>ShellGems_

Achieving Domain Knowledge in the Era of Vibe Coding

Fri, 30 Jan 2026 10:00:00 +0200

Hey everyone! 👋

We’re all “vibe coding” these days, right? You prompt, the AI generates, you iterate. It’s fast, it’s fun, and it gets you into that flow state where you feel like a wizard. 🧙‍♂️

But there’s a catch.

While your AI copilot knows everything about React patterns and Python algorithms, it knows zero about your specific business. It doesn’t know that your brand’s primary color is “Warm Orange” (#FF8A33), not just “orange”. It doesn’t know you decided against using Redux three months ago in favor of React Context. It doesn’t know your target persona is “Sarah the Solopreneur”.

Building a Smart WhatsApp Personal Assistant with Cloudflare AI

Fri, 25 Jul 2025 23:25:00 +0200

Hey there! 👋

So I had this crazy idea: what if I could build an AI assistant for WhatsApp that doesn’t just spam responses, but actually behaves like a smart secretary? You know, someone who understands context, knows when to speak up, and maintains professional boundaries.

Turns out, it’s totally doable with Cloudflare Workers AI. Here’s how I did it.

🎯 The Problem I Wanted to Solve

Most chatbots are… well, annoying. They respond to everything immediately, have zero context awareness, and feel completely robotic. I wanted something different:

HansCard: A Modern Approach to Language Learning

Thu, 21 Mar 2024 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

HansCard is an innovative language learning application that combines spaced repetition with real-world sentences to help users learn languages naturally and effectively. The app focuses on vocabulary acquisition through context, using authentic sentences from native speakers via the Tatoeba project.

Current Functionality

HansCard Dashboard

Vocabulary Management: Users can add words they want to learn in their target language
Authentic Sentences: Integration with Tatoeba API to fetch real-world example sentences
Spaced Repetition: Smart review system that adapts to user’s learning pace
Multi-language Support: Currently supporting English, Hebrew, and Dutch
Dark/Light Mode: Comfortable reading experience in any lighting condition
Responsive Design: Works seamlessly on desktop and mobile devices

Upcoming Features

Social Learning: Friend system for collaborative learning and motivation
Progress Analytics: Detailed insights into learning patterns and progress
Custom Sentence Creation: Ability to create and share your own example sentences
Audio Support: Text-to-speech for proper pronunciation practice
Gamification: Achievement system and daily streaks to maintain motivation

Technical Stack

Our tech stack is built on modern, reliable technologies:

Coding with a Copilot

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:01:13 +0000

Boy.. where do I start? GPT-3 has brought with it plenty of interesting developments in the coding world, and GitHub Copilot is one of the most promising ones. After using it for a month, I can share my thoughts on this AI pair programmer.

What is GitHub Copilot?

GitHub Copilot is an AI-powered code completion tool that helps you write code faster and more efficiently. It’s like having a pair programmer who’s always ready to help, but instead of a human, it’s an AI trained on billions of lines of code.

My first true build

Mon, 26 Jul 2021 12:01:13 +0000

COVID kept a lot of us indoor, luckily cloud gaming service got stronger with time Especially here in the Netherlands. It actually helped me survive the first lockdown; and kind of drugged me back to my childhood.

Got myself a cheap single board computer and used it to stream GeForce now and Stadia and ease.

Which got me thinking; what if I’ll build my own gaming PC just like when I was a kid? The real motivation was because I really wanted to play Fallout New Vegas and mod it, so it would like a bit newer and modern graphics and gameplay wise.

Howto use Firebase RemoteConfig in your project as a vault

Thu, 31 Dec 2020 09:57:37 +0000

Disclaimer: Firebase remote config main purpose is to push new configuration for mobile apps!
As it gains popularity, and because it's a free-to-use managed service that requires no real efforts to setup, I had the chance to experiment with it and utilize it within a project I worked on in the build level of a CI.

It’s been a while

Recently I solved a small repetitive challenge we’re all facing with new projects - allowing the change of configurations on the fly without having to change anything in the codebase.

Create a Hugo base blog and auto-deploy to Firebase host

Sat, 23 Nov 2019 12:45:19 +0000

When I started this blog, just like everyone else, I’ve chosen Wordpress; default in the blogging world (so it seems at least). Wordpress is well established CMS, BUT IT’S AN OVERKILL.

I had a dedicated VM running alpine with the PHP runtime and Nginx. Waste of money and resources for a simple blog.

Back then, when I researched for what CMS shall I used; I stumble upon jekyl - not a proper CMS but it looked good enough to generate me a nice site right?

.dev tld

Mon, 25 Feb 2019 13:15:48 +0000

From the 28 of February you can have your own .dev domain.

I’ll keep it short. Google started with the early access program for the .dev tld.

From the 28 of February(3 days) you could buy you own.dev domain for ~12$!

Some useful links

tld-list - Compare prices of different registrars.
porkbun or namecheap - dev friendly registrar.

