Built With

1Password is where this site's environment variable values actually live. varlock's 1Password plugin pulls them at build and deploy time, so secrets are never committed and rotate in one place. The committed .env.schema declares what must exist; 1Password holds what it is.

Atkinson Hyperlegible is a highly readable sans-serif typeface developed for improved character recognition, originally created in partnership with the Braille Institute. It features distinctive letterforms and generous spacing to reduce ambiguity between commonly confused characters (such as I/l/1 and O/0), enhancing accessibility for readers with low vision. We use Atkinson Hyperlegible for body text to prioritize legibility and inclusive design across our content.

Babel is a JavaScript compiler used transitively by our tooling (e.g., Sentry bundler plugin). It helps transform modern syntax and annotate source for better debugging.

Biome is a fast formatter for JavaScript, TypeScript, JSX, TSX, JSON, HTML, CSS, and GraphQL that scores 97% compatibility with Prettier, saving CI and developer time.

Bun is a fast, incrementally adoptable, all-in-one JavaScript, TypeScript, and JSX toolkit. We use it as our primary development runtime environment and package manager.

Bungee Shade is a bold, decorative display font designed by David Jonathan Ross, featuring a dimensional 'shade' effect ideal for standout headings and signage. Part of the Bungee superfamily, it supports Latin scripts and is optimized for large sizes where its playful, high-impact forms enhance personality and brand recognition. We use Bungee Shade for display headings to create strong visual hierarchy and memorable typographic moments.

Bunny Fonts is a privacy-friendly, GDPR-compliant, and high-performance font delivery service provided by Bunny.net. It offers a drop-in, open alternative to Google Fonts with global CDN caching, subsetting, and fast TLS, helping reduce layout shifts and improving Core Web Vitals. We use Bunny Fonts to serve web fonts reliably without leaking user IPs to third-party ad networks.

Claude Code is Anthropic's agentic coding tool: a Claude-powered agent that works in the terminal and editor, reading the codebase, running commands, and making changes under human review. We use it daily to build and maintain this site, from content edits to feature work, with every change reviewed and committed through our normal git workflow. For a studio that publishes open research for developers of LLM applications, using the tools we study is the only honest way to work. The site now returns the favor: it serves agents directly through llms.txt and a public MCP endpoint.

Codebook Spell Checker is a Zed extension that provides fast, in-editor spell checking with dictionaries and inline suggestions. We use it to catch typos in code comments, markdown docs, commit messages, and strings, helping maintain clear and professional developer and user-facing text.

Coolors is a palette generator for creating, exploring, and sharing color schemes. We use it to quickly iterate on accessible, consistent palettes for UI, data viz, and branding.

Cascading Style Sheets define the presentation layer of our site. We pair native CSS with UnoCSS utilities, using modern features like custom properties, container queries, cascade layers, and media queries for dark mode and reduced motion. This balance keeps styles predictable, accessible, and performant.

DigitalOcean Spaces is an S3-compatible object storage service with built-in CDN integration. We use Spaces to serve static assets and media via a global edge cache, reducing latency and offloading bandwidth from our app servers. Its simple bucket-based permissions, presigned URL support, and predictable pricing make it a good fit for asset pipelines and backups.

esbuild is a fast bundler/minifier. As of Vite 8 it is no longer part of Vite's own pipeline (Rolldown took that seat), but the SvelteKit Vercel adapter still uses it to bundle our serverless functions for deployment.

Git is a free and open-source distributed version control system designed to handle everything from small to very large projects with speed and efficiency. One recent survey found that 96% of professional developers use Git.

GitHub is a cloud-based platform for hosting and collaborating on code using Git. It offers repositories, pull requests, code reviews, issues, CI/CD workflows (GitHub Actions), and project management tools, enabling teams and open-source communities to build, review, and ship software together.

Happy DOM is a fast JavaScript implementation of the browser DOM for server-side environments. We pair it with Bun's built-in test runner so our component and markdown-parsing tests can exercise real DOM behavior without launching a browser.

This one should go without saying, but we'll say it anyway. Modern HTML is not only essential for building web pages, but it also plays a crucial role in creating responsive and accessible user interfaces. Not to mention, it's pretty dope.

JavaScript powers our application runtime in the browser and on the server (Node.js). Paired with TypeScript for static types, we use modern JS features (modules, async/await, Intl APIs) and performance-minded patterns to build responsive, accessible interfaces and services.

Lightning CSS is an extremely fast CSS parser, transformer, and minifier written in Rust. It ships inside Vite 8, where it handles CSS transforms and minification in our build pipeline. Also, given our name, we were always going to like it.

macOS is our primary development environment. We use it for native tooling and workflows (Zed, Sketch, Zsh/Starship) and for reliable local parity with our Node.js toolchain and containerized services.

