Tom Johnson
@tomjohnson3.bsky.social
CTO at Multiplayer.app, full stack session recordings to seamlessly capture and resolve issues or develop new features.
Also: 🤖 robot builder 🏃♂️ runner 🎸 guitar player
Also: 🤖 robot builder 🏃♂️ runner 🎸 guitar player
Jules Verne might as well have been talking about debugging when he said: “Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
December 4, 2025 at 10:07 AM
Jules Verne might as well have been talking about debugging when he said: “Science, my lad, is made up of mistakes, but they are mistakes which it is useful to make, because they lead little by little to the truth.”
I’m joining a LeadDev panel tomorrow on a topic many teams are struggling with right now: how to bring AI into your systems without creating chaos, security holes, or unexpected costs.
December 2, 2025 at 11:51 AM
I’m joining a LeadDev panel tomorrow on a topic many teams are struggling with right now: how to bring AI into your systems without creating chaos, security holes, or unexpected costs.
Monitoring will always have its place.
But modern distributed systems require more: you need immediate, surgical and complete visibility *across your stack* to fully understand system behavior.
But modern distributed systems require more: you need immediate, surgical and complete visibility *across your stack* to fully understand system behavior.
November 28, 2025 at 1:04 PM
Monitoring will always have its place.
But modern distributed systems require more: you need immediate, surgical and complete visibility *across your stack* to fully understand system behavior.
But modern distributed systems require more: you need immediate, surgical and complete visibility *across your stack* to fully understand system behavior.
A tiny bug. A big bank. Hours lost.
Internal tools don’t get the same love as customer-facing products, but the pain of debugging them is just as real.
Internal tools don’t get the same love as customer-facing products, but the pain of debugging them is just as real.
November 21, 2025 at 2:30 PM
A tiny bug. A big bank. Hours lost.
Internal tools don’t get the same love as customer-facing products, but the pain of debugging them is just as real.
Internal tools don’t get the same love as customer-facing products, but the pain of debugging them is just as real.
APIs are the front doors to our systems, and users expect them to just work. Automated API testing is how we guarantee that at scale.
Here are a few proven best practices: 🧵
Here are a few proven best practices: 🧵
November 19, 2025 at 3:01 PM
APIs are the front doors to our systems, and users expect them to just work. Automated API testing is how we guarantee that at scale.
Here are a few proven best practices: 🧵
Here are a few proven best practices: 🧵
“Ambiguous screenshots”. It says it all, doesn’t it?
@farisaziz12.bsky.social is describing the nightmare that of debugging vague support tickets, with blurry photos, no reproduction steps, and endless back and forth.
@farisaziz12.bsky.social is describing the nightmare that of debugging vague support tickets, with blurry photos, no reproduction steps, and endless back and forth.
November 17, 2025 at 9:46 AM
“Ambiguous screenshots”. It says it all, doesn’t it?
@farisaziz12.bsky.social is describing the nightmare that of debugging vague support tickets, with blurry photos, no reproduction steps, and endless back and forth.
@farisaziz12.bsky.social is describing the nightmare that of debugging vague support tickets, with blurry photos, no reproduction steps, and endless back and forth.
Does debugging support tickets look like this for you?
If yes, share the latest rabbit hole you fell into.
If yes, share the latest rabbit hole you fell into.
November 11, 2025 at 10:49 AM
Does debugging support tickets look like this for you?
If yes, share the latest rabbit hole you fell into.
If yes, share the latest rabbit hole you fell into.
I’ve spent the better part of the past year working with the OpenTelemetry Collector to ensure our full-stack session recordings include automatically correlated backend traces.
Here are the lessons I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) about configuring the Collector 👇
Here are the lessons I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) about configuring the Collector 👇
November 6, 2025 at 4:04 PM
I’ve spent the better part of the past year working with the OpenTelemetry Collector to ensure our full-stack session recordings include automatically correlated backend traces.
Here are the lessons I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) about configuring the Collector 👇
Here are the lessons I’ve learned (sometimes the hard way) about configuring the Collector 👇
👇 @farisaziz12.bsky.social describes the pain of customer support perfectly.
It’s always exciting to see Multiplayer show up in real-world stories like this, as part of how engineers actually solve problems. Seeing it used to cut through the “screenshot chaos” is exactly why we built it.
It’s always exciting to see Multiplayer show up in real-world stories like this, as part of how engineers actually solve problems. Seeing it used to cut through the “screenshot chaos” is exactly why we built it.
November 3, 2025 at 10:52 AM
👇 @farisaziz12.bsky.social describes the pain of customer support perfectly.
It’s always exciting to see Multiplayer show up in real-world stories like this, as part of how engineers actually solve problems. Seeing it used to cut through the “screenshot chaos” is exactly why we built it.
It’s always exciting to see Multiplayer show up in real-world stories like this, as part of how engineers actually solve problems. Seeing it used to cut through the “screenshot chaos” is exactly why we built it.
Optimizations don’t have to be flashy or complex and a 5-minute fix to our CI/CD pipeline saved us 5hr a day.
This is a reminder that even the most obvious optimizations can hide in plain sight when you’re heads down building the next big thing.
This is a reminder that even the most obvious optimizations can hide in plain sight when you’re heads down building the next big thing.
October 22, 2025 at 8:39 AM
Optimizations don’t have to be flashy or complex and a 5-minute fix to our CI/CD pipeline saved us 5hr a day.
