{"version":"https://jsonfeed.org/version/1.1","title":"Workshop | Philip I. Thomas","home_page_url":"https://www.philipithomas.com","feed_url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/feed/workshop/feed.json","description":"Philip Thomas is an engineer in San Francisco who crafts digital tools.","authors":[{"name":"Philip I. Thomas","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com"}],"items":[{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/stripe-projects-launch","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/stripe-projects-launch","title":"Stripe Projects launches","summary":"Last month, I wrote Agent experience about the Stripe Projects beta and how developers must now treat AI as a first-class user of their products alongside humans. Today, Stripe Projects launched durin...","date_published":"2026-04-29T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/stripe-projects-launch-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/agent-experience","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/agent-experience","title":"Agent experience","summary":"As coding becomes solved by AI, developer tools need to be designed for agent users as much as human ones. \"Agent experience\" is a problem I have been focusing on at Chroma. The first step is legible ...","date_published":"2026-03-26T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/agent-experience-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/sync-phone-numbers-and-webhooks","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/sync-phone-numbers-and-webhooks","title":"Sync, phone numbers, and webhooks","summary":"A couple of weeks have passed since I last posted. If this were an email, it would start with \"Sorry for the slow response.\"  Sync A project I built just shipped at Chroma. I added Amazon S3 sync supp...","date_published":"2026-03-05T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/sync-phone-numbers-and-webhooks-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/fresh-coat-of-paint","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/fresh-coat-of-paint","title":"A fresh coat of paint","summary":"Recently I have been watching documentaries by Gary Hustwit. It started with Rams, about the life of Dieter Rams. Next, Urbanized about city design. Then, Helvetica about the popular font. As I watche...","date_published":"2026-02-19T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/fresh-coat-of-paint-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/three-ring-binder","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/three-ring-binder","title":"Three-ring binder","summary":"When I was a kid, I would assemble binders with information about topics I was interested in. My favorite one was about airplanes and their specifications. I find that collecting information helps me ...","date_published":"2026-02-13T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/three-ring-binder-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/code-as-content-and-digital-proprioception","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/code-as-content-and-digital-proprioception","title":"Code as content, digital proprioception, and what's next","summary":"I recently launched Trivet, and I've enjoyed seeing people install it on websites ranging from personal homepages to business blogs. Before AI, Trivet would have taken me a few weeks to build. Now, Co...","date_published":"2026-01-25T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/code-as-content-and-digital-proprioception-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/chroma-for-ruby","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/chroma-for-ruby","title":"Chroma for Ruby","summary":"Last week, I shared a personal project I built over the holidays - Trivet, which adds Google sign-in to Ghost. Here, I'm sharing a work-focused holiday project I built: an official Ruby client for Chr...","date_published":"2026-01-14T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/chroma-for-ruby-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/tacit-knowledge-in-softwar","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/tacit-knowledge-in-softwar","title":"Outage, tacit knowledge, and a new project","summary":"Hello from Boulder, Colorado - where we've been dealing with power outages due to high wind. Alas, as I lost power in Boulder, my apartment in San Francisco also lost power. I knew because my Mac Mini...","date_published":"2025-12-24T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/tacit-knowledge-in-softwar-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/digital-gardening","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/digital-gardening","title":"Digital gardening","summary":"I've been thinking about gardens this week. It started while reading the book Shopkeeping, which had a section entitled \"Gardening\": > A good shopkeeper will notice if a wall or section is in a slump ...","date_published":"2025-12-16T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/digital-gardening-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/build-and-tinker","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/build-and-tinker","title":"Building less, tinkering more, and walking away sooner","summary":"I'm back from my vacation to Japan, slowly adjusting to California time. It was a fun and inspiring trip – I'm thinking about it now while listening to the Eric Dolphy album Out There on vinyl, which ...","date_published":"2025-12-05T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/build-and-tinker-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/disaster-recovery","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/disaster-recovery","title":"Disaster recovery","summary":"I'm headed off on holiday later this week. As the trip approached, I found myself thinking about how to best back up my Mac Mini home server. I've had an abnormal number of conversations about SOC 2 c...","date_published":"2025-11-19T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/disaster-recovery-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/snail-mail","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/snail-mail","title":"Snail mail","summary":"I’ve been getting back into analog media this year - reading paper