Shows
The Bikeshed PodRetro & React - 2Summary
In this episode of Retro and React, Scott and Matt dive into two significant developments in the tech industry: Anthropic's recent policy changes around third-party agent harnesses and the layoffs at Tailwind Labs.
Anthropic's Crackdown on Third-Party Tools
Anthropic recently prohibited the use of open-source/third-party agent harnesses (like Claude Code, OpenCode, Clawdbot, and Pi) with Claude Pro and Max subscriptions
These tools were previously spoofing headers and using system prompts to bypass Anthropic's restrictions and leverage subscription-based access
Users must now pay for API billing (per-token pricing) instead of using monthly subscriptions...
2026-01-1921 minThe Bikeshed PodAI Wrote My Performance ReviewSummary:
Scott, Dillon, and Matt kick off 2026 with a deep dive into the joys (and pains) of performance review season. The conversation starts with everyone's approach to using AI—specifically Claude—to help write self-reviews. Scott shares how an MCP server at work generated his entire review in about 15 minutes, while Dillon notes his company explicitly encourages using AI for reviews. Matt discusses using Claude to scan his Obsidian notes from the past year and create a summary of accomplishments.
The hosts explore best practices for structuring reviews:
Focus on 3-4 high-impact accomplishments and tell...
2026-01-151h 03The Bikeshed PodRetro & React - 1This week on The Bikeshed, Scott, Matt, and Dillon tackle two breaking stories that have the JavaScript community buzzing: React's severity 10 vulnerability in React Server Components and Anthropic's surprising acquisition of Bun.
React's Critical Vulnerability
The hosts dive into the details of React's newly disclosed security flaw affecting React Server Components—a severity 10 vulnerability that could potentially allow arbitrary code execution on servers. While major infrastructure providers like Cloudflare, Vercel, Railway, Netlify, and Deno Deploy quickly patched the issue at the firewall level, the team discusses the concerning lack of early disclosure to smaller framework ma...
2025-12-0530 minThe Bikeshed PodClankers Can Review Code Now?!?The AI Code Review Landscape: Three Companies, Three Approaches
The conversation kicks off with each host sharing their company's approach to AI code review tooling. Dillon reveals that Whoop is piloting three different tools simultaneously—Greptile, GitHub Copilot, and CodeRabbit—leaving engineers unsure which bot will show up in their PRs on any given day. Matt explains HubSpot's dual approach with "Sidekick" (their internal AI agent for chat and code review) alongside "Sparrow," a non-AI bot that auto-approves low-risk changes like markdown updates. Scott shares that Airbnb uses Claude for PR reviews, finding it catches genuine bugs but...
2025-11-2851 minThe Bikeshed PodWhy Internal Tooling SucksWhy Internal Tooling (Usually) Sucks
In this episode, Matt kicks things off with a provocative thesis: internal tooling usually sucks. What follows is a deep, nuanced exploration of one of software engineering's most persistent challenges—the build versus buy decision that every company eventually faces.
The Two Types of Internal Tools
The hosts identify two distinct categories of internal tooling:
Wrappers: Tools that extend existing external solutions (like a custom UI for managing GitHub repository settings)
Replacements: Complete alternatives to industry-standard tools (like building your own NPM/Yarn/PNPM equivalent)
Through ex...
2025-11-2146 minThe Bikeshed PodThe Parking Lot - 1Coffee Discussion
The hosts spend considerable time discussing coffee preferences and brewing methods. They critique Dunkin' Donuts coffee quality, with the consensus being it's subpar without heavy sugar additions. Matt shares his experiences with different brewing methods including espresso machines, palm press, and Chemex. Scott provides an enthusiastic review of his new Breville espresso machine, explaining the learning curve around grind settings and shot preparation. The group agrees that smaller coffee shops generally have better quality beans than chain establishments.
Cursor 2.0 Release
The team discusses Cursor's major update, which repositions it as an "...