Oh and I almost forgot to write about this new blog; Hugo based static page blog that being served in Firebase 🎔 instead of a heavy Wordpress with a dedicated vm. and continuously generate pages and deploy to firebase via CircleCI I’ll share everything in the next post (pure 🛸).

Puppeteer + Firebase = Test headless in the cloud

Tue, 11 Dec 2018 00:00:00 +0000

A couple of months ago, I had the opportunity to experiment a bit with Google’s latest competitor for Cypress, Puppeteer.

Just like Cypress, Puppeteer is a node module that includes a headless version of Chrome and a wrapper-controller (similar to Selenium’s webdriver).

One of the key differences between the two is the fact that Puppeteer is purely opensource with no additional dashboards or nice fancy UI’s that costs the user extra. Therefore I’ve decided to experiment with it within one of my favourite edge services. Yes you guessed it => as a Firebase function

How to Deploy Firebase Functions App With Any CI

Sun, 19 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Update #1 08.10.18 – Forgot about all I just said; here is an amazing simple way

When you’re working with Google product, you need to get used to Google paste.

Recently google published a blog article explaining a little better of how to use their firebase deploy commend for CI purposes

I took the liberty to create a deployment script based on that post: ci-firebase-deploy-script

and included a dockerfile based on alpine slim image.

➕.bashrc

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

alias	description
`alias c="clear"`	Clear terminal
`alias h="history"`	Show command history
`alias j="jobs -l"`	List jobs
`alias ports=“lsof -i -P -n	grep LISTEN”`
`alias path='echo -e ${PATH//:/\\n}'`	Show PATH in readable format
`alias now='date +"%T"'`	Show current time
`alias nowdate='date +"%d-%m-%Y"'`	Show current date
`alias meminfo='free -m -l -t'`	Show memory info
`alias cpuinfo='lscpu'`	Show CPU info
`alias mkdir='mkdir -pv'`	Create parent directories if needed
`alias wget='wget -c'`	Resume download if possible
`alias top='htop'`	Use htop instead of top
`alias myip='curl ifconfig.co'`	Show public IP
`alias localip='ipconfig getifaddr en0'`	Show local IP
`alias weather='curl wttr.in'`	Show weather
`alias moon='curl wttr.in/Moon'`	Show moon phase
`alias starwars='telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl'`	Watch Star Wars in terminal
`alias matrix=‘echo -e “\e[1;40m” ; clear ; while :; do echo $LINES $COLUMNS $(( $RANDOM % $COLUMNS)) $(( $RANDOM % 72 )) ;sleep 0.05; done	awk '{ letters=“abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789@#$%^&*()”; c=$4; letter=substr(letters,c,1);a[$3]=0;for (x in a) {o=a[x];a[x]=a[x]+1; printf “\033[%s;%sH\033[2;32m%s”,o,x,letter; printf “\033[%s;%sH%s\033[0;0H”,a[x],x,letter;if (a[x] >= $1) { a[x]=0; } } }'’
`alias docker-clean='docker system prune -af'`	Clean up Docker system
`alias docker-stop='docker stop $(docker ps -aq)'`	Stop all Docker containers
`alias docker-rm='docker rm $(docker ps -aq)'`	Remove all Docker containers
`alias docker-rmi='docker rmi $(docker images -q)'`	Remove all Docker images
`alias docker-compose='docker compose'`	Use new Docker Compose syntax
`alias git-status='git status -sb'`	Show git status
`alias git-log='git log --oneline --graph --decorate'`	Show git log
`alias git-branch='git branch -a'`	List all git branches
`alias git-pull='git pull --rebase'`	Pull with rebase
`alias git-push='git push origin HEAD'`	Push to current branch
`alias git-commit='git commit -m'`	Quick commit
`alias git-stash='git stash save'`	Quick stash
`alias git-stash-pop='git stash pop'`	Quick stash pop
`alias git-clean='git clean -fd'`	Clean untracked files
`alias git-reset='git reset --hard HEAD'`	Reset to last commit
`alias npm-update='npm update -g'`	Update global npm packages
`alias npm-clean='rm -rf node_modules && npm cache clean --force'`	Clean npm
`alias yarn-clean='rm -rf node_modules && yarn cache clean'`	Clean yarn
`alias python='python3'`	Use Python 3
`alias pip='pip3'`	Use pip3
`alias venv='python -m venv'`	Create virtual environment
`alias activate='source venv/bin/activate'`	Activate virtual environment
`alias deactivate='deactivate'`	Deactivate virtual environment
`alias serve='python -m http.server'`	Serve current directory
`alias ports=‘lsof -i -P -n	grep LISTEN’`
`alias mkdir='mkdir -pv'`	Create parent directories if needed
`alias wget='wget -c'`	Resume download if possible
`alias top='htop'`	Use htop instead of top
`alias myip='curl ifconfig.co'`	Show public IP
`alias localip='ipconfig getifaddr en0'`	Show local IP
`alias weather='curl wttr.in'`	Show weather
`alias moon='curl wttr.in/Moon'`	Show moon phase
`alias starwars='telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl'`	Watch Star Wars in terminal
`alias matrix=‘echo -e “\e[1;40m” ; clear ; while :; do echo $LINES $COLUMNS $(( $RANDOM % $COLUMNS)) $(( $RANDOM % 72 )) ;sleep 0.05; done	awk '{ letters=“abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyzABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ0123456789@#$%^&*()”; c=$4; letter=substr(letters,c,1);a[$3]=0;for (x in a) {o=a[x];a[x]=a[x]+1; printf “\033[%s;%sH\033[2;32m%s”,o,x,letter; printf “\033[%s;%sH%s\033[0;0H”,a[x],x,letter;if (a[x] >= $1) { a[x]=0; } } }'’