books, listening to vinyl, subscribing to print magazines, even getting the Sunday New York Times. For some of the blogs I follow, su...","date_published":"2025-11-11T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/snail-mail-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/maintenance","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/maintenance","title":"Maintenance","summary":"I’m preparing to launch Workshop here as an independent newsletter within Contraption Company. I started it as an experiment, and I’m ready to graduate it from “experiment” to “project.” Before doing ...","date_published":"2025-10-30T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/maintenance-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/backup-plans","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/backup-plans","title":"Backup plans","summary":"I’ve always been fascinated by planes. A few years ago, I took an introductory class toward a private pilot’s license - and it was less fun than I expected. The plane pretty much flies itself; the pil...","date_published":"2025-10-28T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/backup-plans-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/git","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/git","title":"GitHub syncing","summary":"Something I worked on just launched: Chroma GitHub Sync. I love the mental model of businesses having a \"shadow business\" - a non-obvious skill they must master to achieve their main goal. My favorite...","date_published":"2025-10-23T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/git-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/hacking-yc-again","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/hacking-yc-again","title":"Hacking YC (again)","summary":"I like seeing how things work. Digitally, that often means keeping the network tab open to watch how websites talk to servers. Sometimes, I find mistakes. Last month, while browsing Y Combinator’s sof...","date_published":"2025-10-01T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/hacking-yc-again-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/taste-skill-gaps","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/taste-skill-gaps","title":"Taste-skill gaps","summary":"When I saw Craig Mod speak in San Francisco this summer, he mentioned an concept that stuck with me. I don’t remember his exact context, only that he was new to something and knew his work wasn’t good...","date_published":"2025-08-29T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/taste-skill-gaps-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/joys-of-self-hosting","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/joys-of-self-hosting","title":"The joys of self-hosting","summary":"When I checked my phone this morning, the first notification was that my home server \"Toolbox\" was down. Everything on it was offline - Postcard, Booklet, this blog, and more. I pulled out my laptop, ...","date_published":"2025-08-27T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/joys-of-self-hosting-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/claude-launching-and-tools","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/claude-launching-and-tools","title":"Claude, Launching, and Tools","summary":"For the last week, I’ve been leaning into Claude Code for development. I used to think of it as more of a hobbyist tool, rather than a professional one. Cursor had been the main way I used AI to write...","date_published":"2025-08-20T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/claude-launching-and-tools-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/adding-a-brain-to-my-toolbox","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/adding-a-brain-to-my-toolbox","title":"Adding a brain to my toolbox","summary":"One of my favorite projects has been using my Mac Mini as a home data center. It hosts this blog and all of my projects. After using cloud machines for decades, there's something tactile about maintai...","date_published":"2025-08-15T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/adding-a-brain-to-my-toolbox-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/rethink-chat","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/rethink-chat","title":"It's time to rethink chat","summary":"Today's chat tools feel dated. It's time for a startup to rethink them. Notion is an example of a team firing on all cylinders to become AI-native. But, no communication tools seem to have cracked AI....","date_published":"2025-08-14T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/rethink-chat-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/software-is-bread-not-burgers","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/software-is-bread-not-burgers","title":"Software is bread, not burgers","summary":"I was reading the book Richard Hart Bread last night when I came across this paragraph: > Absolute devotion to consistent methods and exact recipes is useful when you’re running a fast-food franchise ...","date_published":"2025-08-09T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/software-is-bread-not-burgers-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/my-favorite-tool-for-making-email-less-stressful","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/my-favorite-tool-for-making-email-less-stressful","title":"My favorite tool for making email less stressful","summary":"Email has become a to-do list—bills, questions, scheduling requests, expense reports, and more. Opening it can induce stress. Amid these tasks were email newsletters—long-form pieces I wanted to read....","date_published":"2025-08-05T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/my-favorite-tool-for-making-email-less-stressful-cover.JPG","tags":["workshop"]},{"id":"https://www.philipithomas.com/workshop-welcome","url":"https://www.philipithomas.com/workshop-welcome","title":"Welcome to Workshop","summary":"Welcome to a new project: a members-only newsletter experiment on Contraption Company called Workshop. So far this year, 98k people have read essays on this site\\1\\(fn1), and more than 4k subscribe to...","date_published":"2025-08-02T00:00:00.000Z","image":"https://www.philipithomas.com/images/covers/workshop-welcome-cover.jpg","tags":["workshop"]}]}