This is a reminder that even the most obvious optimizations can hide in plain sight when you’re heads down building the next big thing.
This is a reminder that even the most obvious optimizations can hide in plain sight when you’re heads down building the next big thing.
A sneak peak of my presentation for tomorrow’s MCP demo night 👀
If you’re in New York - come say hi!
If you’re in New York - come say hi!
October 21, 2025 at 2:27 PM
A sneak peak of my presentation for tomorrow’s MCP demo night 👀
If you’re in New York - come say hi!
If you’re in New York - come say hi!
Claude Code error or human error?
From the latest Anthropic blog post: variable names don’t match (red)…misspelling of urgent (blue) … unnecessary second check (second yellow line)
From the latest Anthropic blog post: variable names don’t match (red)…misspelling of urgent (blue) … unnecessary second check (second yellow line)
October 16, 2025 at 5:26 PM
Claude Code error or human error?
From the latest Anthropic blog post: variable names don’t match (red)…misspelling of urgent (blue) … unnecessary second check (second yellow line)
From the latest Anthropic blog post: variable names don’t match (red)…misspelling of urgent (blue) … unnecessary second check (second yellow line)
Devs: I’ll just make a small change.
QA tickets: 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶
QA tickets: 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶
October 3, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Devs: I’ll just make a small change.
QA tickets: 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶
QA tickets: 🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶🐶
Is it ever really possible to get a dev to switch tools once it "works well enough"?
September 29, 2025 at 9:59 AM
Is it ever really possible to get a dev to switch tools once it "works well enough"?
If you haven't yet, I highly recommend checking this collection of reference implementations for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). 👇
September 26, 2025 at 1:31 PM
If you haven't yet, I highly recommend checking this collection of reference implementations for the Model Context Protocol (MCP). 👇
I had the chance to speak at API World 2025 last week on a topic I’ve seen frustrate teams for years: API documentation.
Because let’s face it: most developers don’t want to read static docs. Outdated Postman collections and PDF references slow everyone down.
Because let’s face it: most developers don’t want to read static docs. Outdated Postman collections and PDF references slow everyone down.
September 11, 2025 at 3:59 PM
I had the chance to speak at API World 2025 last week on a topic I’ve seen frustrate teams for years: API documentation.
Because let’s face it: most developers don’t want to read static docs. Outdated Postman collections and PDF references slow everyone down.
Because let’s face it: most developers don’t want to read static docs. Outdated Postman collections and PDF references slow everyone down.
What’s more expensive: developing a new API or fixing a bug?
August 29, 2025 at 3:29 PM
What’s more expensive: developing a new API or fixing a bug?
Great API monitoring is knowing that when something breaks, you’ll know where, why, and how to fix it.
July 31, 2025 at 4:41 PM
Great API monitoring is knowing that when something breaks, you’ll know where, why, and how to fix it.
Is there a better compliment for an engineering manager?
July 28, 2025 at 1:08 PM
Is there a better compliment for an engineering manager?
If you only sample at the beginning of a request (head-based sampling), you might miss the error that happened at the end.
Tail-based sampling is heavier, but smarter and increasingly worth the cost on critical paths.
Tail-based sampling is heavier, but smarter and increasingly worth the cost on critical paths.
July 24, 2025 at 9:29 AM
If you only sample at the beginning of a request (head-based sampling), you might miss the error that happened at the end.
Tail-based sampling is heavier, but smarter and increasingly worth the cost on critical paths.
Tail-based sampling is heavier, but smarter and increasingly worth the cost on critical paths.
Hooked up a full-stack session replay to Cursor.
Watching it suggest a fix with actual request/response data was… kind of magic.
Watching it suggest a fix with actual request/response data was… kind of magic.
July 21, 2025 at 12:05 PM
Hooked up a full-stack session replay to Cursor.
Watching it suggest a fix with actual request/response data was… kind of magic.
Watching it suggest a fix with actual request/response data was… kind of magic.
Spent yesterday afternoon breaking the demo app in different ways and recording how we fix it with full-stack replays and AI-assisted suggestions.
It was fun! 😆
It was fun! 😆
July 14, 2025 at 9:37 AM
Spent yesterday afternoon breaking the demo app in different ways and recording how we fix it with full-stack replays and AI-assisted suggestions.
It was fun! 😆
It was fun! 😆
In every system I've worked on, API integrations start out deceptively simple: a few endpoints here, a webhook there. But scale, uptime requirements, and changing business needs reveal the cracks fast.
Here’s the summary of key API integration best practices I recommend every engineering team adopt
Here’s the summary of key API integration best practices I recommend every engineering team adopt
July 10, 2025 at 4:24 PM
In every system I've worked on, API integrations start out deceptively simple: a few endpoints here, a webhook there. But scale, uptime requirements, and changing business needs reveal the cracks fast.
Here’s the summary of key API integration best practices I recommend every engineering team adopt
Here’s the summary of key API integration best practices I recommend every engineering team adopt
Debugging distributed systems shouldn’t be this hard. At @gotocon.com Unscripted, I spoke with @julianwood.com about why it’s still such a pain and what we can do to fix it.
June 10, 2025 at 7:35 AM
Debugging distributed systems shouldn’t be this hard. At @gotocon.com Unscripted, I spoke with @julianwood.com about why it’s still such a pain and what we can do to fix it.
Come for the AI talk, stay for the memes. 😆
May 21, 2025 at 12:59 PM
Come for the AI talk, stay for the memes. 😆