 & 5 configurations
USB	2022	bt2usbhid	a way to use your Bluetooth peripherals with another computer using a Raspberry Pi as a converter
Video	2021	showmewebcam	a prebuilt image that uses uvc-gadget to turn a Pi into a USB web cam with extensive configuration options
		piwebcam	a prebuilt image that supports motion detection and image analysis
	2025	mjpg-streamer	a fork of mjpg-streamer with several optimizations for the Pi Zero
	2026	ZeroPlay	Lightweight CLI H.264/HEVC player that leverages the Pi’s V4L2 M2M decoder together with DRM/KMS and ALSA so it runs without X11 or Wayland.

Survival Tips

If you’re using an older version of Raspbian and want to access your board via VNC, you should grab a copy of the vnc4server sources from Ubuntu and rebuild it on the Pi. vnc4server has much less latency and performs much better overall, at least for my use cases:

# on a Ubuntu box
$ mkdir tmp; cd tmp
$ apt-get source vnc4server
# find the source tree and rsync it across to the Pi
# ...time passes...

# on the Pi, cd into the source tree and do:
$ debuild -us -uc
# ...a lot of time passes...
$ cd ..; sudo apt-get install xbase-clients x11-apps; sudo dpkg -i vnc4server*.deb

This is just lovely. If, like me, you grew up with the LEGO Space collection and loved the artwork on those pieces, and do 3D printing, this 10:1 scale recreation with a Mac mini and a 7 inch display will make your day.

I’m just a bit sad that the cabling is still very visible, but you can grab the files from Makerworld and give them your own spin.

I know a bunch of people will disagree, but this is the most relevant Mac announcement in years for two reasons:

• It’s the first new Mac model in a while that isn’t just a spec bump, but rather a new product line with a clear target audience and a pretty aggressive price point (at Apple standards, that is).
• It’s not running on an M-series chip, which is a bold move that could have significant implications for Apple’s product strategy and the broader Mac ecosystem.

The fact that it has “only” 8GB of RAM and 256GB of storage (which is OK if you think of it as a school machine) is going to be widely maligned, whereas I would focus on the missed opportunity to make it even more portable by shipping a 12” display instead of 13” (probably some sort of golden ratio thing) and the unbelievable stinginess of shipping with a USB-C 2.0 port.

What? You couldn’t afford a USB-C 3.0 port? Really? I mean, I get that this is an entry-level machine, but come on, Apple.

Update: this seems to be a limitation of the A18 chipset’s I/O setup, from what I’m reading. There’s a lot of chip information out there now, including breakdowns of the new M5 lineup that are worth perusing as well.

That said, I would swap my iPad Pro for it in a flash (if it had a 12” display, that is). And that is probably exactly why it is that big.

Date	Platform	Link	Notes
2026		prek	A Rust-based, dependency-free reimagining of pre-commit with drop-in compatibility
		Worktrunk	A CLI for git worktree management with hooks and automation tuned for parallel agentic workflows
2025		git-crypt	A tool for transparent encryption of files in a git repository
		Soft Serve	A self-hosted Git server with a text interface, written in Go
2023		git-secret	A tool to store your private data inside a git repository
		OneDev	A possible GitLab replacement for on-prem setups
	Mac	GitUp	A nice Mac GUI with undo and history editing features
2018		lazygit	nice terminal-based wrapper
2014		Gitblit	A Java based solution.
		Gitlist	A PHP front-end
		Gitfs	A FUSE filesystem that keeps track of changes
		Gogs	A self-hosting Go solution, pretty neat.
2013		libgit2	A linkable library for git
		gittle	A high-level Python implementation based on Dulwich
		klaus	A Python-based repository browser
2012		git-extras	A set of extensions for team work.
2011	Mac	GitX	Another fork with even more features
		gitx	A fork of the traditional GitX with a number of new features
2010		Gitbox	Free for up to three repos.
		gitnub	RubyCocoa, plays nice with github, requires some tweaking.
		GitMac	Also in beta. No remarkable features.
		GitX	The classic.
		Gity	Simple and straightforward UI.
		Gitti	In beta. Seems to have a decent revision graph.
	Multiple	Dulwich	a pure Python implementation
		SparkleShare	Wants to be Dropbox as well

Notes

Use git config --global core.autocrlf input to have git convert files to LF ending when committing (essential if you are dealing with legacy codebases).

It’s been a long while since I’ve been this stupendously unwilling to do the corporate thing, and although I quickly got a hold on things, the entire week felt like recurring confirmation that I am not doing the kind of work I want to be doing.

Fortunately I was able to have quite a bit of fun with my own projects in the wee hours.

I have been using vibes almost continuously to convert a few thousand posts in Textile format to Markdown to accelerate this site’s migration to its future engine.

Over the past week, instead of being 40% Markdown and 60% Textile, this site became around 75% Markdown, which is a huge improvement.

The agent is a little bit too enthusiastic about converting things to Markdown and sometimes screws up the formatting (especially for tables), but it’s a massive improvement over scripts, one-shot prompts or even my custom MCP server.

Fortunately I had the foresight to make things like my link tables and other structured data use YAML, which made it much easier for the agent to parse and convert things without screwing up the formatting.

And, every morning, I can just pop open vibes on my phone and ask it to file new interesting links, or start a draft that I can finish later.

It is still too eager in marking pages as “new” (which I’ve had to fix a few times), but the fact that it can reclassify URLs on its own and validate inter-page links is a huge help.

piclaw, however, has been a completely different ball game. It shares a lot of DNA with vibes (in fact, it started as a fork of vibes that I then refactored and rewrote to handle pi), but the fact that it is an agentic system with a persistent memory that I can access from my phone has made it a much more powerful tool for me.

The main reason why is that I can pull out my phone or iPad (or a webapp on my desktop) and quickly get the agent to follow-up on things using text or voice input, which is surprisingly effective with frontier models.

Regardless of the OpenClaw mania, there is a lot to be said for an agentic loop with a dead simple memory (I gave it access to its own sqlite database besides Markdown files) and a bunch of SKILL.md files that it can write itself.

Over this past week, piclaw has rebuilt itself into a much more robust and capable system:

• The first skill it built for itself was a “hot reload” skill that allows it to update its own codebase and restart itself, which is… exactly the thing that is going to bring about the singularity, I’m sure.
• Learned to back itself up to Azure using restic every night, and to restore itself if something goes wrong.
• Learned to use playwright to scrape nearby restaurant listings and suggest places to order from at lunchtime.
• Refined that to do a comparative analysis of pretty much every inference API out there and build a pricing calculator for itself, plus a neat SVG chart with our token usage.
• Checked a few sites every couple of days and gave me updates on interesting content that doesn’t have an RSS feed (it’s also been able to do quite interesting “news alerts” off my RSS summaries, which is something I will play around with more).
• Searched ArXiv for new papers in my areas of interest, summarized them, and cross-referenced them with my notes to give me an overview of a couple of topics I needed for work.

But these were “just” new SKILL.md files that it wrote for itself and then loaded, which is impressive but not exactly groundbreaking.

Then it started improving itself:

• Added the ability to switch models on the fly, which also means that scheduled tasks can now run on cheaper models automatically. Thanks to the brilliant design of pi itself, scheduled runs are appended to a side branch in the session tree and then the cursor is restored. The result is fully logged, but it doesn’t pollute the main model’s conversational context.
• The web UI gained a workspace explorer with previews, downloads, and file‑reference pills that feed directly into prompts. I had piclaw and vibes steal each other’s CSS and UI tweaks as we implemented new features, and the result is a much more responsive and usable interface.
• Large messages now have previews and digests, keeping the UI responsive. The timeline does infinite scrolling and full-text search, and the model can search it itself.

But the most impressive thing it did was that it built me a custom Debian Trixie image for a new ARM board hat almost booted on the first try.

And it only failed because of a quirk in the EFI/DTB boot sequence, which is… pretty impressive.

I gave it two things:

• The URL to the vendor source tree, which I cloned
• Access to a local VM running Ubuntu

…and it was able to ssh in, review the build scripts, cross-compile the kernel and use debootstrap to build a custom image for the board, which I then flashed onto an SD card.

That got to the “starting kernel” stage but then threw an error because EFI and DTBs are fickle beasts and it skipped a step in the process that I didn’t know about.

After implementing automatic model switching, piclaw is running Codex 5.1 Mini or GPT 5 Mini most of the time for basic tasks, and it knows to switch to Opus 4.6 when interpreting content or Codex 5.3 Max when fixing code, so costs are… manageable. But I am not leaving it unsupervised with the more expensive models.

Right now I haven’t given piclaw access to any of my actual data except for some project code (which is still sandboxed, so I am the one reviewing and pushing commits to GitHub), but I’m pretty sure I will have one or two projects it will be having direct access to in the near future.

But then again, piclaw is not OpenClaw–it is a much simpler, much more focused thing. I know every single thing it’s doing (and every single line of code it’s written for itself), so I had no compunction in giving its early iterations access to my Obsidian vault, and will likely do so on a permanent basis soon.

I get the hype–it is indeed a much nicer way to use agents than, say, webterm.

Right now I’m working on a little something that will make it easier to access. Tailscale is awesome, but I need a brain-dead authentication mechanism, so I’m prototyping bouncer, which is going to be a reverse proxy that only supports passkey authentication and nothing else.

I have zero belief that passkeys are a real solution for consumer authentication, but if you flip the script and use them for temporary mobile authentication tokens, then they actually make sense.

However much that might be the case, it was a great excuse to draw another cute Go-themed mascot, and I am pretty happy with how it turned out:

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/ai/agentic?utm_content=atom 2025-12-23T10:00:00+00:00 2026-03-10T21:50:43+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Notes and resources on building and operating agentic AI systems, covering orchestration frameworks, task routing, memory, and evaluation approaches that extend baseline LLM capabilities.

Reusable instruction packs, workflow recipes, and prompt modules live in Agentic Skills.

OpenClaw-specific projects and lightweight variants live in OpenClaw Ecosystem.

Pi.dev is the home of the Pi coding agent and its ecosystem of extensions, adapters, and clients. See the Pi.dev Ecosystem page for the curated project list.