2025-11-1555 minThe Bikeshed PodThe Downfall of ReactRemix 3 Discussion
Overview: The hosts discuss the recent Remix Jam conference and the unveiled Remix 3 framework, which aims to simplify web development. Remix 3 is centered around event handling and components with a different approach to React.
Key Concepts:
Event Handling: A core focus is on managing DOM events and using events to manage state.
Components: Aims to reduce complexity compared to React's functional components, potentially eliminating the need for hooks.
Frames: A replacement for suspense that they called frames
Concerns:
The framework is still pre-alpha, and APIs are subject to change.
Potential difficulties in migrating existing React codebases...
2025-11-0854 minThe Bikeshed PodIs The Web Screwed?!Summary
This episode of the Bikeshed Podcast dives into the question of whether the current state and future of the web are in jeopardy, primarily due to the rise of AI and its impact on content creation, consumption, and monetization. The discussion revolves around the tension between human-centric web experiences and the increasing dominance of AI-driven content aggregation and delivery.
Key Discussion Points
The AI Crawler Problem: The podcast starts by highlighting the increasing use of systems like Anubis to prevent AI from crawling websites, which negatively impacts the user experience for humans. This...
2025-10-3052 minThe Bikeshed PodDeploy Fast, and Break Things?!This episode of the Bikeshed Podcast features a discussion on the optimal level of deployment pipeline optimization, sparked by a company's desire to achieve five-minute deploys. The co-hosts, Scott, Matt, and Dillon, debate whether aggressively shortening deployment times is always beneficial, or if it can mask underlying problems and sacrifice stability.
Key Discussion Points:
Organizational Velocity: The concept of organizational velocity is introduced, emphasizing the importance of moving as fast as possible in the right direction across the entire company, not just in deployment.
Trade-offs: The discussion highlights potential trade-offs between deployment speed and stability. A...
2025-10-1845 minThe Bikeshed PodManaging Dependencies: It DependsThis episode of the Bikeshed Podcast dives into dependency management, particularly within the context of front-end projects. The discussion centers around the "one version rule," a strategy adopted by companies like Wayfair to ensure consistency and reduce bundle sizes by using a single version of each library across all projects. The hosts explore the pros and cons of this approach, as well as alternative dependency management strategies.
Key Discussion Points:
Introduction to Dependency Management: Dependency management involves pulling in libraries and managing updates, breaking changes, and inconsistencies across projects.
The One Version Rule: The one version...
2025-10-1747 minThe Bikeshed PodAre React Server Components Risky?!?The bikeshed boys interview Matt on this episode, talking about all things React Server Components (RSCs), exploring their benefits, trade-offs, and adoption strategies. The hosts draw on their experiences at Wayfair, Fireworks, and Whoop to provide practical insights for learning and adopting RSCs.
Why React Server Components
Benefits:
Improved Time to First Byte (TTFB) via streaming.
More cohesive view of data dependencies (tighter front-end/back-end coupling).
Potential for smaller client-side bundles (automatic code splitting).
Trade-offs:
Requires a server layer (which might be a new concept for some React developers).
Migrating to...
2025-06-161h 16The Bikeshed PodMonorepo MadnessThe Bikeshed podcast returns after a brief hiatus with hosts Scott Kaye, Matt Hamlin, and Dillon Curry. Tune in to hear the bikeshed boys talk about keyboards, Scott's Italy trip, monorepos, and our hot takes on CSS!
Stand-up Updates
Dillon is dealing with disruptive construction at his house and is taking time off to combat burnout after a large launch at Woop. He has volunteered to be the guild lead of web, but is finding it difficult to motivate others and get things done.
Scott recaps his recent trip to Italy, highlighting Rome, Florence, Venice, Milan...
2025-06-091h 09The Bikeshed PodDitch the Career LadderSummary
The Bikeshed Podcast introduces its hosts: Scott Kaye (UI guy, coffee curator, powerlifter) and Matt Hamlin (principal engineer, senior engineering lead) and Dillon (Spicy Take) Curry. They cover software engineering, tech events, and Discord emojis.
