Another year. Let's go.
The good
AI coding tools went from "cute toy" to something I can no longer imagine working without. Claude Code became my pair programmer: on a large migration it traces every place a change touches and drafts the mechanical edits, which is a lot more useful than the fizzbuzz demos people clap for. I still review each change and make the calls on design and edge cases, and that's the fun part.
Topo Contábil grew from an ambitious project into a platform clients use to manage their money. Anyone who works with Brazilian taxes knows how insane the system is. Our software makes it a little less so, and that's satisfying.
Sigil Protocol took shape. AI agent identity is going to matter more and more as agents become autonomous. We're early, but the foundation is solid.
The bad
AI hype became unbearable. Every startup became an "AI company" and every feature "AI-powered." People added a ChatGPT wrapper and called it innovation. VC money flowed like water toward anything with "AI" in the pitch deck, whether or not the product made sense.
The job market stayed weird. Companies lay off engineers and complain they can't find talent. Senior roles demand 15 technologies; junior roles, 3 years of experience.
Open source sustainability is still a joke. The most critical infrastructure on the internet is maintained by exhausted volunteers while billion-dollar companies use it for free and send stickers as thanks. We have not fixed this, and I do not think we are going to.
The hallucinated
LinkedIn lost it. Every post is either "I was FIRED and here's why that's the BEST thing that ever happened to me" or "I gave my employees UNLIMITED vacation and our revenue TRIPLED."
AI-generated content flooded every platform. Blog posts that say nothing in 2000 words. Twitter threads that are clearly GPT-4 with a personality prompt. Comment sections full of "Great insight! I particularly agree with your point about..."
Every week brought another "AI will replace developers" article, often written by people who don't ship code. I think AI replaces tasks, and the developers who learn to use the tools will replace those who don't. It's been that way since the invention of the compiler.
The personal
I shipped more this year than any year before. Claude Code and the architecture knowledge I've built up let me move faster without cutting corners. Speed and quality went up together, which is rare.
I got better at saying no to features that don't matter, meetings that could be messages, and refactors that feel good without helping users. That may be the most important skill a tech lead can develop.
I also wrote on this blog consistently and became the dev who builds a blog and actually uses it. The prophecy is fulfilled.
I liked 2025, problems and all. Let's see what 2026 breaks.