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I used some skills I picked up 20 years ago refactoring a huge and very messy codebase I knew nothing about and built a skill that allows Claude to do the same.

Seems to work really well by executing very small and very safe refactoring steps that don't break functionality.

Very curious to hear how this works on large codebases and in different circumstances and how else we can improve it so that refactoring becomes a solved problem.

This is excellent, just what I needed from a barebones SEO tool as a total newb.

Simple, clear, gets the data right from my Google Console setup and shows a simple graph and a list of keywords.

Would love to connect on Twitter and offer more feedback/support if you're there.

Sounds like bad codebase compounded by a toxic team. A lethal combo.

That sounds aweful. I didn't think there were still shops that don't even have source control and just edit code in prod.

Mine was huge Java monolith that ran (and maybe still runs) part of the foreign exchange system that banks use to trade currency.

There were 8 layers of abstract classes with only one concrete class at the bottom.

There was a whole half-assed quasi-functional almost-but-not-quite-turing-complete language in XML for parsing legacy binary files.

There were unit tests, but they modified the dev DB so you needed to manually reseed it after every run (defintely no CI).

I spent months trying to refactor some of the more afwul bits. Not sure I actually made things any better.

I still shudder.

I can imagine a bot that posts a "Show HN" for each of those ideas that points to a landing page generated with GPT3 and DALL-E and tracks traffic to figure out the best one to build.

Might need a little tweaking. GPT3 skews to 5 y/o humour without deeper guidance.

...

Generate a list of 5 cringy app names and descriptions.

1. "PooPee!" - A game where you must help a little brown turd make its way through a maze to the toilet.

2. "Bathroom Break!" - A game where you must help a person take a dump in as little time as possible.

3. "Pimple Popper!" - A game where you must pop as many pimples as possible in a set amount of time.

4. "Hangman With a Twist!" - A game where you must guess a word or phrase, but with a hangman twist!

5. "Who Can Pee the furthest?" - A game where you must see how far you can make your pee go.

I removed the worst of the cringy ones (e.g. AnalConnect for business analysts) and the "Inspiration" bit in each app can sometimes ring a little off, but I'm pretty happy with the result overall.

Heard it a million times before but it's a nice reminder.

You're right, that's what the article is about, because that's easier. Finding paying customers and product market fit for an existing product is harder, and that's what I teach at growthlab.so.

People seem to be enjoying this over on IndieHackers, thought you guys might be interested in this too.

I do and it is!

Ping me on Twitter @finereli, let's connect!

Potion is an awesome project and Noah is a great guy. Been paying him for a while with https://softdiscipline.com, not planning to stop any time soon.

I switched from super.so and I absolute love the instant update. Used to smash the refresh button quite a bit to get things to update!

That's definitely the point. Slowing down FTW!

I don't validate the email on purpose :) I would like to stay in touch, but I don't want to force your hand.

The script is indeed very similar, but it feels different depending on what you're actually going through.

This is very direct and honest, thank you!

You make a very good point. Whatever I manage to build is going to be experimental.

You're also right that therapy is a common way to create that self awareness, but it's not the only way. Some techniques work well without a guide like meditation and journalling, and others require a little guidance but nothing as in-depth as therapy (Byron Katie's Work and Sedona Method are two that I've personally found very effective).

Ping me on Twitter @finereli, I'd love to give you a walkthrough.

Mental IDE, that's brilliant!

Something to find the bugs, something to fix them, something to organize your thoughts, a tool for reflection. Oh boy, do I have a lot of ideas around this.

But we have to start with some basic awereness and emotional processing otherwise we'll get stuck in the same old mental loops.

That's a valid point. I think my approach to this does include fixing the problem and refreshing, at least for a certain category of inifinite mental loops.

That's a valid point. I do think it's possible to build an app that gets you to reflect a lot more than interact. Ping me on Twitter @finereli, I'll show you what I've got so far.

It seems that most people would like to remove erroneous facts from other people's minds, but aren't as keen to explore their own.

That said, I agree it's a very big problem, especially these days.

For a few years. I found that it helps my general state of mind, but doesn't work very well in times of specific stress.

It's the way it's supposed to work. But it doesn't always. I get trapped in random negative thoughts all the time, lie to myself, confuse reality with my perception of it and get hung up on feelings of worthlessness and failure.

Many years ago I wrote https://github.com/elifiner/affirm which replaces the built-in assert statement and provides similar (?) benefits without changing the syntax.

Depends on the country, but we're still a long way off a wide legalization. Some cities in the US (IIRC Denver?) have decriminalized psychedelics, but it's not the same thing as legalizing them. There's a lot of research going on and a lot of good results coming in, so hopefully we'll be in a different place in a few years.

Thanks for this, I'll definitely look into it.

Your comment deserves an honest reply. If someone hurts themselves because of something that I've said or done, and there is a chance it might, I will hurt, I will mourn and I will do time if it comes to that. But the risk of this won't stop me from looking for better answers to these problems because the answers we have right now aren't good enough. And if a thousand people avoid harming themselves because of this approach and one still does, is that a failure?

Thanks so much for taking a deep look at it. I'll do another round of testing and editing on the dialogs, I might have missed a few spots there. The orphaned words are eternally greatful for your gentle care!

Thanks! Writing this down, will see what I can do about adding some controls for the audio. The non-written instructions are for times when your eyes are supposed to be closed :)