Politics and emotion at Local-First Conf
My reflections on Local-First Conf 2026. I was surprised by the angles of geopolitics, and charged emotion in response to our changing industry.
Adam Wiggins
Articles about computing and creative tools.
Latest posts
A Bluesky feed for one
I built a custom feed for Bluesky that trains a model on my past interactions. Here's what I learned about RecSys and social media feeds generally.
Firehose authentic use
A prototype of email triage via a custom-trained model. This is a report of the first two weeks of real-world use.
Email triage with an embedding-based classifier
I built a machine learning pipeline for email triage. Includes a hand-labeled golden set, training the model in the browser, and evals. Plus options for local vs cloud embeddings.
Personal information firehose
My new research project asks whether a personal algorithm, inspired by social media, can help us filter our email, group chats, and other personal correspondence.
Why sync
Web developers are discovering the joys of sync, including next-frame UIs, multiplayer by default, and a simplified stack.
Muse retrospective
The inside story of four years building Muse, a canvas-based thinking tool for iPad and Mac.
together, we can make things better
Let’s work together to change our industry conversation, direct our individual careers, and develop new institutions for making computers better.
how we create and deliver software
Let’s make software development fast, fun, and ceremony-free.
how we pay for software
I want to see us diversify payment models beyond ad-supported and B2B SaaS in order to enable more types of software.
how we manage our attention
In a hyperconnected age, I want software to help us find harmony between staying connected and staying focused.
how we interact with our tools
Core OS interactions like copy-paste, multitasks, and multitouch have stagnated. Maybe we lack the right institutions for innovation.
how we store and collaborate on our work
Files give us agency, the web gives us collaboration, mobile gives us direct manipulation. I want all three together.
how we identify ourselves
We identify ourselves to computers hundreds of times a day, but it’s a mess. I want digital identity that is easy to use, private, and secure.
making computers better
We live in a computer-embroidered reality. Here are six ways to improve computing in service of human prosperity.