Field	Category	Date	Link	Notes
Agent Frameworks	Frameworks	2026	HVE Core	enterprise prompt engineering framework for GitHub Copilot with constraint-based workflows, validated artifacts, and RPI methodology
		2025	FlashLearn	a simple interface for incorporating Agent LLMs
			agno	a lightweight library for building Multimodal Agents
			crewAI	framework for orchestrating role-playing, autonomous AI agents (multi-agent automation)
			AgentKit	build multi-agent networks in TypeScript with deterministic routing and rich tooling via MCP
			Agent Framework	Microsoft open-source agentic framework
	Samples	2026	Cloudflare Agents Starter	starter template for building AI chat agents on Cloudflare Workers with tools, scheduling, and real-time streaming
	Tools		Agent Lightning	training and optimization toolkit for AI agents across frameworks
Agent Knowledge	Frameworks	2025	firm	an ontology framework for structuring agent knowledge about businesses
Agent Memory	Tools	2026	beads	a distributed, git-backed issue tracker and memory system experiment for AI agents
			claude-mem	a persistent memory compression system for Claude Code with search tools
		2025	AgenticMemory	a tool for creating and managing memory in LLMs
			letta	a tool for creating and managing memory-backed agents
Agent Platforms	Platforms	2026	Rivet	Actor-based agent platform that bundles state, storage, workflows, scheduling, and WebSockets into self-hostable Rust binaries or managed cloud runtimes, letting each agent run as a persistent, stateful primitive with built-in persistence and tooling.
		2025	HelixML	an interesting enterprise-grade agentic platform with tools for integration and observability
			Sim	open-source platform to build and deploy AI agent workflows
Agent Systems	Frameworks		pixelagent	an agent engineering blueprint
		2024	pipecat	yet another LLM agent framework
	Samples		TinyTroupe	a multiagent persona simulation
	Tools	2026	CallMe	minimal Claude Code plugin that calls your phone/watch via Telnyx or Twilio (plus OpenAI/ngrok) when a task stalls or needs your input
			baudbot	always-on, Slack-connected multi-agent dev assistant that runs tasks end-to-end on Linux
			Pinchtab	HTTP browser-control bridge that lets any agent drive Chrome via a compact, stealthy API, with snapshot/text modes, token-efficient read flows, and persistent sessions
			rtk	Rust Token Killer CLI proxy that compresses command output before it reaches your Claude Code session, saving ~60‑90% of LLM tokens on git/status/test workflows with ultra-compact summaries and hook-first install.
			gogcli	CLI for Google APIs (Gmail, Calendar, Drive, Docs, Sheets, Chat, etc.) with OAuth credential management, headless flows, and JSON/TSV/compact output modes tailored for agent interactions and automation.
			Argus	VS Code extension that discovers Claude Code sessions, visualizes costs/performance, and surfaces rule-based findings to debug and tune agentic workflows without leaving your editor.
		2025	R2R	production-ready AI retrieval system for agentic RAG via a REST API
		2024	plandex	yet another long-running agent tool for complex coding tasks
		2023	Auto-GPT	an attempt to provide ChatGPT with a degree of autonomy
Code Agents	Samples	2025	amplifier	a technology demonstrater for agentic coding
		2024	devlooper	a program synthesis agent that autonomously fixes its output by running tests
	Tools	2026	kimi-cli	CLI tool for interacting with the Kimi AI assistant
			Sidecar	terminal UI for agentic development workflows with git, task, workspace, and conversation management
			Codex CLI	OpenAI’s lightweight agentic coding CLI for the terminal
		2025	Toad	a unified terminal UI to run coding agents via ACP
			goose	a local AI agent focused on development tasks
			quibbler	a critic for coding agents that can also work as an MCP
			mistral-vibe	Mistral’s agentic coding CLI
Developer Resources	References	2026	Context7	a curated database of context for several development stacks
Personal Assistants	Tools		nanobot	an ultra-lightweight personal AI assistant with multi-provider support
Research Agents	Samples	2025	STORM	LLM-powered knowledge curation system that researches a topic and generates a full-length report with citations
		2023	gpt-researcher	a simple agent that does online research on any given topic
	Tools	2026	autoresearch	Autonomous research harness that lets Claude/Codex agents edit train.py, run 5‑minute training passes, and iterate on models via human-written program.md instructions, logging each experiment the next morning.
Sandboxing Environments			amla-sandbox	A WASM-based sandbox with capability enforcement for running agent-generated code safely. Provides isolation without Docker and reduces tool-call overhead.
			Agent Safehouse	macOS sandbox-exec wrapper that builds deny-first policies for Claude/Codex/AMP workflows so coding agents only touch the files and integrations they need.
			yolobox	a containerized sandbox for running AI coding agents safely
			Capsule	a secure runtime for orchestrating agent tasks in isolated WASM sandboxes
			shuru	local-first microVM sandbox for AI agents on macOS using Apple’s Virtualization.framework
			Cua	A sandboxing toolkit and agentic platform for running agents in isolated environments. Covers Docker, QEMU, and Apple Virtualization for benchmarking, safe code execution, and UI automation.

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/python?utm_content=atom 2007-04-15T10:44:37+00:00 2026-03-01T21:50:40+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Python is one of my favorite programming languages due to its terseness and amazing flexibility, and after decades using it I find it quite amusing that it is now the language of choice for data science and machine learning.

Year	Item	Notes
2016	Sushy	my current wiki engine
2015	rss2imap	The way I used read my news a while back
2009	PNG Canvas	a native Python PNG creation module, suitable for use in Google App Engine
2007	Yaki	my previous wiki engine
2006	MailArchive	a quick hack to file web pages as MIME compliant e-mail messages.
2005	PicoStats	a minimalist Apache log parser.
	IMAP Backup	another quick hack that apparently filled a long-standing need.
	The Python Grimoire	which I converted into TiddlyWiki format
2004	newspipe	which I used daily for a couple of years and occasionally contributed to
	PicoRendezvous.py	a minimalist (and dumb) Bonjour / Rendezvous client
	Growl native protocol implementation	this spawned numerous variants, including a proxy.

