Full Stack Developers Wes Bos and Scott Tolinski dive deep into web development topics, explaining how they work and talking about their own experiences. They cover from JavaScript frameworks like React, to the latest advancements in CSS to simplifying web tooling.
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Scott and Wes run through eight new CSS, JS, and HTML features landing in browsers; including the relative alpha() color function, the progress() function for calculating values between units, Promise.allKeyed(), and native camera and microphone elements. They also get into an upgraded attr(), shrink-to-fit containers, and text-box-trim for finally killing that annoying extra space above your text. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! Wes’s Demo Site 00:22 CSS Alpha() Relative Color Function Google Groups 02:25 Brought to you by Sentry.io 02:48 CSS CSS Progress() Function: Calculate Values Betw
Scott and CJ break down Stripe's $7B acquisition of OpenRouter, the SvelteKit 3 release candidate, and their first look at TanStack Charts. Plus Zed's new Delta editor, stealing reasoning traces from proprietary LLM APIs, why dark mode toggles only need two states, and all 43 quintillion Rubik's cube states in your browser. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 02:20 SvelteKit 3 Release Candidate 07:43 Video editor recs Casey Faris 09:58 TanStack Charts First Look TanStack Charts TanStack Charts implementations of every official shadcn/ui chart 14:24 Ponytail AI Tool 17:22 Zed Delta Editor Intro
Scott and Wes answer your questions about coding in the AI era, atrophying skills from too much autocomplete, whether it’s finally time to leave VS Code, chasing flow state with agents, and which single AI subscription is worth your money. Plus: AT Protocol vs Solid, making your AI config portable across tools, and bringing Shadcn-level UX to server-rendered frameworks. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:57 AI-Generated Code: Are My Skills Atrophying? 06:03 Is It Time to Move On from VS Code? 13:19 Hitting Flow State with AI Coding See Wes’ Post on X 19:15 AT Protocol vs Solid: Decentraliz
An AI assistant goes rogue and hacks a gym website, a $9k surprise Cloudflare bill lands in someone’s inbox, and AI subscriptions start promising unlimited usage. Plus Meta’s Muse Glimmer, Agent Plugins, Kimi K3 in Copilot, and a pile of CSS chaos. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 02:30 Celld: self host distributed durable objects 07:57 $9k Cloudflare Bill 13:43 Ogygia - SSR islands for SvelteKit 18:49 Brought to you by Sentry.io 19:51 Standard Code - Unlimited Use AI Subscription 29:17 New Meta Model Muse Glimmer 36:12 AI Assistant Hacks Gym 46:49 This Week in AI 54:50 Prime Agent RLM harn
Nathan Sobo joins Scott and Wes to explain why Zed was built in Rust, how GPUI works, and what happens to editors once agents write most of the code. They also talk about DeltaDB, Zed’s new Git-compatible version control system, and Delta, the collaborative agentic editor it powers. Show Notes 00:00 Start 00:35 Welcom to Syntax 01:13 The Journey to Zed: Building the Ultimate Tool 03:26 Why Rust was chosen for Zed? 06:29 Brought to you by Sentry! 07:07 Building a UI from scratch in Rust GPUI 15:55 AI’s role in coding and development 18:42 The role of text editors in the age of AI 21:52 Delta DB
Cloudflare is rolling out crypto wallets with claimable handles as identity, and a real React compiler finally landed for regular hooks-based code. Plus: OpenAI's pricing war, Vue Vapor benchmarks, GitHub's new npm malware scanning, and an active supply chain attack hitting 868 packages. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:02 Shai Hulud is back! New Shai-Hulud announcement Attacked keyv packages 05:27 GitHub scans your npm packages for malware 06:42 Your agent has a wallet now Make your own Cloudflare wallet announcement blog post X402 payments 12:10 Yet another React compiler? Ripple.ts In