Keyboard Discussion
Dillon discusses his new Nuphy keyboard with silent red clear top switches, featuring RGB lighting. Matt reveals he recently ordered a Nuphy Air 75 v2 after being influenced by Dillon. This leads to a brief discussion about potentially dedicating an entire episode to keyboards.
Engineering Levels Discussion
Introduction: The main topic shifts to...
2025-05-2044 minThe Bikeshed PodScratching the Surface on Design SystemsSummary:
This episode of The Bikeshed Podcast covers design systems, including their benefits, trade-offs, and whether your company needs one. The hosts also share experiences from their time working on a design system team at Wayfair. Segments include stand-up updates, "Two Takes and a Fake," and "Spicy Takes with Curry."
Stand-up Updates
Dillon: Shifted to a new project requiring more help. He is listening to the audiobook "Sapiens."
Matt: Exploring the Cloudflare Vite plugin, which allows building a worker and a client-side app. Also experimenting with TinyBase, a sync engine for web applications.
Scott...
2025-04-1254 minThe Bikeshed PodTesting - Is It Worth It?!?Summary:
This episode of the Bikeshed Podcast features a discussion about software testing, with a focus on automated testing in frontend development. The hosts, Scott Kaye, Matt Hamlin, and Dillon Curry, explore various testing methodologies, tools, and their value in different contexts. They delve into the nuances of unit, integration, and end-to-end testing, and the trade-offs involved in choosing one over the other. The discussion also touches on the role of mocking, dependency injection, and the importance of balancing test coverage with development speed. They each share personal experiences from their development career on testing, and their...
2025-04-021h 08The Bikeshed PodPerfecting The Pull RequestSummary:
This episode of the Bikeshed Podcast features Scott Kaye, Matt Hamlin, and Dillon Curry discussing best practices for code review, with a focus on creating effective pull requests (PRs) and how to approach reviewing code.
Creating Great Pull Requests
Context is Key: Highlight the problem being solved, the goal of the PR, and the solution chosen. Explain why this solution was selected over alternatives.
Scope: PRs should be isolated to a single problem or feature.
Rollback: Consider and outline the rollback procedure for changes.
Templates: Minimal templates with "context" and "details" sections are...
2025-03-3152 minThe Bikeshed PodA Day In The Life: Coding, Coffee, and Commit MessagesSummary:
In this episode of the Bikeshed Podcast, the bikeshed boys dive into their daily routine exploring their productivity habits and workflows. They also get down and dirty on discussing their spicy takes.
Daily Routines for Productivity
Matt: Starts his day with a morning walk and uses Obsidian as a central hub for notes and task management. He reviews notes and Slack to identify action items. He also notes that he finds opportunities to make improvements on other things while doing a given task and acts on it instead of simply noting it.
Scott...
2025-03-2638 minThe Bikeshed PodIs The Web Getting Worse?!?!?Summary:
This episode of the Bikeshed Podcast explores the concept of "enshittification," the idea that the quality of products and services deteriorates over time, often accompanied by increased monetization and decreased customer value. They further discuss how this relates to web development and the broader tech industry. They explore potential cultural factors behind this.
Key Discussion Points:
Enshittification Examples: The hosts provide examples of enshittification in popular services like Spotify (increased ads with subscription) and Netflix (higher prices for premium features). Facebook is also mentioned as a product that has seemingly declined in popularity...
2025-03-191h 04The Bikeshed PodVibe Coding When The Vibes Are Off
Dillon, Matt & Scott record an episode with some semblance of quality.
The bikeshed boys dive directly into software's hottest topic: AI. We believe in using AI in your day to day job to be more successful.
In this episode we discuss;
use cases for AI in software development,
the fun tasks AI has taken away and,
how to be successful using AI tools.
Listen to us explain navigating writing code in a world where more and more companies are increasingly advocating the usage of AI at your day job.
How do...
2025-03-1759 min