Resources

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Astronomy	2021	Skyfield	An astronomical library for Python
Audio	2024	pedalboard	a library for audio processing
Authentication	2023	authlib	OAuth, OpenID Connect and other niceties
	2021	aioauth	Oauth 2.0 framework and provider for asyncio
Automation	2024	helium	a library for automating browsers such as Chrome and Firefox
CAD	2025	sdfCAD	Simple 3D mesh generation with Python based on SDFs
	2024	build123d	a parametric BREP modeling framework for 2D and 3D CAD built on OpenCascade
	2023	sdf	Generate 3D meshes based on SDFs (signed distance functions)
		sdf (Gitlab)	Another version of the sdf library with additional functionality
CLI	2021	pqdm	parallel tqdm
	2020	pyp	a clever shell tool to do inline Python
		typer	A click-like library for building CLI applications
	2019	tqdm	a configurable progress bar
	2018	python-fire	a CLI wrapper for any Python object
		click	A very nice way to do composable CLI tools (see also argh, defopt, docopt, python-fire, etc.)
		Clint	A great module for developing CLI apps
		pbs	A nice, simple and consistent generic command wrapper.
		ptpython	The Python Prompt Toolkit
		plumbum	Another command wrapper, with SSH support.
Cloud	2026	Stelvio	a pure-Python framework for building and deploying AWS apps with the stlv CLI
	2020	pyinfra	a fabric-like agentless automation tool
Coding	2025	pyscn	an intelligent python code quality analyzer
Compilers	2022	codon	an LLVM compiler for a Python subset
	2021	mypyc	a compiler for a subset of type-annotated Python
		Transcrypt	Another JavaScript transpiler
Compression	2021	zipfly	a library for doing on-the-fly zip compression with low memory footprint
Concurrency	2024	dramatiq	background queueing/task processing library
		protean	framework for building event-driven applications using the CQRS pattern
		asyncpal	a unified approach at providing elastic task pools
	2023	mpire	a multiprocessing replacement with a number of additional features
	2020	aiomultiprocess	an asyncio Pool implementation to manage multiple processes with independent event loops
		Trio	a friendlier wrapper around asyncio for concurrent tasks
		OpenReplica	A coordination service that provides replication and synchronization support for large-scale distributed systems
		python-rq	A simpler queueing library
		Pulsar	Another actor-based multiprocessing library with asyncio support and a fair degree of network transparency
		Celery	My current go-to library for task queueing
		Pykka	An implementation of the Actor model, with gevent support
		offset	ports of the Go concurrency model
		aioprocessing	A set of asyncio equivalents of the multiprocessing library
		ray	A distributed execution engine that implements a pandas clone
		goless	ports of the Go concurrency model
		Littleworkers	Parallel job management without the hassles.
Console	2020	rich	a console library with various layout options
		bpython	My favorite REPL
		Colorama	Making ANSI color sequences work cross-platform (see also this gist)
		fabulous	Prints images to console
		urwid	A curses based library for building console UIs
Data Engineering	2024	polars-h3	a Polars extension that adds support for the H3 discrete global grid system
		Pathway	a Python ETL framework for stream processing, real-time analytics, LLM pipelines, and RAG
	2020	Little Ball of Fur	a graph sampling library that works with NetworkX
		riptable	a multithreaded array processing library
		Happy	A Hadoop library to run map-reduce jobs via Jython
		biplist	A library that can manage Mac binary .plist files
		pyparsing	a handy, flexible parser library that does away with lex/yacc.
		snakebite	A native HDFS client to access the Hadoop datastore.
		xlwings	An Excel plugin
		Bounter	A fast probabilistic counter
		voluptuous	A data schema validation library.
		fuzzywuzzy	A fuzzy string matching library
		PyCascading	A better way to write Hadoop jobs.
		xlwt	a library to parse Excel documents (cheatsheet.
Data Science	2025	DataSynthesizer	a library for generating synthetic data
		kreuzberg	a text extraction library supporting PDFs, images, office documents and more
		mimesis	a library for generating fake data
		Merlion	A time series forecasting library
		pydbgen	another library for generating synthetic data
	2024	sail	unifies stream and batch processing with a drop-in replacement for Spark SQL
		cuDF	a GPU DataFrame library leveraging CUDA
	2023	pygwalker	a Tableau-like dataframe exploration tool for Jupyter
		datapane	a data and reporting and analisys framework
		fugue	a unified interface for executing SQL, Python and Pandas code on Spark, Dask and Ray
	2021	Kats	a time series analysis library
		euporie	a text-based interface for Jupyter notebooks
		xeus-sql	a Jupyter kernel for SQL databases
		eztable	a simple table library
		pyxelate	a pixelation/dithering algorithm that uses a mix of algorithmic and ML approaches
	2020	TextHero	an NLP library for large-scale text processing
		papermill	a way to parameterize and automate Jupyter notebooks
		SciPy	scientific (including plotting) libraries for Python
Data Validation	2021	schema	another data validation library
		pydantic	Data validation using type hinting
		Schematics	A validation/schema handling library.
Database	2025	mssql-python	a Microsoft SQL Server driver for Python
		aiosqlitepool	a connection pool for aiosqlite
	2023	mongolite	another MongoDB-like database
	2021	pottery	a Redis library with Pythonic syntactic sugar
		dataset	trivial abstraction layer over SQLAlchemy
		Mongita	a MongoDB-like database library for in-process use
	2020	DuckDB	an embeddable SQL database with OLAP features
		montydb	a tiny MongoDB implementation in pure Python
		simple-graph	A simple graph database in SQLite
		pymssql	SQL Server and Sybase driver
		FreeTDS
		SQLAlchemy	tutorial
		Peewee	A small, very flexible ORM
		tinydb	A (very) lightweight document oriented database
		Goatfish	An even smaller schemaless ORM
Debugging	2020	Scalene	A high-performance CPU and memory profiler
		PrettyErrors	an error handler that prettifies output
		Eww	Insert a REPL into a running application
		Pycallgraph	Generate a program flow graph Graphviz
		Hypothesis	A very nice testing framework
		pudb	A console debugger
		lptrace	A pretty amazing single-file strace-like tool for Python
		assertEquals	a testing framework with a great screncast
Django	2025	django-qrauth	a Django library for QR code-based authentication
		django-tastypie	a Django library for building RESTful APIs
		plain	an opinionated fork of Django
		django-rest-framework	another Django library for building RESTful APIs
		django-admin-sortable	a library for adding drag-and-drop sorting to Django admin
	2024	django-organizations	a Django library for managing organization accounts
	2023	django-unicorn	a Reactive framework for Django that uses minimal JavaScript
	2022	django-ninja	for building APIs with Django and Python 3.6+ type hints
	2021	diskcache	a Django-compatible caching library
		wid.gy	A Django-based CMS framework
		Django	Probably the best app framework I’ve every used.
		Wagtail	Another Django-based CMS framework
		django-micro	A lightweight wrapper to use Django as you would Bottle
Electronics	2024	micropython-fusion	a sensor fusion library for MicroPython
		Kalman-Filter-Python-for-mpu6050	a Kalman filter for the MPU6050 IMU
	2023	belay	a library and helper for developing MicroPython projects, including an on-device REPL
	2021	pinout	Helps create SVG pin-out diagrams for electronic hardware
Embedded	2025	MicroPythonOS	a MicroPython-based operating system for embedded devices that can run on ESP32 (and likely the CYD)
		archimedes	a Python framework that lets you develop and analyze algorithms in NumPy and automatically generate optimized C code for embedded systems
Enterprise		toil	A cross-platform pipeline management system with Common Workflow Language support
Environments	2020	snakeware	a Python userspace for Linux
Frameworks	2024	Platypush	a modular platform for home automation with easy MQTT event handling and a graphical editor
Functional Programming		Hy	An awesome LISP dialect that sits atop the runtime.
		funcy	A nice, fairly complete functional library
		Toolz	A functional complement to the standard library.
		pyrsistent	A persistent data structure library
GIS	2021	prettymaps	A minimal Python library to draw customized maps from OpenStreetMap data
		geopy	an amazingly flexible geocoding library.
		reverse-geocoder	A fast offline reverse geocoder
GUI	2025	pytauri	a Tauri binding for Python
	2024	CustomTkinter	offers customizable widgets and supports system appearance modes across platforms
		mesop	a rapid web development framework for Python
		micropython-nano-gui	A lightweight MicroPython GUI library
		nicegui	a library for creating Web UIs
	2022	flet	creates realtime web, mobile and desktop apps using Flutter
	2021	encodermenu	a MicroPython library for GUI creation, using uasyncio
	2020	Gooey	a wxWidgets wrapper for quickly building GUI versions of CLI tools
		DearPyGui	a Linux/Windows GUI library atop ImGUI (C++)
	2019	fman build system	a complete build system for Qt applications
	2018	Toga	a cross-platform GUI that works on the Mac
		kivy	A sophisticated UI/UX library with Android support
		PythonCard	A bit basic, but interesting.
		VPython	3D OpenGL libraries for quick visualization
		winGuiAuto.py	for Windows automation
		pyglet	a cross-platform windowing and multimedia library with OpenGL support
		PySide	A recent Qt binding (up to and including 4.7) with QML support
		PySimpleGUI	a simple tkinter-based GUI wrapper
Graphics	2026	splathash	Encodes any image into 16 bytes (22-char base64url) and decodes to a 32×32 preview orders of magnitude faster than BlurHash, with Go/TS/Python reference libs and identical hashes across languages.
	2025	piligraphs	a library for creating charts using PIL
		html2pic	a library for rendering HTML/CSS to images using pictex
		pictex	a layout library for creating component-based graphics in Python, using skia
	2024	renderer	rendering and rasterizing library for STL
		pyrender	glTF 2.0-compliant OpenGL renderer for visualization of 3D scenes
		pygfx	render engine targeting Vulkan/Metal/DX12
	2023	pyxel	A retro game engine for Python
	2022	taichi	a high-performance graphics library
	2021	image-blender	a Cython implementation of Adobe Photoshop blend modes
	2020	blurhash	A way to encode image placeholders as strings
		hiplot	high dimensional interactive plotting
		diagrams	a library for drawing cloud architecture diagrams (Azure, AWS, k8s, etc.)
	2019	douglas-quaid	a library for image matching and correlation
		imagededup	uses several different algorithms (including NNs) to detect duplicate images
		plottyprint	printable formatting for matplotlib
		smc.freeimage	A wrapper for the freeimage library that can handle various TIFF and fax formats as well as ICC color profiles
		Graphite	a real-time graphing system similar to RRDTool
		Skip's Python Bits	lots of useful snippets
		Pygal	An SVG charting library with a variety of built-in formats.
		Pyx	Oldie, but goodie.
		pygame	a game-oriented library with SDL support
		pyprocessing	A Processing clone in Python.
		Vapory	A library to generate photorealistic renderings using POV-Ray
		drawille	Uses Braille characters for TTY charting
		Cropmap	Face-aware image cropping.
HTML		lxml	a different libxml binding, with excellent HTML parsing performance
		cssutils	a CSS parser
		Gnosis Utilities	all sorts of XML goodies
		pygments	syntax highlighter able to handle multiple nested languages
		pyquery	A jQuery-like library for manipulating documents.
		BeautifulSoup	The most powerful HTML parser out there.
		squeezeit	A CSS and JavaScript bundler/minifier
Interpreters	2026	monty	a minimal, secure Python interpreter written in Rust for running AI-generated code
	2024	RustPython	A Python Interpreter written in Rust
	2023	pocketpy	an embeddable C-based interpreter in 5000 LOC
		PyScript	a WASM runtime using Pyodide for web embedding
Languages	2025	SPy	a variant of Python designed to be statically compilable with an interpreter and compiler
Large Language Models	2023	pykoi	a unified interface for data and feedback collection, comparing models, and doing basic RAG
Libraries	2026	shreg	a Python library for regularizing line segments and closed contours using various algorithms.
	2025	readability-python	an implementation of Mozilla’s readability algorithm for extracting the main content from HTML documents
		trafilatura	another readability variant for extracting text from HTML documents
		automerge-py	a Python library for building collaborative applications with CRDTs
		pythonista-stubs	a collection of type stubs for the Pythonista app, useful for writing scripts that run on iOS devices
		smartfunc	a library for using LLMs via docscrings and introspection and introspection
		aiopandas	a library for using Pandas with asyncio
	2024	unsafe-python	A library to assist writing memory-unsafe code, without any imports
		domscribe	converts HTML to semantic Markdown while preserving structure and meaning
		foc	an intriguing collection of higher-level functions using operators for composability
		BM25S	an ultrafast implementation of BM25 in pure Python
	2023	fastkafka	A Kafka library inspired by fastapi
		reader	A modern RSS/Atom/JSON feed reader library.
		pgvector-python	for using Postgres as a vector database
	2022	slack-machine	A Slack bot library that uses socket mode and asyncio
		mintotp	a tiny TOTP library
	2021	Sorted Containers	a fast C-backed collections library
		seedir	A utility library to render filesystem tree diagrams
	2020	minotaur	an asynchronous inotify interface
		minibatch	a simple stream processing library
Machine Learning	2021	Perceptilabs	free visual ML model creation tool
	2020	netron	a viewer for neural network, deep learning and machine learning models
		discomll	A ML framework for Disco
		Tensorflow	Usual staple, largely superseded by PyTorch
Mail	2021	imapautofiler	an IMAP mailbox sorter that I unwittingly replicated (with less features)
	2018	aiosmtpd	an asyncio version of smtpd.py
		Salmon	an SMTP mail server
		slimta	a mail app framework for building MTAs
Messaging	2023	Propan	a declarative Python MQ framework inspired by fastapi
Music	2025	music21	a library for computer-aided musicology
	2023	musicpy	A domain-specific language for writing music
	2020	pippi	an audio processing/music library
		pymidi	a library for building MIDI over IP/RTP applications (compatible with Apple specs)
Networking	2023	p2pd	an async networking library with P2P and UDP support
	2019	opendrop	a partial implementation of AirDrop
	2018	asphalt	An asyncio framework for network oriented applications, with a considerable number of modules
		PyRendezvous	neat little Bonjour module I use a lot
		telnetscript	a simple module to do scripted telnet sessions.
		IPy	an IP address manipulation library.
		pyvnc	A ctypes interface to the VNC libraries
		ircutils	A relatively modern async IRC framework
		Eventlet	Amazing event-oriented framework
		ftputil	a high-level interface to the ftplib module
		Python smtplib progress indication	Might come in useful some day.
		gunicorn	A WSGI server that supports a number of different worker daemons and is highly customizable.
		dpkt	packet creation and parsers
		Pcapy	a packet manipulation library
		uwsgi	A C application container that speaks WSGI and is seriously good.
		PuSSH	SSH wrapper
		RPyC	an awesome RPC library
		SleekXMPP	A more modern XMPP library
		Tftpy	a pure Python TFTP library, useful for implementing UDP file transfer testbeds.
		ThriftPy	A pure Python implementation of Apache Thrift
		pyxmpp2	another one, probably more interesting.
		pyrobuf	a Cython implementation of Google’s protobuf library
		pyapns	An Apple Push Notification Service provider based on Twisted.
OCR	2025	olmocr	A toolkit for training language models to work with PDF documents in the wild.
	2024	surya	OCR library supporting 90+ languages
PDF	2025	plutoprint	another PDF generation library
	2024	marker	a PDF to markdown converter optimized for books and scientific papers, using surya
	2023	peepdf	a Python tool to explore PDF files in order to find out if the file can be harmful or not.
	2021	borb	a library for creating and manipulating PDF files
	2020	camelot	a library to extract tabular data from PDFs
		Kiva	a Display PDF library
		PyPdf	a PDF toolkit
		WeasyPrint	Alternatives to PrinceXML for generating formated PDF documentation.
		xhtml2pdf
Packaging	2026	go-to-wheel	build Python wheels that bundle cross-compiled Go CLI binaries
	2021	PyOxidizer	a better way to distribute Python bundled apps than pyinstaller
		shiv	builds self-contained applications for easy deployment
	2019	Poetry	a dependency management and packaging tool
Presentations		pydown	An HTML presentation generator
Reference	2023	python-cheatsheet	a modern reference, useful for kids
Reporting		Relatorio	A very neat reporting library with multiple output formats
		ReportLab Toolkit	a pure Python PDF library that includes a presentation tool.
Resources	2024	awesome-micropython	another curated list of MicroPython resources
		awesome-micropython	a curated list of MicroPython resources
	2023	python-package-template	a template project for building packages
Robotics	2026	Cozmo Direct Control	PyCozmo-powered GUI with AI chat, keyboard/mouse driving, visual node lab, MediaPipe face tracking, and procedural speech/animation pipelines for commanding Cozmo over WiFi without the official app.
		Cozmo Explorer Tool	Flask-powered GUI that combines Cozmo’s camera feed, keyboard remote controls, event monitor, and animation explorer for prototyping behaviors without the stock app.
		Cozmo Python SDK	Official Anki SDK for the Cozmo robot, with the cozmo module, sample scripts, an event monitor, simulation support, and documentation at cozmosdk.anki.com/docs for wiring your own behaviors over Wi‑Fi.
		PyCozmo	Pure-Python alternative SDK and app that speaks Cozmo’s UDP protocol directly, bundles tools for dumps/replay/animation updates, and exposes docs/examples for firmware, OTA, and Wi-Fi based control.
		kabuki	A declarative control library for MicroPython
Runtimes	2022	pikascript	an embedded Python runtime for the STM32 and other tiny MCUs
	2021	Pyjion	Pyjion, a JIT extension for CPython that compiles your Python code into native CIL and executes it using the .NET 5 CLR.
	2020	Pycopy	a fork of MicroPython
		Nuitka	An interesting batch compiler.
		Pyjamas	Some interesting twists on using Python on the way to JavaScript.
		Brython	a fairly complete in-browser runtime
		Skulpt	Some interesting twists on using Python on the way to JavaScript.
		tinypy	Python in 64K of code.
		Js2Py	A JavaScript interpreter written in pure Python
		Hope	A specialized JIT compiler
Scraping	2023	trafilatura	a library and CLI tool for text extraction
	2020	InvoiceNet	a neural network for extracting invoice information from PDFs
		Mechanize	a programmatic web browser for screen scraping.
		subliminal	A library for looking up movie subtitles in various languages.
		pholcidae	A web crawler library.
		urlwatch	A flexible page modification monitor
Site Generators	2023	django-distill	Minimal configuration static site generator for Django
	2020	MiniConf	a lovely site generator for managing conferences
	2019	portray	a static site generator for Python project documenntation
Speech		silero-models	Multi-language neural text-to-speech
TUI	2023	trogon	a genius way to automatically generate a TUI for click-based applications
		pyTermTk	an impressive text UI toolkit
	2021	textual	Text user interface widgets and fields
Task management		doit	a task runner that can replace make for many use cases
Tools	2026	HeloWrite	a distraction-free terminal writing environment built with Python
	2025	posting	an amazing terminal-based Postman replacement
	2024	hancho	a simple, pleasant build system
		berylliumOS	a Python-based shell for CircuitPython devices
	2023	ssh-crypt	a clever way to manage secrets on remote servers
		frogmouth	a TUI Markdown browser
		pypipe	a Python command-line tool for pipeline processing that can export pipelines as standalone scripts
		marcel	a shell that can pipe structured data (like PowerShell, but done right)
		flameshow	a terminal flamegraph viewer
		termgraph	simple terminal charting
		reloadium	advanced hot reloading and profiling
	2022	reloading	a decorator for hot reloading code
		Doctool	a tool to manipulate .docx files
		honcho	a process supervisor that uses Procfiles and can be used for multi-process Docker containers
Tutorials	2021	ugit	a step-by-step git implementation
Unicode		Unidecode	Does character transliterations.
Video	2021	webcam-filters	a set of GStream filters for doing live webcam background segmentation and blurring
Visual Programming	2024	nodezator	a graphical node workflow editor based on PyGame
	2022	PyFlow	a another (confusingly, identically named) visual programming environment
		Ryven	a flow-based programming environment with a Qt front-end
		PyFlow	a desktop-based visual programming environment
Web	2025	justhtml	a pure Python HTML5 parser
	2022	newscatcher	a cute scraper database/fetcher combo
Web Frameworks	2025	fastapi-voyager	a FastAPI extension for visualizing endpoints
		air	a FastAPI-backed HTML framework
	2023	socketify.py	another libuv wrapper
		litestar	another high-performance ASGI API framework with rigorous typing
		robyn	an async Python framework with a Rust connection handler
		sse-starlette	Server-Sent Events for Starlette and FastAPI
		ucall	a JSON-RPC library that claims to be 100x faster than FastAPI
	2022	pynecone	a full-stack Python web framework that automatically renders Next.js components
	2021	FastAPI	decorator-based, runs under uvicorn
	2020	blacksheep	an ASGI web framework that uses decorators
		starlette	an ASGI web framework that runs under uvicorn
	2019	appkernel	a microservices framework
	2018	zatt	An asyncio implementation of the Raft consensus algorithm (some of the forks add significant enhancements)
		Bottle	Tiny, flexible, awesome. My favorite since 2011.
		Draco	Old and busted, to various extents.
		Falcon	A Cythonizable framework with little magic and good performance
		Karrigell	Old and busted, to various extents.
		pecan	Based on object dispatching
		eve	Another RESTful foundation framework
		wheezy.web	A high-performance framework that seems to get along well with PyPy
		Snakelets	A minimalistic app server, my old web platform of choice.
		Twisted	Old and busted, to various extents.
		medusa
		CherryPy
		Tornado	non-blocking, which is pretty interesting.
		Zope	Old and busted, to various extents.
		sandman	A simple RESTful wrapper
		Vibora	An asyncio framework that seems to beat Sanic in static performance
		Moya	a new(ish), template-centric web framework with some interesting twists
Wikis	2024	silicon	another Markdown-focused wiki
		otterwiki	a nice git-backed wiki
Writing	2023	proselint	a linter for prose

