Syntax - Tasty Web Development Treats

Scott and CJ tour their homelabs, from a fully 3D printed server rack to a custom OPNsense firewall load balancing two ISPs. They dig into Proxmox, Tailscale, Caddy, Synology vs. DIY ZFS storage, Home Assistant, Jellyfin, Immich, Kiwix, and coding over the network with T3 Code and OpenCode.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

00:56 What’s in Our Homelabs? Servers, Pis and Workhorse Machines

TEROW 4 Port 2.5G PoE Switch

Proxmox

03:54 Proxmox Explained: A Hypervisor OS for Your Home Lab

05:49 Scott’s Fully 3D Printed Server Rack and Mac Studio

Synology DS918+

11:19 Keeping It Quiet: Server Fans and Noisy NAS Drives

12:58 Networking: Building a Custom OPNsense Firewall

oaknode Firewall Appliance

15:08 Load Balancing Two ISPs With SFP+ Fiber

AUMOX 10 Port 2.5G Switch

20:07 Wi-Fi Access Points and VLAN Network Segmentation

Omada AX5400 WiFi Access Point

21:40 Scott’s Switch and Eero Wi-Fi 7 Mesh Setup

UGREEN USB to 2.5G Ethernet Adapter

Eero Max 7

25:55 Ditching the ISP Router: PPPoE and Bridge Mode

27:51 Accessing Your Services Remotely With Tailscale

31:08 Local Domains and TLS Certificates With Caddy and Cloudflare

34:37 NAS and Storage: Synology vs. a DIY Setup

38:59 Hot and Cold Storage: Hardware RAID, ZFS and Cockpit

Cockpit

45:20 Container Management With OrbStack, Proxmox and Portainer

Portainer

47:52 Termix: SSH Into Your Servers From the Browser

48:50 Home Automation With Home Assistant and Apollo Automation

Apollo AIR-1

51:02 Flashing Wyze Cams With Thingino for Frigate

52:30 Cloud-Free Smart Devices: ESPHome, Tasmota and Bluetooth Proxies

57:07 Self-Hosted Media: Jellyfin, Audiobookshelf and Immich

Seerr

01:02:37 RSS, Read Later and YouTube Archiving With Tube Archivist

Miniflux

Wallabag

01:04:01 Offline Internet: Wikipedia and Stack Overflow With Kiwix

Zim Library Manager

01:05:46 Paperless-ngx for Device Manuals and Documents

Paperless NGX

01:07:44 AI Coding Agents: Scott’s Pi Durable Personal Agent

01:09:46 Coding Over the Network With T3 Code and Zed Remote

01:15:39 CJ’s OpenCode, Open WebUI and code-server Setup

01:20:02 What’s in Your Homelab? Roast Our Setups

Hit us up on Socials!

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Scott, Wes, and CJ report live from GitHub Universe in San Francisco, breaking down GitHub’s re-architecture for agent-scale traffic, the GitHub Copilot app, Copilot Fusion, Projects, Automations, and AI push protection. Plus hacked conference badges, a USB-C lanyard, and the Syntax macropad.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

01:08 Syntax Meetup Recap in San Francisco

02:10 Our Best Swag Ever: The USB-C Lanyard

04:11 The Syntax Macropad: How CJ and Wes Built a Web Configurator

07:37 GitHub Universe Swag, Good and Cringe, Plus the Matching Mugs

09:52 Hacking the GitHub Universe Badges: Wes’s Photo Booth Printer

13:15 Scott’s Badge: Pinball, a Bug Shooter and a Music Sequencer

15:34 The Scale of GitHub in 2026: Pushes, Commits and Actions

Octoverse: Commits, pushes, reach new highs in 2026 as developers build with agents

17:19 Performance and Reliability: How GitHub Is Re-Architecting for Scale

The bridge to agent-scale Git infrastructure

19:49 The GitHub Copilot Desktop App and Team Collaboration

21:10 Copilot Projects: Shared Chat and Agents Across Repos

Working with projects in the GitHub Copilot app

Managing agent sessions

22:15 Wishing for Sign In with ChatGPT in Copilot

23:37 Copilot Fusion: Single, Cascade and Critique Model Orchestration

About GitHub Copilot Fusion

Project HydraFusion: Frontier quality via multi-model orchestration

27:22 Session Continuity Across Every Surface: Do We Still Need Editors?

Continue a session from another client

29:24 Copilot Automations: Scheduled and Event-Driven Cloud Agents

Copilot automations

31:06 Will Enterprise Buy-In Pull People Back to GitHub?

33:09 GitHub Advanced Security: Secret Scanning and AI Push Protection

35:20 Closing Remarks: 1% of the Code We’ll Write in Five Years

36:47 Developer Burnout, Constraints and Reading the YouTube Comments

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Scott and Wes tackle your potluck questions, from passing context between Claude Code and Codex to whether AI-generated skills are any good. Plus high-fidelity Figma builds, WebSerial reconnects on an ESP32, AG-UI vs WebMCP, a listener who thinks Syntax is too pro-AI, and Scott’s minimal Pi setup.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

Ask a Potluck Question

01:05 How Do You Pass Context When Switching Coding Agents?

dex

06:40 Are AI Generated Skills Even Good?

