← the writing tools · 18 essays

Tools

The software I actually use every day to run an agency, build products, and ship content at scale. Updated when something earns or loses its place.

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19 jul 2026 Vibe coding is a team sport: how I ship with six AI models The best question in AI coding is not which model to pick. It is how to run several as a team, each doing the job it is best at, with a human owning every merge.
17 jul 2026 Dockerfiles on Vercel: Do You Still Need a VPS in 2026? Vercel added Docker container support and a lot of developers declared the VPS dead. I've been running both in production for months now. The honest answer is more boring than the hot takes suggest.
13 jul 2026 Vercel AI SDK in Practice: Ship Smarter, Not Harder After wiring AI into dozens of client projects, I've landed on Vercel AI SDK as the fastest path from "we want AI features" to production. Here's the honest breakdown of what it does and how to ship with it.
10 jul 2026 I tested 8 AI coding models for 10 days: my honest ranking An honest, hands-on ranking of the best AI coding models in 2026 after ten days of real work in Cursor — Composer, Claude Sonnet 5, Opus 4.8, Fable, GPT-5.6 Sol and Terra, and Grok.
5 jul 2026 Best Frontend Hosting in 2026: The Honest Shortlist After building 12,000+ sites at Seahawk Media, I've stopped pretending every frontend host is "great for different use cases." Some are better. Here's the honest shortlist for 2026, with no sponsorships muddying the verdict.
5 jul 2026 Vercel Hobby Plan Limits (and When You Outgrow Them) Vercel's Hobby plan looks generous until you hit a production edge case at 11pm on a Friday. Here's where the limits actually matter, from build minutes to serverless function timeouts.
4 jul 2026 Render vs Vercel: When You Actually Need a Real Server Vercel wins for most frontend work. But the moment you need persistent connections, background jobs, or a WebSocket that stays alive, you're fighting the platform. Here's how I think about the split after building 12,000+ sites.
3 jul 2026 Cloudflare Pages vs Netlify (2026): Which Host Wins After deploying on both platforms across hundreds of projects, I've got a clear answer on which static host wins in 2026. Spoiler: it depends on one thing most comparisons ignore.
3 jul 2026 Cloudflare Pages vs Vercel (2026): Cost, Edge, and DX After deploying across both platforms for dozens of client projects, I've got a real opinion on Cloudflare Pages vs Vercel in 2026. Here's the honest breakdown on cost, edge performance, and developer experience.
2 jul 2026 Netlify Free Tier Limits: What You Get Before You Pay Netlify's free tier is genuinely generous, until it isn't. Here's exactly what the Starter plan gives you, where the walls appear, and how I've worked around them for client projects without spending a penny more.
1 jul 2026 Netlify Pricing Explained (2026): Free to Enterprise Netlify's pricing looks clean on the surface. Four tiers, a free plan, some enterprise asterisks. But the real cost only shows up after you've deployed something that actually gets traffic. Here's the full breakdown.
30 jun 2026 Vercel vs Netlify on Price: A Line-by-Line Breakdown Both platforms pitch themselves as the obvious choice for frontend deployment. But the pricing pages tell a different story once you start doing actual maths. Here's what I found after running both for client projects at Seahawk.
30 jun 2026 How Much Does Vercel Actually Cost? Real Monthly Bills Vercel's pricing page looks reasonable until your first real bill arrives. I've run the numbers across dozens of client projects, here's what you'll actually pay, and where the costs quietly stack up.
29 jun 2026 Is Vercel Free? What the Hobby Tier Actually Allows Vercel's Hobby tier looks generous until you actually ship something real. Here's a plain breakdown of what the free plan allows, where it quietly breaks down, and whether it's worth staying on it.
29 jun 2026 Vercel Pricing Explained (2026): Plans and Surprise Bills Vercel's Hobby plan looks free until a traffic spike or a forgotten cron job sends you a $300 invoice. I've watched it happen to clients. Here's every plan broken down honestly, plus the specific things that quietly rack up cost.
3 may 2026 Why I Started Writing Tests Again (AI Made Me) I abandoned unit tests for almost two years. Confident code, fast delivery, no safety net. Then AI coding tools started shipping bugs I couldn't see coming, and I quietly went back to writing tests.
1 may 2026 Claude Code vs Codex vs Cursor: Honest Review After 6 Months Six months. Three AI coding tools. Dozens of client projects and at least four moments where I genuinely wanted to throw my MacBook out the window. Here's what I actually found, good, bad, and confusing.
1 may 2026 How I Use Claude Code Daily as a Founder Who Still Ships I'm a founder who still writes code. Here's the unvarnished truth about how Claude Code fits into my daily workflow at Seahawk, what it nails, what it breaks, and why I haven't stopped using it.