Techniques

• daemon.py, an example daemon script.
• Pydoc built-in Web help, anytime, anywhere
• How to Write a Spelling Corrector - an interesting technique that can come in handy to fix/suggest search terms, etc.
• Python Webcam Color Track
• Python webcam fun - motion detection

Create a file named .pydistutils.cfg in your home directory with the following contents and set $PATH accordingly:

[install]
install_lib = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/site-packages
install_scripts = ~/Library/Python/$py_version_short/bin
install_data = ~/Library/Python/$py_version/share

This will install packages to your Library folder rather than to the system directory, saving you the trouble to use sudo or risking messing with the system installation. Of course virtualenv does a better job for keeping track of project-specific dependencies, but this is great for common/complex dependencies and is sure to survive operating system upgrades.

And then you can use easy_install or pip install --user with impunity, although you might need to do something like:

ARCHFLAGS=-Wno-error=unused-command-line-argument-hard-error-in-future easy_install pandas

…for getting around some clang oddities.

#!/bin/sh
python -c '__import__("SimpleHTTPServer").test()'

• Estimating the Airspeed of an Unladen Swallow

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Apps	2023-09	Simple Mobile Tools	a set of simple, open source android apps for common tasks (great if you need, say, a plain file manager or gallery app for a gimped version of Android)
	2023-01	Shelter	An app to activate MDM/Android Work Profiles and easily segregate and limit troublesome applications.
		androrat	A remote administration and tracking solution for Android devices.
	2012-06	Connectbot	A pretty good SSH client that almost works perfectly with a hardware keyboard.
Development	2014-06	scaloid	A Scala library for Android development
	2012-08	From Zero to Boot-Porting Android to your ARM platform	A handy overview.
	2012-06	Android Development on the Command Line	Probably the sanest way to do it.
	2011-10	Speeding up the Android emulator	or sidestepping it altogether…
Ports	2024-01	Bliss OS	an Android-based OS for x86 PCs
Tools	2026-03	termux-linux-setup	Unified Termux script that layers XFCE4/LXQt/MATE/KDE desktops, GPU acceleration (Turnip/Zink), audio, Box64/Wine, and curated utilities to turn Android into a native-style Linux environment.
	2024-07	toybox	a busybox-like bundle of CLI commands that can even rebuild Android itself
	2019-12	scrcpy	ADB screen mirroring
	2013-02	HoRNDIS	A Mac OS X driver for using USB tethering to Android devices.
UI	2018-08	CrunchyCalendar	source code component for a modern calendar view
	2011-02	Native android icons in vector format	Useful for a number of purposes.