Scott and Wes tackle your questions on the rise of the design engineer, why AI still lacks “taste” (and why it’s about more than just looks), and how to actually write tests in the age of AI-assisted coding. Plus: is AI a bubble about to burst, keeping coding agents efficient in massive codebases, introducing kids to AI, a Linux life update, and more! Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:18 The Rise of the Design Engineer Role 08:39 Why AI Has No Taste: It’s Not Just How It Looks 14:28 Brought to you by Sentry.io 14:52 Testing in the AI Era: Are We Using AI to Write Tests? 20:09 Is AI a Bubb
A rogue OpenAI agent allegedly hacks Hugging Face, the React Compiler lands in Rust, and a fresh Rust full-stack framework ships. Scott, Wes, and CJ also dig into Anthropic’s $1.5B copyright settlement, Claude Opus 5, and the campaign to kill the cookie banner. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 01:03 React Compiler Ported to Rust 06:39 Vercel releases TS to Native Compiler 19:26 Standard Agent Zen Garden 29:14 In-House LLM at Netflix 34:14 Brought to you by Sentry.io 35:15 Anthropic to pay $1.5B over book piracy 38:06 Open Weights and American AI Leadership 40:27 Kimi K3 Weights Released 44:
Dan Abramov joins Scott and Wes to explain AT Protocol, the open standard quietly rebuilding the social web. They get into how it actually works, why it’s way bigger than just Bluesky, and why Dan calls it one of the most interesting ideas on the internet right now. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:45 Welcome to Syntax! 01:46 Introduction of Dan Abramov 02:55 Understanding AT Protocol and Its Importance 06:41 The Relationship Between AT Protocol and Bluesky 08:22 Identity and Hosting in AT Protocol 11:29 Brought to you by Sentry 11:54 Use Cases for AT Protocol 13:08 How Content is Managed in AT Proto
A huge week for open models: Inkling (the first big US open-weight model since Gemma 4), Qwen 3.8, and Kimi 3 all dropped. Plus Vue 3.6 RC + Vapor Mode, the slow death of Stack Overflow, a decoy font that blinds AI, and the usual grab bag of fun links. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:44 Welcome to Syntax 03:01 Vue.js 3.6 RC Released Vue.js 3.6-RC.1 09:50 Brought to you by Sentry 10:35 Rift - new worktree alternative Rift Explaining Rift tweet 17:46 Every new browser feature MDN Plus Browser features updates CSS ’text-fit’ property 23:09 Kimi K3 Released Kimi K3 release tweet Kimi K3 blog post Openro
Running your dev process off your main machine doesn’t have to mean the cloud. Scott and Wes break down how to host projects on a box you can reach from any device, close your laptop mid-build, and keep long-running processes alive. They cover Scott’s stack (Mosh, Caddy, Tailscale, Zed, and terminal AI agents like Claude Code), the annoyances of mobile TUIs, and whether it beats staying local. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:36 Welcome to Syntax! 01:56 Benefits of Remote Development 07:50 Process for Remote Development 09:34 Tech Stack for Remote Development Mosh instead of SSH Caddy for domains and
CJ and Scott break down the biggest week in web dev: TypeScript 7 ships with a 10x-faster native port, Bun gets rewritten in Rust (much to the Zig team’s dismay), and Better Auth joins Vercel. Plus GPT-5.6 first impressions, Odin 1.0, Cloudflare’s new Workers cache and drag-and-drop deploys, and the OpenCode 2 beta. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:21 CJ upgraded his homelab network 02:09 TypeScript 7 is 10x faster 11:19 Bun Rust rewrite drama Zig creator criticizes rewrite 28:18 GPT 5.6 Impressions Ashley Peachock on X Matt Shumer on X 40:58 Better Auth Acquired by Vercel 49:51 Grok Bui