11:53 Getting AI Agents to Nail High Fidelity Figma Designs

17:45 What Technical Skills Should I Focus On Without a CS Background?

20:50 Be Curious: The Photo Frame Hardware Business Example

25:13 Is Syntax Too Pro-AI? Responding to a Listener’s Criticism

30:55 Brought to you by Sentry.io

31:38 Handling WebSerial Reconnects When Flashing an ESP32

EWatch: a programmable ESP32-S3 smartwatch

34:57 Mourning the Death of Code: Feeling Guilty About Hard Won Skills

41:44 AG-UI vs WebMCP: Two Approaches to Agent Integration

47:12 Scott’s Pi Agent Setup: Start Minimal and Add What You Need

omp

51:46 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

Scott: Cat6 Ethernet Cables

Wes: Wall-mount Boom Arm

Hit us up on Socials!

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Wes, Scott, and CJ run through the week’s biggest web dev news: everyone’s hacking their TVs, VoidZero open-sourced its Void framework with Cloudflare deploys, OpenCode got hacked, and Anthropic built its own git replacement. Plus DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, Cloudflare’s security audit skill, Krea 3, a local LLM speed tester, and Killswitch, an esoteric language designed to break coding agents.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

00:44 CJ Hacks a Round Thrift Store Photo Frame

02:18 VoidZero Open Sources the Void Framework

06:58 Jev Adds Image Support to Its Decision API

11:18 Local Security Cameras: Frigate and Custom Wyze Firmware

17:41 LLM Speed: Try Local Models Before You Buy Hardware

21:00 Everyone Is Hacking Their TVs With Clean Your TV

24:51 Are These the Final Days of Hardware Hacking With LLMs?

29:24 Reverse Engineer Everything: Skills for Agentic Hacking

31:42 Hacking a Tonal and Building a DIY Digital Resistance Gym

37:24 Brought to you by Sentry.io

38:34 OpenCode Console Hacked: What Happened and Who’s Affected

41:31 Black Market API Tokens and Distillation Attacks

44:13 Should Everyone Get Access to Cyber Models?

47:48 Managing API Keys With Varlock and 1Password

48:45 Anthropic Builds Its Own Git Replacement

55:15 What Are We Losing in the Agentic Era?

01:04:26 Killswitch: A Programming Language Built to Break LLMs

01:06:53 Cheng Lou Turns JavaScript Code Into a Neural Net

01:09:30 Antfu’s Furigana Font for Reading Japanese

01:12:32 Guitoro: Strum a Guitar in the Browser

01:17:39 Playing Snake on Network Switch Lights

Hit us up on Socials!

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Scott and Wes talk with Adam Jacob about software factories: what they actually are, why they’re unique to each team, and how to build trust in agent-generated code. They dig into Swamp Club, black box testing, domain driven design, adversarial review for accessibility, and whether unit tests still earn their keep.

Show Notes

00:00 Welcome to Syntax!

01:10 What Is Swamp Club and Adam Jacob’s Background

02:37 Scott’s Personal Automations: Cleaning Folders and Filing Sentry Bugs

03:28 Where Does This Fit If You Already Run Claude Code?

07:22 Brought to you by Sentry.io

07:46 Swapping Models and APIs: Flipping the Agent Loop Inside Out

09:40 Pricing and Bringing Your Own Inference

10:18 What Is a Software Factory, Really?

14:50 Shipping 2,500 PRs a Month: Trust, Automation, and Black Box Testing

16:55 Software Factory or Slop Factory? A Perception Problem

19:06 How Big Companies Can Start: Give Five People Permission to Break the Rules

24:16 Who Has Actually Pulled This Off So Far?

25:54 What Do You Do With 10,500 Engineers?

28:56 The Vibe Coded Adobe Suite: When Does This Stop?

30:24 Personal Software: What If Software Got Smaller, Not Bigger?

33:51 Testing With AI: Black Box, Integration, and Deleting Your Unit Tests

39:03 How Do You Validate Trust in a Factory?

39:30 Domain Driven Design Gives Your Agent a Vocabulary

43:12 Adversarial Review: Accessibility, Lighthouse, and Fixing the Machine

46:17 Why Skills Alone Aren’t Enough

49:00 Figuring It Out Together: Engineers, Not the Labs, Know Their Systems

53:53 Sick Picks + Shameless Plugs

Sick Picks

Adam: Dell XPS-14 running Linux with Omachy, Lorna Shore

Shameless Plugs

Adam: Swamp Club, Swamp Club Discord

Hit us up on Socials!

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Scott: X Instagram Tiktok LinkedIn Threads

Randy: X Instagram YouTube Threads