Timeline

Some of the news coverage from the early years of Android:

Date	Link	Notes
2010-06	Google Android 2.2 (Froyo) comes to Nexus One	Not that exciting.
	Adobe Flash Player 10.1 for Android Gets Official	If that is your thing.
	Yep, the iPhone runs Android 2.2, too	Still unusable, basically.
	Android 3.0 Gingerbread getting revamped UI, Froyo living on for lower-end phones?	A bigger chunk for the fragmentation advocates.
2010-05	Google fails to revolutionize the cellphone market	Told you it wasn’t that simple to just sell phones online…
	Speedy Android 2.2 hits with tethering, push framework, more	A better overview.
	Everything You Need to Know About Android 2.2 (Froyo)	A pretty comprehensive overview
	Is Android Really Outselling Apple?	Hardly a surprise if you take into account that there is only one Apple.
	Flash For Smartphones Is Finally Here, And It Is Terrible	Ha.
	The Verdict On Android 2.2 "Froyo"-It's Sweet	It does look nicer.
	Android 2.2 Tethering Hotspots	More features, less battery life.
	Froyo Speed Test	Faster without Flash.
	Android 2.1 becomes most used version, just in time to be obviated by Froyo	More statistics.
	iPhone 3G's Android port is ready to download	a fully charged iPhone running Android will last only an hour or so.
	Is Android fragmented or is this the new rate of innovation?	in a nutshell, Google won’t admit to fragmentation of user experience.
2010-04	5 Things Google Must Do to Make Its Tablet Competitive	Oh ffs. The thing doesn’t even exist yet, and they’re pontificating already?
	Jobs detects an imbalance in the force	Gotta love stats. One little thing, though - Android apps are more likely to be free and ad-driven, so anything coming from an ad server isn’t necessarily a good market penetration metric for a platform.
	Flash Support in Android 2.2	Oh, the enthusiasm.
	Nexus One launches on Vodafone UK this Friday, April 30	There you go, mate.
	Yes they can (potentially kick Apple's ass)	Don’t think so, but it’s sure going to be interesting to watch them try…
2010-02	Google makes biggest gain in smartphone market share	More pretty charts (US-centric, therefore meaningless). The difference here is that there are umpteen versions of Android devces and far fewer of other platforms…
	Nexus One could be more Environment Friendly	Why add the charger instead of replacing it?
	Google reduces its Nexus One termination fee	Interesting.
	Nexus One gets a software update, enables multitouch (updated with video!)	Will it change anything?
	Nexus One 3G problems persist after update — is it a design problem?	Oh, yeah, sure. Like baseband firmware fixes poor coverage.
	New Nexus One ROM leaks, fixes more radio issues?	Another try, I guess…
	Nexus One coming to Vodafone UK in April, says Telegraph	No comment
2010-01	Android 2.1 SDK	About time.
	On-duty with the Nexus One-form factor, battery, Android	An odd review.
	Google learning that users want real support for Nexus One	Learning can be painful.
	Google's biggest announcement was not a phone, but a URL	I find it amazing that they’d write this much about ordering a phone online on a third-party store, but that’s the US mobile market for you.
	Google at the crossroads - a review of the Nexus One	Pretty detailed and comprehensive review, as always.
	In the First Week, Google May Have Sold 20,000 Nexus One Phones	Comparing 20K against 1.6 million iPhones on the first week is a bit unfair considering the way it’s sold.
	Google Charges ETF For Nexus One On Top of Carrier’s	Interesting. More here and here.
	Google Isn’t Targeting iPhone Users; It’s Targeting Everyone Else (Maybe)	Much ado about nothing in particular, basically.
	Google Phone Unveiled Today	A coherent list of specs, although there are plenty of meaningless stats bolted on to beef up the article.
	Nexus One - $174 Cost to Build	About the same estimated production cost than a 3GS, except that Apple has likely done a better bulk deal on parts… Also, nice comparative tables.
	Google Nexus One hands-on, video, and first impressions	Not an iPhone killer. Hardly capable of killing a fly, apparently.
	Nexus One review	not much in terms of review, actually.
	Google’s Nexus One is official	$529 unlocked, shipping to the US, UK, Singapore and Hong Kong, or with a two year T-Mobile US contract for $179. There go a lot of pipedreams about it being sold direct to the public at “astonishingly low” prices.
	Nexus One teardown reveals 802.11n WiFi and FM transmitter	This teardown mania is somewhat fun, but one wonders how long it will take until people realise that only a very small minority of what is “unearthed” is news…
	Vodafone promises Nexus One ‘in a few short weeks’	And this is probably where I stop keeping track of this particular device…
	T-Mobile makes mention of 3G issues with Nexus One, hopes to have ‘more information’ soon	Here’s to some heroic debugging.
	T-Mobile gives reps troubleshooting tips for Nexus One’s 3G issues	Looks like a baseband issue alright.
	Google - Nexus One 3G issues result of poor coverage, bugs; patch possibly within a week	Wouldn’t be surprised if it was a baseband upgrade.
	State of the Art - Google Shakes but Doesn’t Upend the Cellphone Market - NYTimes.com	Pogue doesn’t seem terribly impressed.
	Google’s Nexus One is no iPhone - and that’s OK	A more balanced review.
	Nexus One Phone	Hilarious video review.
2009-11	Droid Doesn’t - It’s Not Ready For Prime Time · Alsop Louie Partners	A month later, reality calls.
	Exchange Access for Droid - $15 Extra Per Month	Wow.
	Verizon Droid Gets Early Reviews	A nice summary of the reviews so far.
	Analyst estimates 100,000 DROID smartphones sold in first weekend	It isn’t the RAZR, but it’s a decent figure.
	Motorola Droid torn down despite desperate cries of ‘no disassemble’	Worth looking at.
	Stats show Motorola Droid is the new elephant in the Android room	I’m still wary of stats (local copy of PDF), but I hear it’s selling pretty well indeed.
	Droid Does… only have 256MB of storage for apps	Now that’s gotta be… Useful.
	Andy Ihnatko on Verizon Droid “iDon’t” ads - baloney (mostly)	Yep.
2009-10	Android 2.0 Highlights	The e-mail client looks nice, but I’m curious as to usability.
	The Droid Has Landed…Unboxed! Plus a Few Facts	Nothing to worry about except that it’s the start of a trend.
	Android, not iPhone, is Bigger Symbian Challenger Says Gartner	Not rocket science, but a bit exaggerated, since nobody can really look that far into the future in this industry.
	Droid to be Verizon's Android Product Line, Not a Single Phone	Now this is a clever move.
	Android 2.0 is Official - Quick Contacts Look Nice	This is just what I think is needed in oh, so many other places.
	Droid Launches Nov 6 Priced To Match iPhone	The price matching approach is interesting, but then again in the US handset prices don’t work quite the same way as in Europe.
	Android Phones Get Free Turn-By-Turn Directions	Best overview yet
	Verizon Droid Phone - Nov 6th, $199	A pretty decent feature set overview.
	Verizon's Droid is a series, not just a phone; Droid Eris coming from HTC	Let’s see how this pans out. I’m quite curious, actually, to see if Verizon can pull this off in the sense of generating genuine buzz around an operator-specific set of Android devices.
	Google adds free turn-by-turn navigation, car dock UI to Android 2.0 (video)	The quip about an Apple version is not to be missed.
	Google Navigation video hands-on - you want this	Looks nice indeed, but let’s wait to see how well map caching works.
	Motorola DROID first hands-on! (update - video, impressions, more pics)	I can’t figure out why these people keep wasting space in hardware keyboards.
	Google Releases Android 2.0 SDK	But the UI guidelines are still a bit on the loose side.
	Android thoughts two years later	Well worth reading through, and mirrors my own views. One to re-visit a few years from now indeed.
2009-09	Android 1.6 SDK is here	Well, at least compatibility is assured.
	Some News from Android Market	It took them this long to add screenshots to apps in the Market?
	Cyanogen	Modified firmware for some devices. Just had to happen.
	Android Battle	A nice summary table of devices
2009-08	The Android Opportunity	Mostly agree, although this is too US-centric for it to be considered the whole truth.
2009-06	Adobe demos Flash on the HTC Hero	This is going to be interesting to watch.
	HTC Hero running Android and Sense UI leaks from HTC's own website	Flash turns out to not be that exciting. Or useful. Plus the phone is plain ugly, and a lot thicker than what the first shot makes it look.
	HTC Hero hands-on	Flash, keyboard and ruminations
2009-04	Introducing home screen widgets and the AppWidget framework	An interesting tech note on how Android handles home screen widgets.
	Some Fun Facts About The Google Phone	Interesting stats about usage patterns.
	Vodafone Spain first to launch HTC Magic	Loads of fun for various reasons.
	Vodafone suggests future Android phones could have less Google	People keep confusing the platform with the services.
2009-03	HTC black Magic (Sapphire) hands-on - a Vodafone exclusive	Very few decent shots
	HTC Magic hands-on	A few more shots
2009-02	Android Market update - support for priced applications	Using Google Checkout, of course.
	TeleNav Does Turn-By-Turn on Android	Apparently US-only, which is a pity.
	Android Market - Open for Business	A very nice (if shallow) analysis that bunches together some interesting tidbits of info.
	HTC Magic first eyes-on!
	HTC Magic in-depth hands-on, with video!
	HTC Magic is official, bringing Android to Vodafone sans keyboard
		And after adding these links, this page now merits a direct, obvious, reference to my disclaimer.
	Google blocks paid apps for unlocked G1 users	Interesting hint of fragmentation.
2009-01	Android netbooks on their way, likely by 2010	Dubious in both title and subject matter (we’ve known that Android could be made to run on PCs for a good while now.
2008-12	Huawei powers up its Android plans	For Q3 2009. Let’s see what they come up with.
	Unlocked Android - $399	Development samples, available for purchase.
	Open Handset Alliance announces 14 new members	including Sony Ericsson and Vodafone. Most people missed this last bit, which is fun.
	AD IV - Programming Newbie	Tim Bray lists a few interesting resources for new developers
2008-11	Worst. Bug. Ever.	Although this was fixed fairly quickly, it is the perfect example of why mobile phones aren’t exactly trivial to “improve upon” using today’s technology.
2008-10	Android is now Open Source	Let’s see if someone will port this to Intel and get it running on a netbook…
	First T-Mobile G1 user review	Not particularly gushing.
	Almost Human - a review of Google's Android G1 phone	Good reading - a thorough appraisal.
	Over 260 images and 5 videos of the T-Mobile G1 Google Android device	A tad overkill, but interesting nonetheless.
	The Google Phone Review - What I Love Hate About T-Mobile G-1	Om Malik weighs in.
	T-Mobile G1 Google Android Phone Review
	Google answers the iPhone	Walt Mossberg’s take.
	HTC Dream T-Mobile G1 (black) Smartphone review
	iPhone vs T-Mobile G1	A short comparison.
	Android Phone Teardown	How weird is it that this is in Japan?
	T-Mobile G1 review
	T-Mobile G1 review
		Engadget’s lengthy two-part article
	T-Mobile G1, a hands-on introduction to the first Android phone	Some interesting videos
	Review of the T-Mobile G1 Google phone	Pretty comprehensive gallery.
	State of the Art - A Look at Google's First Phone	David Pogue weighs in.
	What Android Can Learn From the iPhone - It's the Software, Stupid.	Brilliant title.
2008-09	Google shows off masked Android handset	About a year later, one of the first sightings of actual hardware (but running over Wi-Fi. I don’t get the “masked” bit, though - the hardware’s pretty obvious.
	Video - Android walkthrough on T-Mobile G1	A few demos
2007-11	Android SDK	Includes plenty of links to videos and reference information
	Wikipedia	Background info