Dax Raad, co-founder of OpenCode, joins Scott and Wes to talk remote dev servers, OpenCode 2.0, and why his team is “addicted” to AI models they’re not even allowed to name yet. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:43 Welcome to Syntax! 01:22 Remote Development Environments and Their Benefits Dax’s post Latitude.sh exe.dev 06:24 The Setup: Tmux and Long-Running Sessions 07:15 Brought to you by Sentry! 08:12 Integrating AI with Personal Projects 11:21 Open Code 2.0: Features and Improvements 17:15 Software Engineering Methodology and Design Philosophy 21:33 Model Routing and AI Integration 23:58 The Evolu
Auto-accept on, brain off? We’re getting into whether anyone actually reads the code they ship anymore — then it’s HTTP’s first new method in 16 years (meet QUERY) and OpenAI’s compute-hungry “Sol Ultra” tier landing in Codex. Bring your hot takes and hang out with us live. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:31 Welcome to Syntax! 01:44 World Cup Chat 03:21 Do you read the code? Theo’s take Primeagen’s take Dax’s take notch’s take David Fowler’s take David Cramer’s take 16:50 Query: NEW HTTP Method RFC 10008: The HTTP QUERY Method The new HTTP QUERY method explained 22:39 Github Repos on a CD-ROM Github
This episode tackles the growing pains of AI-assisted development, from the struggle of reviewing thousands of lines of agent-generated code to the mounting technical debt when teams merge PRs without meaningful human review. Scott and Wes also dig into local models, whether jujutsu really beats git, how freelancers should price work in the AI era, and getting your team on board with external libraries. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:45 Understanding AI-Generated Code 06:24 The Challenges of Code Review in AI Development 11:21 What the heck are local models? CJ’s Guide to Local AI 16:0
Google fires the engineer behind its Workspace CLI tool, OpenAI previews GPT-5.6 with three new model tiers, and Astro 7 lands with a full Rust rewrite. Plus: Coinbase cuts token costs with smarter routing, and more in this week’s Syntax Live Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:34 Welcome to Syntax! 01:46 Google fires Workspace CLI Creator 12:30 GPT 5.6 Is Coming 19:59 GLM 5.2 Released 23:23 Astro 7 Rust Re-write 32:46 Cursor Announces iOS App 35:08 Scott’s Workflow: Herdr + Mosh + Termius + Tailscale 40:33 Coinbase Reduces AI Cost with Model Routing 44:22 wayfinder-router - Local AI Routing CLI 48:16 T
Scott and Wes raid the listener mailbag to settle the pnpm vs. npm debate, decode how web standards sneak into your browser, and ask the big one: is “AI” even intelligent, or just fancy autocomplete? Plus Stack Overflow nostalgia, the Shadcn head-scratcher, and why big design systems are sleeping on modern HTML. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:44 Welcome to Syntax! 01:51 Exploring CSS Component Approaches 07:30 Brought to you by Sentry 08:09 The Advantages of PNPM over NPM 12:31 Nostalgia and Growth through Stack Overflow Wes’ Stack Overflow Scott’s Stack Overflow 19:13 The Evolution of Podcasting a
Wes, Scott, and CJ break down the latest web dev news. From AI agents and coding tools to Deno Desktop, Nub, and predictive UX. They also discuss bot-filled social media, remote work debates, and a slick 3D bookstore experience. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:35 Welcome to Syntax! 01:43 Codex Design Smell 03:55 More Bots Than Humans Bot vs Human Post-smoke test software era 12:38 Social Media Is Nothing But Bots 19:55 Brought to you by Sentry 20:38 Vercel Launches Agent Framework Introducing Flue Flue Introducing eve eve 36:14 We Want Local AI Agents 47:22 Deno Desktop Deno Desktop App 01:01:40 Nub
Is the web dead, or just evolving? Wes Bos breaks down his JS Nation Amsterdam talk on agentic interfaces, why chat won’t replace everything, how Web MCP lets agents interact with your existing sites, and what “Clicks and Clankers” really means for the future of UI. Show Notes 00:00 Intro 00:33 Welcome to Syntax! 00:46 Wes’s Talk: Agentic Interfaces at JS Nation 01:37 Is the Web Dead? Chat vs. Traditional UI 03:13 No UI, Voice UI, and the Smart Home Vision 04:00 What Is Web MCP and How It Works 05:10 Clicks and Clankers: When to Click vs. Prompt 06:57 The Future of Shopping and the Open Web Pr
