https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog Essays on AI-assisted engineering, blockchain, and building a career remotely. en Sun, 26 Jul 2026 04:10:43 +0000 https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/getting-hired-remotely-from-asia-is-a-trust-problem en/getting-hired-remotely-from-asia-is-a-trust-problem Wed, 08 Jul 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Developers in Hong Kong and Taiwan keep blaming their English or their skill level for the silence from international remote roles. The real wall is trust - a company wiring money to a stranger across the planet - and four concrete signals are what actually close it. career remote-work job-search https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/your-resume-is-written-for-the-wrong-reader en/your-resume-is-written-for-the-wrong-reader Wed, 01 Jul 2026 02:00:00 +0000 A strong engineer's applications had gone silent, and almost nothing about her work was the problem - her resume was written for herself instead of the stranger who decides in nine seconds. Three fixes turn a list of duties into a document that actually gets read. career resume job-search https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/i-work-four-hours-a-day-heres-the-workflow en/i-work-four-hours-a-day-heres-the-workflow Wed, 10 Jun 2026 02:00:00 +0000 A former colleague was shocked that I work about four hours a day and sometimes leave my MacBook at home entirely. The difference is not a better prompt - it is treating each task as a pipeline of skills and agents that runs while I am at lunch or asleep. Here is the whole setup. ai claude productivity workflow https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/anatomy-of-a-claude-slash-command-evaluate en/anatomy-of-a-claude-slash-command-evaluate Wed, 03 Jun 2026 02:00:00 +0000 A slash command is not code. It is a markdown file. Here is one real command, /evaluate, broken down section by section so you can steal the pattern for your own first workflow - prerequisites, structured scoring, anti-optimism rules, and the design choice that keeps the human deciding. ai claude productivity workflow https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/how-i-explore-ideas-with-claude en/how-i-explore-ideas-with-claude Wed, 27 May 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Most ideas die because nobody ever evaluates them seriously. This is the directory-based Claude workflow I use to filter shower thoughts into scored verdicts in a couple of hours - a CLAUDE.md, a few folders, and a handful of slash commands. ai claude productivity workflow https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/everyone-should-learn-claude-not-just-developers en/everyone-should-learn-claude-not-just-developers Thu, 21 May 2026 02:00:00 +0000 The old reason to learn coding -- build a small public project, share, hope someone notices -- is over. The new reason is much more practical: bend your own daily computer use to your own shape. Start with the Claude desktop app, Projects, and Code. ai claude productivity https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/cs-is-not-dead-take-it-somewhere-else en/cs-is-not-dead-take-it-somewhere-else Wed, 06 May 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Entry-level CS hiring is breaking, and the default career path that worked for the last decade is in real trouble. CS is not dead -- but the people who win the next decade will take their skills into other domains, the way DeepMind took AlphaGo to protein folding. ai career software-engineering https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/codex-vs-claude-better-model-worse-workflow en/codex-vs-claude-better-model-worse-workflow Wed, 29 Apr 2026 02:00:00 +0000 After seriously using Codex because Claude's KYC push made my setup feel unstable from Hong Kong, I landed on an uncomfortable conclusion: Codex currently has the better coding model, but Claude still has the better engineering system. ai productivity software-engineering https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/when-your-partner-gets-hacked-so-do-you en/when-your-partner-gets-hacked-so-do-you Wed, 22 Apr 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Aave lost roughly $2B of exposure on April 18 without a single bug in its own contracts. The hack was in a bridge Kelp relied on -- and that is the real lesson about DeFi composition, partner risk, and why security is the only advantage blockchain actually has over Web2. web3 security defi https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/ai-cant-give-you-skills-you-dont-have en/ai-cant-give-you-skills-you-dont-have Wed, 15 Apr 2026 02:00:00 +0000 AI is a multiplier, not a replacement. If your skill level in a domain is near zero, even the most powerful AI gets you close to zero in output quality -- here is why the cooking analogy tells the whole story. ai productivity mindset https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/two-months-remote-working-in-chiang-mai en/two-months-remote-working-in-chiang-mai Sat, 11 Apr 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Living well on $2,000 USD a month, swimming between coding sessions, and dodging mosquitoes at 3 AM -- an honest cost breakdown and lifestyle review of Chiang Mai as a remote work base. remote-work digital-nomad lifestyle https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/tokens-burnt-is-the-new-productivity-metric en/tokens-burnt-is-the-new-productivity-metric Wed, 08 Apr 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Jensen Huang says engineers should be measured by tokens burnt, not lines of code. The math backs him up -- your salary costs 5x to 20x more than your AI token bill. High token usage signals effective delegation, not waste. ai productivity software-engineering https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/grok-x-mcp-search-twitter-without-the-api