Marked is a fast, spec-tested markdown compiler. All prose content on this site arrives from our CMS as markdown and is parsed locally by Marked with a footnote extension, keeping rendering fully under this codebase's control.

The Model Context Protocol is the open standard for connecting AI agents to tools and data. We run a public, keyless MCP server at /mcp — built on mcp-handler and the official TypeScript SDK — so agents can search and read everything on this site in structured form.

Node.js is a free, open-source, cross-platform JavaScript runtime environment that lets developers create servers, web apps, command-line tools, and scripts. We use it as our primary production runtime environment.

Noun Project offers millions of curated, royalty-free icons and photos from a global creator community, covering virtually any concept. It provides consistent, scalable SVGs with style filters and collections, making it easy to maintain visual cohesion across UI and marketing. We use Noun Project for accessible, on-brand iconography and quick illustration needs.

Plausible Analytics is an open-source project dedicated to making web analytics more privacy-friendly. Their mission is to reduce corporate surveillance by providing an alternative web analytics tool that doesn’t come from the AdTech world.

Polypane is a developer-focused browser for building and testing responsive, accessible websites. We use it to view multiple synchronized viewports, audit accessibility (landmarks, contrast, headings), simulate devices and user preferences, and debug layout and performance issues faster than with standard devtools.

Raycast is a fast macOS launcher with extensions for development workflows. We use it to trigger scripts, search docs, manage GitHub issues/PRs, launch projects, and streamline routine tasks with custom commands.

Replicator is Lightning Jar's own LLM-powered brand operating system, and it is the content management system behind this site. The blog, customer stories, and reading list are all served live from Replicator's org-scoped content API — saving an edit in its editor goes live here in minutes, with no redeploy. Yes, we eat our own cooking.

Rolldown is a Rust-based JavaScript bundler with Rollup-compatible plugin APIs at dramatically higher speed. It became Vite's built-in bundler in Vite 8, replacing the previous Rollup and esbuild pair, and we rely on it for code splitting and optimized production bundles.

Sentry is a real-time error tracking and performance monitoring tool that helps developers identify and fix issues in their applications.

Sketch is a macOS design app for UI, icon, and prototyping work. We use it to produce components, design systems, and handoff-ready assets for implementation.

Squoosh is a web app and CLI for compressing and converting images (AVIF, WebP, MozJPEG, OxiPNG and more) with fine-grained controls. We use it to reduce asset sizes while preserving visual quality.

Our favorite open-source JavaScript framework at present, SvelteKit is the backbone of most of our new and upcoming projects. SvelteKit is the rare framework that truly reduces complexity and unpredictability rather than adding more limitations, complexity, or unnecessary boilerplate.

svelte-check adds type checking and diagnostics for Svelte components. We use it in CI to catch issues early and maintain code quality.

There isn't much of the internet that isn't powered by TypeScript these days. It's a powerful, fast, and easy-to-use superset of JavaScript that helps developers write better code.

Our favorite utility-based, open-source CSS framework. It's fast, powerful, endlessly customizable, and easy to use. We support this project—and you should too.

varlock manages our environment variables with a committed .env.schema file as the single source of truth, using decorators to mark each variable required, sensitive, or typed. It validates values at build time, generates TypeScript types for every variable, and fails fast when configuration is missing, replacing scattered untyped process.env access with a typed, documented contract.

Vecta Nano is an SVG optimization tool that cleans and compresses vector graphics by removing redundant data and minifying paths. We use it to ship leaner, faster-loading SVG assets.

Vercel is a cloud platform for static and serverless hosting. It provides a fast and reliable way to deploy and host web applications with an emphasis on developer experience and CI/CD.

Vite is a blazing-fast frontend build tool. That's what it says on the Vite website, and we're not about to improve on that. We heart Vite.

Warp is a modern, GPU-accelerated terminal that treats your command line as a productivity app with blocks, input history, and rich UI. It includes AI command search and explanations, workflows, and collaborative sharing of commands, snippets, and sessions. We use Warp for faster iteration, readable command outputs, and built-in tools that streamline everyday CLI tasks.

YAML is a human-friendly data serialization format. Every article on this site carries YAML frontmatter (title, date, tags, and more), authored in our Replicator CMS and parsed locally with the yaml npm package when content arrives from its API.

Zed is a fast, multiplayer-capable code editor built in Rust with a native UI, designed for low-latency editing and collaboration. We use Zed for its snappy editing experience, built-in pair programming, and thoughtful developer ergonomics.

Zod is a TypeScript-first schema validation library. We use it to define and validate the inputs of every tool on our public MCP endpoint, so agent requests are checked at runtime against the same schemas that type the code.

Zsh is our interactive shell, offering powerful completion, globbing, and scripting. Starship is a fast, cross-shell prompt that displays contextual git/status info and tool versions. Together they provide a productive, consistent CLI experience across machines.