Deckchair Vibes
Last week I built and shipped a browser game from a deckchair in Ibiza using nothing but my phone and AI. No laptop. No IDE. No terminal. Just Claude, GitHub and Netlify.
Andi Smith - Blog
Technical Leader, Product Engineer and AI Consultant in London, UK
Latest posts
Measure Shipped Work, Not Tokens
If everyone on your team uses AI every day, what does your AI adoption metric actually tell you?
AI to Resolve Incidents
We put an AI bot between our alerting and our on-call engineer. It reads the logs, the traffic and the recent deploys, then comments on the incident before anyone has even opened Slack.
10 Things I Learned From CTO Craft Con 2026
My highlights from the two day London conference.
Undefined Roles
With the acceleration of AI, the traditional boundaries between product, engineering and UX are collapsing.
AI Is Only As Good As Your Understanding
If AI is so good at solving problems, why do you still need employees?
Lean Coffee Decision Making
A way to come to decisions fast, when time is not on your side.
Relationship Radar
The people you're closest to at work aren't always the people you need to be closest to.
Where to Start?
Opus 4.5 is out and it feels like it's a big step forward in AI innovation.
All Roads Lead to React Native
For a startup, choosing the wrong app technology can cost you millions in burn and years of wasted engineering time.
All the Small Things
In a startup it's important to reduce friction. The main asset available to you is to go fast. If you can't do that, you won't beat the competition.
Observability with Slack Workflows
I recently needed to keep an eye on a third party's rate limit during a product launch, and Slack Workflows seemed like a nice solution to alert me to issues. Let's take a look at how it worked.
Peacetime vs Wartime
Your monolith is buckling under heavy traffic growth. The quick fix is to beef up the server through vertical scaling and buy yourself six months. The right fix is a four month microservices migration that will either save the company or kill it if you miss the deadline. Meanwhile your $2m client is demanding new features or they'll go elsewhere.
From Sprawl to Structure
The business is growing, and your engineering team is too. Great news - until the sprawl sets in. How can your teams and processes scale with consistency and maturity?
Ship Fast, Scale Clean - Building MVPs That Last
Your founder comes to you with the classic Minimum Viable Product (MVP) dilemma. We need to build quickly for speed to market, but make it maintainable so it can scale as we grow.
Lessons from Startup Life
Some things I learnt during my time working as tech employee #1 at a startup.
Inkscape 101
I've been playing around with Inkscape for the first time this weekend. It's been fun and I've managed to get some good results really quickly. Here's my 101 intro to Inkscape! From one beginner to another beginner!
Intro to SOC 2 for CTOs
Congratulations! You've reached the point in your business where you are mature enough to start thinking about cybersecurity and security compliance, but there's a lot of new information to get your head around.
Keeping SaaS Costs Down
It's very easy to fall in to the trap of tool sprawl and escalating costs - particularly in the high speed world of startups. Let's take a look at some techniques we can use to keep a handle on it.
6 Types of CTO
If you examine different CTO job roles currently on job boards, you'll find that there's no established job spec for a CTO. The role varies dramatically depending on the type of company. A CTO may be hands-on in one company, and a "big vision" role in another.
5 Tools to Help with Vibe Coding Design
So you've dipped your toes in to vibe coding and you've coded a basic app, but it's lacking some flair. Here's some useful online tools that can help you make your design really vibe!
Buy vs. Build
When you're building a product at a startup, every engineering hour counts. You can't build everything from scratch, but you also can't buy your way out of every problem. The key is knowing where to draw the line.
AI to Solve Actual Product Problems
AI is improving by leaps and bounds week after week. Everyone’s trying to bolt AI onto their product. But AI only adds value when it’s solving the right problem.
Yes And...
How Improv taught me to be a better leader.
Remote-First Engineering at Scale
The pandemic in 2020 changed the world of software development forever, with teams forced to work remotely.
Improv Suggestions
Sometimes when you are rehearsing or practicing Improv, getting a varied starting word can be the hardest thing.
Vibe Coding
What is vibe coding? Should we all be vibe coding? And how can we do it right?
Generative AI to boost Content Workflows and SEO
Recently I have been experimenting with how AI can help improve content workflows and SEO through the use of real-time content generation.
Getting the best out of Cursor AI
AI is rapidly changing the way how we code. Cursor is one particular tool which has changed the game. Here's some tips on how to get the best out of it.
Containment DX
One of the earliest games we released at Natomic Studios was a 360 Pong variant called 'Containment'. It's been lost to time thanks to the advancement of technology, so I thought I'd have a go at rebuilding it on the web using AI.
Mastering NextJS Parallel Routes
Recently I came across a powerful routing feature in Next.js that completely changed how I thought about structured complex web applications.
The Speed Paradox
Why moving faster often means slowing down first.
Solving InfoSec with AI
Filling in InfoSec surveys is rarely fun at the best of times. How can we use AI to help?
Let's Talk About 1:1s
Should you be running 1:1s with your team?
Do You Really Need Your Own AI Model?
With advancements in AI moving so fast, is it worth the return on investment?
Chaining AI Assistants with Open AI Threads
How to make AI even smarter.
Creating a Technical Strategy
A technical strategy is an important part of any technical leader's arsenal.
Keeping a Daily Note
Starting the day right with a daily note.
Recovering from Failure
In case of emergency, read note. A post on preparing for incidents.
AI Assistants with WhatsApp
How to get started with building a WhatsApp AI Assistant.
Onboarding like a Pro
How to get your team up to speed... fast!
Aligning Leadership Values
How do you align your leadership team when it feels like everyone is working in a silo?
The Start of Something New
After almost 11 years, I am moving on from AKQA to pastures new.
The Quest for the Perfect Workflow
Getting the right tools for the job.
Creating a List of Posts in Assemble
In the previous post, I showed how to get started with Assemble. Now we have content, let's look at how we can create a list of posts.
Getting Started With Assemble
Want to create a static site blog with Assemble? You've come to the right place. This in-depth tutorial will get you started with creating a blog in Assemble!
Shrinkwrap Your Dependencies
Front end development has evolved over the last couple of years thanks to `npm` popularised by task runners such as Grunt and Gulp.
A Look Back at 2013
2013 was an eventful year for me both professionally and personally. I worked on a multitude of different projects in a variety of clients in a number of countries.
jQuery On and Off Namespacing
Being able to apply and remove events with `on()` and `off()` is great, but sometimes there is a requirement to either trigger or remove a subset of events that have been added to an element. Here's how!
Beginning Web Development
Inspired by a post I read earlier this week on how difficult it can be for newcomers to get in to the industry, I decided that I wanted to write a post with some hints and advice for developers who are just starting out their careers.