Cloudflare Workers for the Rescue

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TLDR(אמ;לק) – Using Cloudflare Workers to solve a complex problem with minimal code.

I recently had a problem that needed to be solved quickly and efficiently. The solution came in the form of Cloudflare Workers, a serverless platform that allows you to run JavaScript code at the edge of Cloudflare’s network.

Here’s what I needed to do:

Create a simple API endpoint
Handle requests and responses
Process data in real-time
Scale automatically

Cloudflare Workers was the perfect solution because:

ɕurls

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

curl	why
`curl -4 http://wttr.in/{city}`	Whats the weather
`curl ifconfig.co`	What is my ip
`telnet towel.blinkenlights.nl`	Star wars time!

Goodbye Freelance Life

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TLDR(אמ;לק) – After 5 years of freelancing, I’m moving to a full-time job.

I’ve been a freelance developer for the past 5 years. It’s been an amazing journey, filled with ups and downs, but ultimately very rewarding. I’ve worked with clients from all over the world, on projects ranging from small websites to large-scale applications.

But now, I’m moving on to a full-time job. It’s a bittersweet moment, but I’m excited about the new chapter in my life.

Serverless Framework

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TLDR(אמ;לק) – Great potential; deploy microservices and API’s to a great number of serverless services (lambda;google func etc), but far from perfect.

Age of the serverless – stop configure and “autoscale” manually every little service.

I like this mindset; as a devoted user of firebase with nodejsbased functions and an ex-Google app engine with Django rest.

Using a platform SDK to deploy your own code could get addictive. There is something so satisfied deploying your own code to Firebase functions using firebase-cli or to Google functions with their cloud SDK.

SSH Key Provisioner

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

TLDR(אמ;לק) – A Python CLI tool to provision SSH keys to your servers

I’ve been working on a new project lately, a Python CLI tool that helps you provision SSH keys to your servers. The idea came from a need to manage multiple SSH keys across different servers, and I wanted to make it easier to do so.

The tool is called ssh-key-provisioner and it’s available on GitHub. Here’s what it does:

🧔 Who am I?

Fri, 03 Aug 2018 00:00:00 +0000

Gilad Maoz – גלעד מעוז

True music nerd that hunt records and brag about it.

Israeli born and raise, een Nederlander die maar niet kan stoppen met klagen. Vegan who loves to cook and game.

First Linux distro: Mandrake 2001 with KDE(I know lame of me; but it was before the glory days of gnome).

Inspiration:

Firebase Functions and Python

Sun, 04 Jun 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Update #2: It’s official – beta:

As part of Google Cloud Platform, you can now use Python 3.7 runtime for Django or Flask based webapps!

Guess that it’s not yet implemented in Firebase, but as Firebase it’s just a nicer wrapper for an existing service, then it’s purely just a matter of time.

Thanks Google 🙋

Update #1: Ho-ly shit; It happened.

A “compiler” for flask and Django based python apps. https://github.com/MartinSahlen/cloud-functions-python

Getflix From a Deprecated Netflix Dns Service to an Amazing Personal VPN

Mon, 17 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Almost a year ago, Netflix announced a worldwide support. As a movie junky that owned a US Netflix account, it was super exciting news! no more hiding behind DNS and VPN services to fake my IP.

Well, soon enough the thrill ended when I realized that the content in my region is pretty much empty. Netflix rushed to release new regions without trying to first get licenses for new content.

Socks Proxy From Everywhere in the World

Sun, 16 Apr 2017 00:00:00 +0000

Ever wonder if you can use your raspberry pi/ec2/any kind of ssh instance as a proxy?

I had the same kind of thought as part of my awesome times with my old raspberry, and I’ve found a simple method to make any ssh server into a sock proxy.

We’ll start by running the following command:

ssh -D 3213 -C -N user@host.com -p 22

little argument explanation:

D – Port the sock proxy going to bind in the localhost
C – Compresses the data before sending it (pretty cool if you ask me)
N- Create a 'silent session', where nothing is being sent nor receive(great for this usage).
p – Port of the ssh host(default 22)

As for now, we manage to open a sock connection tunnel to port 3123.