en/grok-x-mcp-search-twitter-without-the-api Wed, 01 Apr 2026 02:00:00 +0000 X's API costs $200/month for basic read access. I built an open-source MCP server that uses Grok's API instead -- each search costs half a cent, and your AI agent gets full X search capabilities. ai side-project mcp https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/three-things-openclaw-is-actually-good-for en/three-things-openclaw-is-actually-good-for Sat, 28 Mar 2026 02:00:00 +0000 OpenClaw is not a replacement for a coding agent. But as a read-only customer service bot, a smart script executor, or a conversational alert system -- it fills a gap nothing else covers. ai productivity self-hosted https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/openclaw-one-month-review-why-i-switched-back en/openclaw-one-month-review-why-i-switched-back Wed, 25 Mar 2026 02:00:00 +0000 After a month of daily use, the cost math, security gaps, and context degradation made me switch back. OpenClaw is impressive tech -- but for actual productivity, a focused coding agent wins. ai productivity self-hosted https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/your-next-hire-should-know-claude-code-not-react en/your-next-hire-should-know-claude-code-not-react Wed, 18 Mar 2026 02:00:00 +0000 The hiring bar has shifted. Agent tool proficiency -- orchestrating AI workflows, managing context, reviewing AI output -- is the new requirement. Years of React experience is now a nice-to-have. ai career software-engineering https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/why-i-built-2vault en/why-i-built-2vault Wed, 11 Mar 2026 02:00:00 +0000 My friend keeps spamming me with articles I never retain. So I built an AI Chrome extension that clips any web page, summarizes it, and drops it into Obsidian as connected knowledge. ai productivity side-project https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/from-prompts-to-systems en/from-prompts-to-systems Sat, 07 Mar 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Mindset gets you halfway. The other half is building systems - reusable skills, multi-agent teams, plan-first workflows, and investing in the best model. Four upgrades that compound. ai productivity https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/stop-treating-ai-like-magic en/stop-treating-ai-like-magic Wed, 04 Mar 2026 02:00:00 +0000 AI is not a genie - it is a capable intern on day one. Five practical mindset shifts that took my friend from 'AI is overrated' to building his own workflow in one afternoon. ai productivity https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/setting-up-openclaw-with-a-non-tech-friend en/setting-up-openclaw-with-a-non-tech-friend Wed, 25 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 From using coding agents instead of outdated docs, to Discord channels, custom skills, and multi-model routing - practical lessons from helping a non-developer get their own AI assistant running on a Mac Mini M2. ai productivity self-hosted https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/the-skill-shift-what-engineers-actually-need-now en/the-skill-shift-what-engineers-actually-need-now Wed, 18 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 AI pair coding reshuffled which skills matter most. Three fundamental shifts every engineer should understand - from LeetCode to problem identification, from writing code to orchestrating work, from mastering one language to navigating many. ai career software-engineering https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/the-programmers-dilemma-craft-efficiency-and-what-comes-next en/the-programmers-dilemma-craft-efficiency-and-what-comes-next Sat, 14 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 AI changed programming the same way it changed Go - the craft of code is giving way to the craft of decisions. Here's what I think programmers need to become. ai career reflection https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/when-ai-killed-the-beauty-of-go en/when-ai-killed-the-beauty-of-go Wed, 11 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 Watching the AlphaGo documentary, I saw an uncomfortable mirror - how AI transformed Go from art to optimization, and why programmers should pay attention. ai career reflection https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/anatomy-of-a-coding-agent en/anatomy-of-a-coding-agent Sat, 07 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 A clear explainer of the four building blocks powering modern AI coding assistants - and how they fit together like layers in a stack. ai software-engineering claude https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/natural-language-is-the-new-programming-language en/natural-language-is-the-new-programming-language Wed, 04 Feb 2026 02:00:00 +0000 From opcodes to English - how LLMs added a new rung to the abstraction ladder, and why the developers who adapt fastest aren't always the most technical. ai career software-engineering https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/building-rwa-marketplace-on-base en/building-rwa-marketplace-on-base Sat, 31 Jan 2026 02:00:00 +0000 How I architected a full-stack decentralized marketplace for tokenizing real-world fashion assets with blindbox mechanics and Chainlink VRF. web3 solidity react https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/ai-powered-development-workflow en/ai-powered-development-workflow Wed, 28 Jan 2026 02:00:00 +0000 A deep dive into how I use Claude, Cursor, and custom MCP servers to accelerate full-stack development while maintaining code quality. ai productivity claude https://www.0xnicholasy.xyz/en/blog/lessons-from-ethglobal-taipei en/lessons-from-ethglobal-taipei Sat, 24 Jan 2026 02:00:00 +0000 What I learned building IntelliGuard in 48 hours - an AI-powered wallet transaction guard that won the Celo L2 Pool Prize. web3 hackathon ai