AI Explorations

Logger-TXT started life as a shell script over a decade ago. It does one small thing: append a timestamped line to a text file so I can remember what I did on that Tuesday two weeks ago. I rewrote it in Go recently, and the surface reason was capabilities. Date ranges, type and project filters, reverse scanning so a decade-deep log file stays fast.

That’s not really why I did it, though. The rewrite was an excuse to practise designing an AI-native command-line tool: one a coding agent can pick up and drive correctly, with no help from me, on the first try.

Let me be upfront: the app I’m about to describe is useful for maybe three weeks out of the year. It helps you figure out when to tap a maple tree for sap. That’s it. The rest of the year it just sits there, waiting for February to roll around again. I can’t think of much else targeting such a specific, and time-limited, niche…

A year ago, I wouldn’t have built this. Not because it’s hard, but because the return on investment is laughable. A few weeks of utility for evenings of development time, if I finish it at all, is not worth it. I’d just check the weather forecast myself, squint at the overnight lows, and make a guess like I did last year. The motivation simply wouldn’t survive contact with the reality of actually sitting down to build it.