Luca Becker — Writing

Why I am replacing hand-managed WireGuard remote access with self-hosted NetBird for SSO, OPNsense routing, and selectable multi-site exit nodes.

Why I published the opinionated agent workflows I use for Jira, planning, code review, and reasoning-rich commit messages.

How AI turned a manual homelab into a multi-site GitOps setup, what broke along the way, and why businesses still need guardrails.

I finally discovered Renovate can update version strings in arbitrary files with its regex manager, and immediately used it for both my homelab and client infra.

Five UUID-looking identifiers, one subtle bug, and a reminder that platform ids do not always mean what you think they mean.

A tcpdump capture led to a closer look at the Marstek B2500-D cloud endpoint: plain HTTP, AES-128-ECB, and a static key.

A small git fixup and autosquash workflow for moving temporary WIP changes back into the commits where they actually belong.

Slotting a Marstek B2500-D between my panels and inverter, expecting a cleaner local API, and ending up building two open-source Go services around its undocumented MQTT interface.

You could already run AI in GitHub Actions. gh-aw's real novelty is the sandboxed execution environment around it, and one Renovate review showed why that matters.

My blog post disappeared from the working tree. git fsck --lost-found and git cat-file got it back.

Axios got compromised, but the bigger lesson is how to harden npm as a consumer and, if relevant to you, as a publisher too.

A benchmark on abandonware reverse engineering: one AI model refused, another reconstructed an old CD-key check in about 20 minutes.

My homelab was already working fine, but I rebuilt it anyway to get easier rollbacks, simpler disaster recovery, and a faster way to ship changes with AI.

Add OAuth to remote MCP servers with an nginx gateway and Authelia.

Four hard-won lessons from upgrading Aurora PostgreSQL 15 to 16 via blue/green deployment - from PostGIS compatibility to TypeORM hidden DDL statements.

From babysitting commands to fire-and-forget confidence: how Agent Skills transformed my git workflow and why they matter for AI-assisted development.

How I automated my RTX 3060 to mine Ethereum Classic only when my balcony solar panels export excess energy, with AI-assisted setup and Prometheus automation.

When the MCP catalog doesn't have what you need, build it yourself. 40 minutes from idea to talking to Confluence.

A mysterious production crash you can't reproduce locally.

How I set up a balcony solar system, built a Prometheus exporter with Cursor, and redesigned my Grafana dashboard using Claude Code with MCP servers.

A retrospective on six months of AI-assisted coding with Cursor - how Planning Mode became a brainstorming partner, why code review is now the bottleneck, and what to expect in 2026.

Six weeks running OpenCode and GitHub Copilot in parallel on production code.

Cursor's new sandbox security model can expose credentials from your home directory.

Planning Mode proves Cursor can iterate thoughtfully, while Cursor Hooks feels rushed.

Add browser automation to your AI agent with Playwright MCP.

Announcing aicommits 1.0.0, a milestone release bringing flexible AI provider support, AWS Bedrock integration, and lessons learned from building AI tools with AI.

A hands-on review of Cursor's new CLI tool, covering installation quirks, model flexibility, GitHub Actions potential, and how it compares to desktop coding assistants.

Testing GPT-5-Codex against Claude Sonnet 4 and finding that long thinking times and uncooperative behavior kill developer productivity.

Bridge the gap between RooCode and Cursor by adding web search capabilities using the DuckDuckGo MCP server for current information during development.

I spent a few evenings testing Cursor Agents to see if AI-powered development on isolated VMs could actually let you code on the go.

Don't let certificate chain issues or outdated TLS configs bite you in production.

Testing Kiro's Agent Hooks feature - a fascinating take on reactive development where your IDE automatically responds to changes.

Discover what pagers are, why git uses them, and explore modern alternatives to the default less pager for better command-line productivity.

Amazon's Kiro has brilliant architectural ideas but dangerous security flaws.

After months of testing Cursor against free VSCode extensions like RooCode and KiloCode, here's an honest breakdown of what actually matters in day-to-day AI-assisted development.

How I went from thinking RAG required custom search APIs to building a functional knowledge base chatbot in one evening, using AI-assisted development to demystify vector embeddings.

From weekend curiosity to client opportunity: How we built a working Postgres AI agent in 1.5 hours while chatting, and what it teaches us about the reality of AI-assisted development.

How I used Cursor to build a serverless Slack bot in just 2 hours of actual work - and why the hardest part wasn't the code, it was the corporate AWS discussions.

Sometimes the best solution is to fork it yourself.

A senior developer's honest review of Lovable.dev - exploring how AI-powered design tools are finally delivering on their promises and changing the development landscape.

Don't let sneaky module resolution issues ruin your users' day.

Two months into AI-assisted development as a senior consultant - the key insights, best practices, and mindset shifts that transformed how I write code.

A brief introduction to my new blog where I'll share insights on modern web development, best practices, and the latest technologies I'm exploring.