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/rust?utm_content=atom 2020-09-01T10:41:00+00:00 2026-03-06T13:51:44+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com The language that helped coin the moniker Rust Evangelism Strike Force, and which is slowly starting to get to me.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Backend	2024	trailbase	a self-hostable Firebase replacement
Data	2021	ballista	an Apache Spark-like distributed execution environment
	2023	lance	a modern columnar data format that is optimized for ML workflows and datasets, compatible with pandas
Editors	2026	Ferrite	A fast, lightweight text editor for Markdown, JSON, YAML, and TOML files built with Rust and egui
Embedded	2024	embassy	a framework for ESP32, Pico and Nordic MCUs
	2026	mousefood	a no-std embedded-graphics backend for ratatui
GUI	2024	dioxus	GUI library for desktop, web, mobile, and more, using the system webview
		egui	a simple, fast, and highly portable immediate mode GUI library for Rust.
		graphpu	a 3D GPU graph visualization application
	2025	azul	a desktop GUI framework for Rust
Game Engines	2020	Bevy	a data-driven game engine
		GameLisp	a scripting language for Rust game development
		RG3D	a 3D game engine
Learning	2024	rustlings	a collection of small exercises to get you used to reading and writing Rust code
Libraries	2020	kay	an actor system for Rust
		lunatic	a platform for building actor systems running WebAssembly
		pulldown-cmark	Markdown paraer
		rust-crdt	A family of CRDT’s supporting both State and Op based replication
		syntect	Syntax highlighting using Sublime Text definitions
	2021	bastion	a distributed fault-tolerant runtime system
		comrak	a Rust port of cmark-gfm
	2023	ratatui	a library for developing text user interfaces
		ractor	an actor library
	2024	kameo	a lightweight library for building fault-tolerant, distributed, and asynchronous actors
	2025	ratzilla	a library for building terminal-themed web applications using Rust and WebAssembly.
		pagefind	a static site search engine that runs in the browser
	2026	FrankenTUI	minimal, high-performance terminal UI kernel for deterministic, flicker-free inline UIs with a diff-based renderer and strict cleanup guarantees (Rust nightly, WIP)
		xmloxide	A memory-safe Rust reimplementation of libxml2 that passes the W3C XML conformance suite, provides XML/HTML parsers, XPath, validation, canonicalization, and a xmllint-compatible CLI.
Machine Learning		gte-pure-C	Pure C implementation of the GTE-small text embedding model (dependency-free, 384-dim embeddings). Focused on semantic similarity, search, and clustering.
Microservices		openworkers	a self-hostable implementation of Cloudflare workers
Networking	2024	koblas	a simple SOCKS5 proxy
Parallelism	2020	rayon	a data parallelism library
	2024	kay	An intriguing, mostly self-contained Actor system
Profiling	2020	heaptrack	a memory profiler
Reference	2023	The Rust on ESP Book	A very nice guide on how to do Rust development for Expressif ESP32 devices
Security	2026	LiteBox	a security-focused sandboxing library OS for reduced host attack surface
		monty	a minimal, secure Python interpreter in Rust for running AI-generated code
Servers	2022	meilisearch	another search engine with document-level access control
		tantivy	another search engine (Lucene-inspired)
		sonic	a fast and schema-less indexing/search backend
	2026	Garage	an S3-compatible distributed object storage service for small-to-medium self-hosted clusters
		narwhal	an extensible pub/sub messaging server for edge applications
Tools	2020	rust-musl-builder	Docker wrappers for building Rust binaries with musl
	2021	tauri	an Electron alternative that uses system webviews
	2022	mcfly	an enhanced ctrl-r replacement
	2024	dtui	a tool to inspect the system/session dbus
		zoxide	a port of the venerable z utility to Rust
	2025	monolith	a tool to save web pages in a unified HTML format
	2026	eilmeldung	a fast TUI RSS reader based on the news-flash library
		vcad	Parametric CAD in Rust; exports STL, glTF, USD, DXF
		Google Workspace CLI (gws)	One CLI for every Google Workspace API; discovers commands from Google’s Discovery Service, emits structured JSON for humans and agents, and ships dozens of reusable agent skills + an MCP server.
Web Frameworks	2023	Rocket	a mostly complete async web framework
	2024	spring-rs	a microservice framework inspired by spring-boot

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/dev/scheme?utm_content=atom 2006-05-08T12:11:41+00:00 2026-03-01T21:50:40+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com Scheme is a LISP dialect that has not just gone its own way (as is usual with LISPs) but also achieved IEEE standardization. With a focus on lexical scope and tail call optimization, it actually contributed many of its ideas back into Common LISP.

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Compilers	2023	guile-hoot	an AOT Scheme to WebAssembly compiler
		whiffle	a minimal Scheme-to-C compiler
	2021	Kawa	a Scheme that runs on the JVM
		ribbit	small and portable Scheme implementation with AOT compilation and 4K footprint
	2019	Chez Scheme	a high-performance Scheme compiler
	2018	gerbil Scheme	a layer over Gambit
	2016	Cyclone Scheme	Supports multiple native threads
		Larceny Scheme	Compiles to Intel and ARM machine code
		Microscheme	A compiler for the Arduino
		Chicken Scheme	One of the most well-known compilers
Frameworks	2025	artanis	a web application framework
Interpreters	2026	Wile	R7RS Scheme in pure Go for embedding
		puppy-scheme	Self-hosting Scheme compiler that targets WebAssembly using the WASM GC proposal, keeping outputs tiny (~137 bytes).
	2025	steel	an empedded Scheme interpreter written in Rust
		stak	a R7RS Scheme interpreter written in Rust
	2023	chibi-scheme	an embeddable Scheme interpreter
		zuo	a tiny Racket for scripting (written in C)
		Gauche	can create standalone executables
	2022	owl	a Scheme interpreter written in C, that can apparently also compile to C
		Kernel	a Scheme-like dialect of Lisp in which everything is a first-class object.
	2021	armpit Scheme	an ancient R7RS interpreter
		S7 Scheme	a TinyScheme variant designed for embedding into other projects
	2020	Guile	the GNU Scheme implementation, which has a JIT
	2019	bobscheme	A suite of Scheme implementations in Python and C++ including an interpreter, VM and compiler to WebAssembly
		schemy	a .NET embeddable Scheme interpreter
	2016	s9fes	A well-documented interpreter that can run on Plan9
	2014	IronScheme	Runs atop the .NET DLR
Libraries	2020	r-cade	a Racket library for doing simple retro-style games
	2019	scheme-lib	A set of libraries for Chez
		thunderchez	More libraries for Chez Scheme
Tools	2021	Alive	VS Code extension
	2019	chez-exe	A tool to generate standalone executables with Chez
Tutorials	2025	guile-examples	examples and tutorials for Guile

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/com/adobe/pdf?utm_content=atom 2006-10-10T20:46:17+00:00 2026-03-02T22:23:05+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com The Portable Document Format developed by Adobe - essentially Encapsulated PostScript with a few indexing,crypto and security features thrown in.

Date	Link	Notes
2026-03-01	markdown-to-pdf	Markdown-to-PDF pipeline implemented in TypeScript so you can render PDFs without spinning up a browser.
2026-02-28	vmprint	A pure-JS, zero-dependency typesetting engine that renders bit-perfect PDFs across any runtime without needing Headless Chrome.
2025-12-26	OCRmyPDF	adds an OCR text layer to scanned PDFs.
2024-11-24	PDFify	A Mac app to create searchable PDFs with OCR support.
2006-07-09	epub2pdf	A Java tool to output EPUB files to PDF.
2006-05-02	Tabbloid	An interesting service that takes RSS feeds and e-mails you a PDF magazine.
2005-01-01	Multivalent PDF Tools	written in Java
	PDF Creator
	Foxit PDF Viewer	very fast, very small, somewhat buggy image display and font rendering. Lets you remove all toolbars, advertising, etc.
	RedMon	The ancient Windows print redirector
	CutePDF	works properly under Terminal Services, Citrix, etc. (my current choice)
	FPDF	a PHP class to generate PDFs (Ruby port)
	Primo PDF	doesn’t work properly under Terminal Services for some reason
	PrinceXML	converts XHTML into hyperlinked PDF documents
	PDFTools	for Windows, allows for combining and manipulating multiple files.
	Ghostscript	The one that started it all

Mac OS X uses Display PostScript (part of its NeXT heritage), so you don’t need anything to view or create PDFs in it (just save the Print Preview results to a file).

