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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 1d

First day of my new life at Github Next! @githubnext.com ✨

I've had my eye on this team for a long time, and it feels like the perfect moment to join them.

The Github Next website: "Github Next investigates the future of software development"

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Ha! Of course she already beat me to this idea. This one looks prettier. I've gotta revise the default GPT-5 design choices on mine ✨

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

True, others could use Notion. I didn't realise they'd added maps.

Another sad fact of London house hunting is it's often a 6-12+ month process so a monthly sub to another service would add up, assuming we need access to it that whole time.

Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

The code is on Github if anyone else is house hunting in South London: github.com/MaggieApplet...

When I say vibe coded I truly do mean it; use at your own risk. I paid minimal attention to code quality. The design choices in this aren't "choices" as much as statistical outputs.

GitHub - MaggieAppleton/home-hunter: A vibe coded tool for house hunting in South London

A vibe coded tool for house hunting in South London - MaggieAppleton/home-hunter

github.com

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

About the same price per month to use Notion ($20/£16) on a tier that would allow map integrations as to pay for Cursor for a month and build my own tool exactly how I want it and then be able to own and control it forever 🤷‍♀️

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Yeah exactly. We don't have Zillow here. Only Rightmove and Zoopla which have comically un-useable websites. The market is complex and there is tons of supply. It's super hard to stay on top of what's available, changing prices, and track the details and trade-offs of each place.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Good thing my Cursor subscription is only $20/month and I've managed to build 3 other elaborate personal tools over the last few weeks and still stay within my usage limits.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Ha! They are much more aggressive on the scrapers now. Zoopla blocks everything I try to scrape. Fair enough...

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

All yours to use: github.com/MaggieApplet...

But at your own peril too. Still super messy and undesigned in places. Will keep cleaning it up over the following week as I use it.

GitHub - MaggieAppleton/home-hunter: A vibe coded tool for house hunting in South London

A vibe coded tool for house hunting in South London - MaggieAppleton/home-hunter

github.com

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Done! github.com/MaggieApplet...

It all still feels a bit messy at the moment (e.g. design decisions made by GPT-5) but I'll keep cleaning it up as I use and build it.

GitHub - MaggieAppleton/home-hunter: A vibe coded tool for house hunting in South London

A vibe coded tool for house hunting in South London - MaggieAppleton/home-hunter

github.com

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Tragic update: tiny human has developed personal preferences and a strong sense of agency over the world. Bottles are now verboten.

Baby giveth and baby taketh away.

Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Aug 7

My tiny human just held a bottle and fed himself for the first time and I can feel the freedom flooding my body. God bless fine motor control.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

Also I cannot be the first person to need good software to manage the overwhelming task of finding a house to buy. Spreadsheets don't cut it because seeing the location on a map and pics are critical to remembering which house is which.

What in the world have other people been using for this??

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

There's the added benefit that I can tailor this app to my specific need: tracking exorbitantly priced London houses that I'd like to bury myself in debt for.

Added some handy calculations like nearest train stations with walking time, nearby schools and their ratings. Can't do that in Airtable.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 16d

TFW you can't find any software that will let you track map locations connected to structured data in a table in one interface so you have to vibe code it yourself.

Felt, Airtable, etc. were all $100+/month for the right to do this. Lol, nope.

One day of GPT-5 vibe coding and problem solved.

A property tracking map with little pins marking houses and popovers showing more information

A property tracking table showing houses for sale with key information

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 27d

They do have a culture section and you can personalise the feed to what you're interested in. They could certainly expand how much control users have over topics and sources here, but it's a decent start.

The news minimalism feed filtered to only show culture.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 27d

Kitty and I are very much on the same wavelength

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 27d

Was thrilled to see this because I've been exploring LMs as personal filters for feeds recently.
Been building a small aggregator of HN, BSky, and Reddit that filters and ranks content based on a set of "research statements" I've written about what I'm interested in. Still WIP but promising!

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 27d

Feels like the news (mostly) sans short-term, small scale, sensationalist distractions.

I wish the filtering & ranking system was more transparent re: how the system decides what ranks high/low.

There's a write up on the about page (newsminimalist.com/about), but it should be clear in the main UI.

The about page from News Minimalist showing how they determine "importance" - asks a smarter, expensive model to rank example stories along 7 factors (scale, impact, novelty, etc.). Then uses a smaller, cheaper model to replicate those results on tens of thousands of stories.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · 27d

Loving the concept and content on News Minimalist: newsminimalist.com

Using ML to rank news stories by "importance" (scale, impact, novelty, credibility, legacy) and gives you a feed of only high scoring items.

At first glance, better quality than the front page of the BBC, Guardian, or NYT

Screenshot of News Minimalist homepage showing a distribution graph of news stories ranked by importance and a list of high ranking stories below it.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Sep 7

Of course! Always

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Sep 7

Happily crushing digestive biscuits in my mid-thirties and thriving.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Aug 27

Classics: The Cove, Free Solo, The Fog of War, China Love, Blind Ambition, Fyre

More recent: Social Studies, Won't You Be My Neighbor?

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Aug 16

Not ideal, but other solutions got finicky.
I'm trying to design a workaround that gives people the option to link to a specific version, even if there aren't multiple versions yet.
It'll be some enhanced "copy link" / "reference this post" option in the header that will guarantee the right version.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Aug 16

Sadly, no. This is one of the harder design decisions, and something I'm trying to find a solution to.

The latest lives at canonical, older versions live at /v1/title

Because only some of my posts will have versions, it didn't make sense to put /v1/ in every url. Want to keep root-level urls.

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Maggie Appleton @maggieappleton.com · Aug 16

I think the best thing about having a baby is everyday you get to wake up with a baby.

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