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Ben Vinegar

@benv.ca

2.1K followers 460 following 310 posts

Worked on @sentry.io for nearly a decade. Co-wrote Third-party JavaScript. Hacking on counterscale.dev in Toronto. 🇨🇦 More: benv.ca

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Nov 4

👋 Hey, my quick bg:

Early 2010s, I worked on Disqus + put comments on everyone's websites.

Later, I wrote a book about it called Third-party JS.

2015, I joined @sentry.io to collect JS errors from everyone's web apps. Had stints as Sentry's VPE and GM of @syntax.fm.

Now: figuring out what's next

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Oct 3

📕 When Third-party JavaScript came out in 2013, I was so burnt out I never followed up with an explainer or postmortem.

So, I decided to write one now, 10 years later.

benv.ca/blog/posts/t...

The Story of Third-party JavaScript

benv.ca

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 2d

luma.com/gjwhlojt

Devtools Toronto #5 • Demo Night · Luma

DevTools Toronto is a community of software development tool builders, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts. For Demo Night, we've asked select community members to…

luma.com

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 2d

🇨🇦 Devtools Toronto is returning Tues, Nov 4th at BDC Community Square.

Featuring hands-on demos from 1Password, Tempo, Keyflow, Wispbit, and Varlock (DMNO)

👇 RSVP link below

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 6d

See you at the combination skate shop + punk show

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 10d

Every day is product launch day now 😅

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 10d

I don't think Bluesky is the place to shill my software. But I'm reasonably proud of working on this and wanted to share it.

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 10d

I've come to accept AI will write the majority of code.

So earlier this year I started exploring other ways AI could help developers.

That turned into this company, Modem. We're building an agent that does PM triage work for you and delivers product context to your IDE.

More here: modem.dev 🙏

Modem - Your dev-team's auto-triage Product Manager

Turn support, chat, and analytics into developer-ready context so engineers can decide, fix, and ship faster.

modem.dev

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 25d

We're exploring ways to get around this, which might mean a second, slower event storage for data outside the 90 day window. Would that be ok?

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 25d

After 1.5 years, the core idea of Counterscale remains true:

1. It's OSS you can actually run yourself
2. The hosting costs are $0 for practically everybody
3. It scales without effort
4. Near-zero effort to maintain

(But it still has a 90 day limit)

counterscale.dev

Counterscale

Scalable web analytics you run yourself on Cloudflare

counterscale.dev

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · 25d

Counterscale's still humming along – almost 2k GitHub stars now.

This summer we (mostly @stordahl.dev) added:

- user auth
- referrer favicons
- works w/ multiple CF accounts
- UTM tracking (PR lands soon)

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Reposted by Ben Vinegar

Jacob Stordahl 🏳️‍🌈 @stordahl.dev · Aug 13

I have some pretty exciting news to finally share here - in July, I joined @benv.ca as a maintainer on Counterscale, the open source analytics service that you deploy to your Cloudflare account! We just released v3.2.0-beta.0 which includes a long awaited feature - auth for your dashboard!

Release v3.2.0-beta.0 · benvinegar/counterscale

What's Changed Add noindex meta tag to Layout by @stordahl in #198 Improve init and add related functions by @stordahl in #205 custom 404 page done by @heyysiri in #206 chore: update React Router ...

github.com

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Aug 12

I like how you can be miles away and it still pops

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Aug 8

Less than 2 weeks!

lu.ma/7revpsif

Devtools Toronto #4 · Luma

DevTools Toronto is a community of software development tool builders, entrepreneurs, and enthusiasts. Devtools Toronto #4 returns to Mascot Brewing's outdoor…

lu.ma

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 25

This feels like a semantic argument when the crux is: "I think this is worth investing in now."

If people want to wait, that's their call.

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 23

IMO the job increasingly becomes translating what you're thinking to a form the agents/LLMs understand.

The tools will improve, sure, but I wouldn't bet on a future where they know how to read your mind.

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 23

The amount of learning I've had to do to become effective working/coding with LLMs is staggering.

Everyday employees aren't gonna figure this out in their spare time. You've got to intentionally carve out time for them to level up – or your team is gonna be left behind.

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 18

Playing around w/ Midjourney to animate some pixel art scenes

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 12

📈 React package downloads/day are up almost 70% (!) since the start of 2025

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 8

I think I found the least maintained feature on @github.com

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 7

I mean, I'd say the look and feel is the "talent" part.

If you mean had I manually written all the CSS myself? Maybe another full day.

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 7

👇 It's live here

counterscale.dev

Counterscale

Scalable web analytics you run yourself on Cloudflare

counterscale.dev

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 7

🆕 new Counterscale landing page

I first mocked this up in Figma. Then exported a PNG and gave it to Claude Code.

That gave me a good start, but I spent hours tweaking afterwards in Claude + Cursor.

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jul 6

Counterscale v3.1.0 is out:

🆕 now pick which Cloudflare org to deploy to if your user belongs to multiple orgs (thanks @sergical on GitHub)
🆕 now uses Wrangler v4

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Feb 21

v3.0.0 beta of Counterscale is up. In this version:

🆕 CLI install wizard (using clack 🙏 @natemoo.re)
🆕 Deploys as a single Worker again / no more CF Pages
🆕 Uses pnpm for development

👇Video: self-deploy your own web analytics stack in 35s

github.com/benvinegar/c...

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Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · Jun 3

doesn't matter how much time I spent here

visiting still feels magical

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · May 26

"Going hard" = ~45 minutes a day, on average.

Ben Vinegar @benv.ca · May 26

I'm spending a few weeks in Vienna this summer after going hard w/ German on Duolingo + random German YouTube content for ~6+ months.

Will report back ...

Gergely Orosz @gergely.pragmaticengineer.com · May 26

Last week, was talking to person who used to a bug Duolingo user but realized they’re not learning a language they wanted (Vietnamese) and hired a tutor instead (talking remote over internet), quitting the app.

I wonder how long it takes for more people to realize the same.

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