Samba Printer

[smbpdf]
  comment = PDF Generator
  path = /var/spool/samba
  printable = Yes
  print command = gs -dNOPAUSE -dBATCH -q - \
  sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=%H/%s.pdf; rm %s

Here’s a plugin for PDF compression that I used under Leopard, but you can just do:

gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH --sOutputFile=file-out.pdf file-in.pdf

#...or:
gs -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -dCompatibilityLevel=1.4 -dPDFSETTINGS=/ebook -dColorConversionStrategy=/Gray -dProcessColorModel=/DeviceGray -dNOPAUSE -dQUIET -dBATCH -sOutputFile=file-out.pdf file-in.pdf

#!/bin/sh
ROTATION=$(shuf -n 1 -e ‘-‘ ‘’)$(shuf -n 1 -e $(seq 0.05 .5))

convert -density 150 $1 \
  -linear-stretch ‘1.5%x2%’ \
  -rotate ${ROTATION} \
  -attenuate ‘0.01’ \
  +noise  Multiplicative \
  -colorspace ‘gray’ $2

I’ve found that LibreOffice Writer has the ability to edit PDFs in-line to some degree (thanks to its integration with Draw). It will not preserve font names or styles, though.

Affinitiy Designer, however, can do so much better (although it will not deal with embedded fonts)

You can tweak or remove document metadata by using a pdfmarks file with Ghostscript:

[ /Title (Document title)
  /Author (Author name)
  /Subject (Subject description)
  /Keywords (comma, separated, keywords)
  /ModDate (D:20061204092842)
  /CreationDate (D:20061204092842)
  /Creator (application name or creator note)
  /Producer (PDF producer name or note)
  /DOCINFO pdfmark

…and combining it like this:

gs -dSAFER -dBATCH -dNOPAUSE -sDEVICE=pdfwrite -sOutputFile=output.pdf original.pdf pdfmarks

The qpdf utility (some assembly required) can do it cleanly like so:

qpdf —password=foobar —decrypt orig.pdf new.pdf

Category	Date	Link	Notes
8-bit	2025	MCUME	a multi-system emulator for microcontrollers
		chips-test	a collection of Tiny Emus for 8-bit systems
Amiga	2008	MaxUAE	Somewhat dead, with only Power PC binaries available.
		UAE	Cross-platform Amiga emulator
	2021	amiberry	optimized for ARM cpus
Arcade	2010	Open Emu	A modular emulator that can be used as a Quartz Composer plug-in
	2011	Emulaunch	A multi-emulator front-end suitable for use on a TV
	2022	Provenance	an iOS and tvOS multi-emulator frontend
C64	2019	bmc64	a “bare metal” C64 emulator for the Raspberry Pi
	2025	TeensyROM	a ROM emulator, fast loader, MIDI and internet cartridge for Commodore 64/128
DEC	2024	DECstation2040	A RP2040 based DECstation emulator (the workstations I used in college)
Emulation		86Box	a low level x86 emulator for running older operating systems and software.
	2026	M5Tab-Macintosh	68040 emulator on an ESP32-P4 with video rendering and input handling capabilities.
		Musashi	A portable Motorola 68000 CPU emulator core used in many classic system emulators
Gameboy	2008	Boycott Advance	GBA emulator. Universal binary.
Gaming		KiGB	Gameboy/Gameboy colour emulator.
Generic x86		QEMU	Q
		Virtual PC	Used to be the best option for running Windows on Power PC
	2010	DOSBox	Boxer
Graphics	2025	retroarch-shaders	a collection of finetuned shaders to replicate CRT looks on Retroarch
IBM PC	2023	martypc	a cycle-accurate IBM PC/XT emulator written in Rust
	2025	Dosbian	a lightweight distribution for Raspberry Pi that boots directly into DOSBox
		felix86	a low-level x86 emulator for RISC-V platforms
		Evertop	an ultra low power, ultra long battery solar PC
		Faux86	designed to be run ‘bare metal’ on a Raspberry Pi
Mac	2011	Basilisk II and SheepShaver	the most stable emulators for Motorola-based Macs, but maintained and released via an obscure forum, so quite annoying to keep up to date
	2023	µvMac	An attempt to modernize the vMac source code
		Macintosh ROMs	quite amazed to see these in the wild
		Mini vMac	The most straightforward Mac emulator out there
	2024	MinivMacArduino	Port of Mini vMac to the Arduino framework (Kind of)
		nacemu	for of Basilisk and SheepShaver with networking support
		pico-umac	embeds the umac emulator into a Rasbperry Pi Pico, complete with VGA mono output
		umac	a minimalist Apple Macintosh 128K/512K emulator
		Ultibo-Mini_vMac	A minivmac fork to be built against Ultibo instead of out-of-date SDL2
		MacRelix	a Unix-like environment that runs in classic Mac OS
	2025	pico-mac-nano	a minimal Mac emulator using an RP2040 and a tiny LCD
		rpi-basilisk2-sdl2-nox	a script to build Basilisk II on a Raspberry Pi with no X11 dependencies
		snow	a new classic 68K Mac emulator that emphasises accurate emulation and debugging features
		MR Browser	a package manager for emulated classic Macs
	2026	speedmtr	A classic Mac benchmarking utility distributed via Gryphel (archive of classic Mac software)
Multi-system	2025	retrom	a centralized management service that serves up web-based emulated games
N64	2010	mupen64plus	a less polished but cross-platform alternative
		Sixtyforce	A N64 emulator with the ability to render games in high resolution.
Newton	2025	Einstein	Newton MessagePad emulator for multiple platforms
Nintendo 3DS	2020	Citra	formerly available for Android with motion controls
Other	2024	libmui	a brilliant Classic MacOS & GS/OS widget library for linux used in the Apple IIe emulator
		mii_emu	an Apple IIe Emulator for Linux
		oberon-risc-emu	Emulator for the Oberon RISC machine
		Twister OS	a set of UI themes and prebuilt ARM images to turn XFCE into faithful reproductions of older OSes
	2026	rocket68	C11 Motorola 68000 CPU emulator library focused on correctness, precise cycle counting, and easy embedding into retro projects.
		Pocket8 / pico-ios	Native PICO-8 companion for iOS that embeds the official engine via WASM, adding instant save/load states, adaptive controls, and a smart library for cartridges.
		OberonSystem3Native	Native port of Oberon System 3 for modern Windows units, complete with build scripts, packaging artifacts, and usage notes.
		Oberon System (ETH)	Official ETH Zurich archive for the Oberon language and operating system, including System 3 downloads, documentation, and research notes.
		Project Oberon	Niklaus Wirth’s Project Oberon site: the book, FPGA schematics, and step- by-step guides to recreate Oberon hardware.
PalmOS	2024	cloudpilot-emu	a cloud-based emulator for running PalmOS applications that works on the iPhone
		Mu	PalmOS Emulator
Psion		WindEmu	emulator for Psion Series 5mx (Windermere)
RISC-V	2025	uvm32	a minimalist, dependency-free virtual machine sandbox that emulates a 32-bit RISC-V CPU that can run DooM
	2026	Emuko	Fast RISC-V emulator written in Rust that can boot Linux and targets modern systems.
Retrocomputing	2023	Clock Signal	a multi-system emulator that works beautifully on a Mac
	2025	Bedrock	8-bit virtual computer system specification with assembler/emulators for PC, web, and Nintendo DS
	2026	RomM	A beautiful self-hosted ROM manager and player with metadata scraping, browser-based UI, and built-in EmulatorJS/RuffleRS players for hosting and sharing emulation collections.
Sinclair	2010	Fuse	A recent port of the cross-platform ZX Spectrum emulator
		zxsp	Emulates a range of Z80-based devices, including the ZX81 I started out with.
	2023	pico-zxspectrum	a ZX Spectrum emulator for for the Raspberry Pico RP2040 MCU
	2024	zx2040	a ZX Spectrum emulator for the Raspberry Pi Pico
	2025	ZXBaremulator	a complete ZX Spectrum 48K/128K/+2A bare-metal emulator
Switch	2023	Ryujinx	Very good performance on Apple Silicon
	2024	sudachi	Another yuzu fork
Terminals	2026	Blaze	a VT420 terminal emulator written in Rust
Tools	2024	retronas	network storage for different retro computers and consoles
Wii U	2022	Cemu	Very good performance on Apple Silicon
Wii/GameCube	2011	Dolphin	An amazing Wii and GameCube emulator
Windows	2024	hangover	enables running Win32 applications on aarch64 Linux using various DLLs for improved performance.
	2025	vbesvga.drv
		winboat	a Windows VM wrapper that uses RDP and RemoteApp to render apps on Linux

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/ai?utm_content=atom 2004-01-22T21:22:58+00:00 2026-03-10T21:50:43+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com That grand, spacious (and long ignored) branch of computing that I never really found a reason to graduate in (big mistake I only realized 30 years later) and that, these days, deals not just with thinking machines (so-called “hard” AI), but mostly with enhancing the usefulness of machines in general by exploring mechanisms to express and manipulate harvested knowledge.

Or just pretty pictures and sophisticated text generation. Either way, it seems we’re currently between AI winters, with a lot of investment in GPU hardware that still needs to prove itself consistently, measurably useful in real life use cases.

Note: Items pertaining to Large Language Models, Agentic Systems, Model Context Protocol, Speech and Stable Diffusion/Image Generation are now in their own section, as this page was getting too crowded. I will be moving other sections out of here as well as they grow over time, so that this page can focus on the more general aspects of AI and ML.