Scott, Wes, and CJ reunite fresh off a trip to Amsterdam to chat conferences, burnout, and whether Anthropic actually uses AI. They also dig into a packed bag of sick picks and tech news, including HTML streaming in Chrome, an image-to-ASCII generator, and a wild Arch Linux supply chain attack. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 02:15 Anthropic Doesn’t Use AI Thariq’s Tweet Tweet Response 06:15 Taste and Vision in Prompting Output 10:50 Wes and Scott’s Slide Decks 18:05 Amsterdam Trip Recap 26:09 Are Conferences worth it? 27:21 Amsterdam Trip Recap 31:17 Fable 5 First Impressions 33:45 Fable
Live at JSNation in Amsterdam, Scott, Wes, and CJ break down Cloudflare’s acquisition of VoidZero, the company behind Vite, Vitest, Rolldown, and Oxc. They dig into why this is genuinely exciting, not scary, covering what it means for the open source tooling you already use, Cloudflare’s growing tip-to-tail stack, and why infrastructure might be the one thing LLMs can never sherlock Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! Live from JS Nation Amsterdam 00:35 The Big News: Cloudflare Acquires VoidZero 01:06 First Reactions: Is This a Good Thing? 01:57 Vite+ Overview: Who’s Using It 03:07 Why Would C
Scott and Wes sit down with Jake Archibald from Mozilla to unpack how web standards actually get made at Firefox. From browser features and developer feedback to the drama around the Prompt API. They discuss Interop 2026, the future of web APIs, and what it’s really like shaping the web after a career spanning both Google and Mozilla. Show Notes 00:00 The Importance of Sunscreen 02:29 Welcome to Syntax! 04:35 Transitioning from Google to Mozilla 06:00 Brought to you by Sentry.io 06:43 Mozilla’s Current Position and Development Priority HTML Sanitizer API 08:35 Feature Implementation and Develo
Scott and Wes sit down with Ben Vinegar, former Syntax GM and founder of Modem.dev, to geek out over terminal-maxxing, from SSH-based development and tmux workflows to AI-powered coding agents. Ben also demos two of his open source tools: Hunk, a slick terminal code reviewer with 4k+ GitHub stars, and TermDraw, a terminal-based diagramming tool that posts directly to your agent. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:49 Introduction to Modem and AI Project Management 01:40 Exploring Terminal Usage and Productivity 04:26 Setting Up Remote Development Environments 08:38 The Power of TMUX in Deve
On this episode, Scott and Wes dig into the messy reality of modern front-end work, from struggling to find skilled devs and navigating team chaos to questioning code quality, testing, and even whether AI is stealing the joy of programming. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax 01:06 The Challenge of Finding Skilled Front-End Developers 05:11 Understanding Design Mode and Its Applications 10:33 Navigating Team Dynamics and Code Quality 12:37 The Importance of Testing Strategies 13:39 Learning and Growing as a Developer 18:11 Consolidating Multiple Animation Libraries 21:16 Draw UI with Code Only
Scott and Wes react to the freshly released State of AI 2026 survey, covering everything from skyrocketing AI adoption and the rise of coding agents to the pain points, job security fears, and big philosophical questions developers are wrestling with right now. Show Notes 00:00 Welcome to Syntax! 00:06 Introduction to the State of AI in Web Development 02:47 Survey Insights: AI Coding Adoption and Sentiment 06:55 Models and Providers: Usage and Sentiment Analysis 09:14 Paid Agent Usage: Who’s Paying for What? 11:31 Agents and Assistants. 15:21 Personal Experiences with AI Tools 20:33 Paid Agen