Field	Category	Date	Link	Notes
General	Examples	2025	edgeai-for-beginners	a collection of tutorials and examples for running AI models on edge devices
		2024	flash-attention-minimal	a minimal implementation of Flash Attention
	Frameworks		tinygrad	A 8000 LOC deep learning framework
		2023	marvin	A generic wrapper for various AI APIs
			MLX	An array framework for Apple silicon
			mlx-examples	MLX examples
	Jupyter		jupyter-ai	an official Jupyter plugin that can handle multiple AI back-ends (although it seems less flexible than the others right now)
	Libraries	2026	nndex	High-performance Rust nearest-neighbor vector search library with Python bindings and zero configuration; the CPU backend uses rayon/SIMD while the GPU backend runs on wgpu compute, yielding cosine similarities via optimized dot products. Offers optional ANN IVF reranking, batch queries, pandas/polars/numpy DataFrame outputs, internal caching, and direct loading from .npy, .npz, and .parquet files.
		2023	unstructured	a library for handling and segmenting unstructured data of various kinds, from text to common file formats
			ml-ane-transformers	Apple’s transformers library, optimized for the Neural Engine
		2009	Alchemy	A toolkit providing a series of algorithms for statistical relational learning and probabilistic logic inference, based on Markov logic representation
	Networking	2024	scuda	a GPU over IP bridge that allows remote GPUs to be utilized by CPU-only machines
	Tools	2026	doppelgangers	a tool to cluster GitHub issues/PRs with embeddings and UMAP for visual triage
		2025	ClaraVerse	a privacy-first local AI workspace (LLM chat, agents, tool calling, automation, image generation)
		2024	scrape-it-now	A flexible scraper implemented in Azure
			treescope	An interactive tensor visualizer for IPython notebooks.
			pico-tflmicro	a port of TensorFlow Lite Micro to the Raspberry Pi Pico
		2023	basaran	An Open-Source alternative to the OpenAI text completion API, with a compatible streaming API for privately hosted models.
			explainerdashboard	a web app that explains the workings of a (scikit-learn compatible) machine learning model
			NVIDIA Triton Inference Server	A high-performance inference server
		2022	Project Bumblebee	Pre-trained and transformer neural models in Elixir.
	Vector Databases	2026	Zvec	an in-process vector database built on Alibaba’s Proxima engine for low-latency similarity search
		2025	OctaneDB	a lightweight Python vector database with HNSW indexing and flexible storage options
		2024	txtai	embeddings database for semantic search
			tinkerbird	Vector Database atop IndexedDB
Large Language Models	Frameworks	2025	NLWeb	an approach to make websites easier to integrate into conversational interfaces
	Libraries		Python Bindings for Apple Intelligence	Bindings to the on-device models
	Tools	2026	PicoLM	a minimal C11 LLM inference engine for GGUF/LLaMA models that streams weights with mmap on low-RAM edge devices
Multimodal Models	Libraries	2024	zerox	a library that performs OCR on documents and converts them to Markdown
	Models		Hybrid-Net	Real-time audio to chords, lyrics, beat, and melody.
	Music Generation	2025	NotaGen	a tool for generating music from text prompts
	Tools	2024	swift-ocr-llm-powered-pdf-to-markdown	a tool that processes PDF files into structured Markdown format
Research Agents		2026	autoresearch-ANE	Autonomous Apple Silicon LLM research suite combining ANE, MLX, and legacy MPS training paths, built on Karpathy’s autoresearch loop with detailed platform instructions for the agent.
Time Series Forecasting	Models	2025	moment	a time series forecasting model
Tools	Tools	2026	PowerInfer	GPU/CPU hybrid LLM inference engine that preloads hot neurons to the GPU, offloads cold states to CPU, and exposes llama.cpp-compatible examples along with PowerInfer GGUF weights and predictor tooling for fast local serving on consumer GPUs.
Vision	Libraries	2025	grayskull	a lightweight library for vision operations in resource-constrained devices
	Tools	2024	machina	a CCTV viewer that connects to RTSP streams and performs real-time object tagging using YOLO and ollama

]]> https://taoofmac.com/space/music?utm_content=atom 2006-09-23T22:00:02+00:00 2026-02-28T12:17:54+00:00 Rui Carmo https://taoofmac.com One of my pursuits of yore and for ever more (in the sense that I stopped short of joining the Conservatorium when I was a kid and still maintain a somewhat active - if diffuse - interest in it).

Category	Date	Link	Notes
Books	2020	Fundamentals of Piano Practice	Lots of pracice tips (and tuning of physical pianos)
DAWs		Non	a lightweight DAW for Linux
	2020-01	Waveform Free	free DAW that runs on Linux (including the Raspberry Pi)
	2022	Ardour	A cross-platform Open Source DAW that runs on ARM64
		Qtractor	A Linux DAW based on Qt
		Reaper	A cross-platform Open Source DAW that runs on ARM64
	2023	DawDreamer	a Python environment that allows you to host and run VSTs
		zrythm	a cross-platform DAW
DIY		picoTracker	An RP2040 hardware tracker (PCB)
Editors	2021	MuseScore	likely the best open source music score editor out there
Environments	2022	Glicol	an interesting music language with a Rust audio engine as back-end
	2024	Csound	a music programming language
		glicol
	2025	Strudel	a music programming language that runs in the browser
Hardware	2023	PicoADK-Hardware	a RP2040 based Audio Development Kit with 32 Bit Audio Output.
	2024	MicroDexed-touch
		Tulip Creative Computer	A MicroPython-based ESP32 synth and sequencer that also has a desktop simulator
	2025	pico-midi-looper	a MIDI looper based on the RP2040 that supports Bluetooth MIDI
Instruments	2019-12	Layers	free orchestral music VST
	2020	minibit	a VST for chiptune instruments
		SunVox	a cross-platform modular synth that includes a tracker
	2020-05	Zebralette	free VST
		PianoBook	Free downloadable EXS24 and Kontakt sampled instruments (mostly pianos)
	2021	Surge	a pretty popular free VST for Mac, Windows and Linux
	2022	sfzinstruments	Various public domain instruments in SFZ format
	2023	GrandOrgue	a sample-based church organ simulator
		vmpc-juce	an MPC emulator front-end writte in JUCE
		visualtracker	an open source modular sequencer with graphical user interface based on Pure Data
		Triple Cheese	a free VST synth
		Pendulate
	2024	WaveTracker	a new open source tracker for Windows (and Linux/WINE) that uses wavetable synthesis and sampling
	2025	OB-Xd	a free VST synth that emulates the Oberheim OB-X
		Diapasonix	an interesting RP2350 based instrument
		terpstrakeyboard	a virtual microtonal keyboard webapp
Libraries	2023	popsicle	a Python library that tries to wrap JUCE
		pedalboard	a Python library for working with audio, also with VST support
		webaudiofont	A browser-based GM set of musical instruments
	2026	mahler.c	a small C99 library for Western music theory covering intervals, chords, scales, and key signatures with enharmonic correctness
Patches	2021	MobileMusic Pro Free Packs	covers multiple iOS apps
		PatchStorage	Patches and samples for a number of iOS apps, including Moog synths.
		Northern Film Orchestra Orchestral Swells	a set of orchestral samples for Kontakt and DecentSampler
Resources	2025	awesome-strudel	a set of strudel compositions
Samples	2020	BBC sound effects	copyrighted but free for personal/educational use
	2021	FreeSound	Creative Commons licensed samples and loops
	2023	sampled	A collection of sampled instruments, loops and impulse responses with open licenses
	2024	SoundFonts4U	a collection of SoundFonts
Scores	2019-06	El Atril	free sheet music
		Mutopia	Free classical and contemporary sheet music
	2020	IMSLP	The Petrucci Public Domain Music Library
		The Mayron Cole Piano Method	has a number of simple piano scores for kids
Sequencers	2022	Ossia Score	a sequencer for audio-visual artists, designed to create interactive shows leveraging DMX, OSC, MIDI, etc.
	2023	Midinous	a node-based MIDI sequencer for generative music
	2024	seq24	A family of minimalist MIDI sequencers
Synths	2020	Vital	MPE support
	2021	Ensembles	a FluidSynth-based arrangement workstation for Linux
		MT-32 Pi	a baremetal MIDI synthesizer for the Raspberry Pi 3 or above, based on Munt, FluidSynth and Circle.
		Bespoke Synth	a cross-platform software modular synthesizer with a node-based UI
	2022	MicroDexed	Dexed for the Teensy 3.x/4.x microcontroller
		MicroDexed-touch	Dexed for the Teensy 4.x microcontroller, with a touchscreen UI, a sequencer and a tracker
		MiniDexed	Dexed running on baremetal Raspberry Pi
		teensy-juno	a Teensy 3.x/4.x-based polyphonic synthesiser, modeled after the Juno 106
		sfizz	A sample based VST instrument that takes SFZ files
		Helm	a free cross-platform software synth that can be used as a VST
	2024	Cardinal	a plugin based on VCVRack
	2025	Amy	a music synthesizer library for microcontrollers
Tools	2019-06	Musical Chord Progression Arpeggiator
	2020	NeuralDX7	a neural network that generates DX7 sysex patches
		ADLplug	a VST that provides a number of FM synth plugins to emulate YMF26XX chips
		RNNoise VST	no builds for macOS
		stochas	a plugin/VST for stochastic pattern generation
		Virtual MIDI Piano Keyboard	useful for monitoring device or as a source image for video overlays
		Blue Cat Freeware Plugins	a set of free VST/AUs for both Mac and Windows, including a frequency analyzer
	2021	alda	a text-based programming language for music composition
		Elk Audio OS	A Linux distro with a low-latency kernel and Raspberry Pi support for audio HATs
		nanostudio-2-sample	SFZ to Obsidian patch converter
		pianoplayer	a fingering generator for sheet music
	2022	JJazzLab-X	Automatic backing track generator
	2024	Patchbox OS	a Raspberry Pi OS for audio projects
		midihum	MIDI humanisation with machine learning
	2025	norns.el	an Emacs interface for developing on the Monome Norns
	2026	miditui	Interactive terminal DAW with mouse-enabled piano roll/timeline, per-track mute/solo controls, insert-mode composing, soundfont playback via rustysynth, autosave, and WAV export.
Trackers	2022	deflemask	another tracker, also available for iOS and Android. Has very little MIDI capability and no Audio Unit support.
		schismtracker	a reimplementation of Impulse Tracker
		furnace	another modern tracker for macOS, Linux and Windows
	2023	nitrotracker	A Fasttracker II style tracker for the Nintendo DS
		bintracker	a cross-platform chiptune music tracker written in Chicken Scheme
		PLEBTracker	a terminal-based tracker
		furnace	a multi-system chiptune tracker
	2024	LittleGPTracker	a fork of the original LGPT
	2025	nitroustracker	a Fasttracker II-style tracker for the Nintendo DS
Tutorial	2021	Learning Music	One of Ableton’s great online tutorials on the basics of electronic music
		Learning Synths	Another Ableton online tutorials on the basics of electronic music

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