Productivity on Nick Liu - Software Engineer

Make tmux Show What Each Window Is Doing

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

If you use tmux, you've hit this: ten windows open and they're all named `zsh` or `node`. Which one had your AI agent running? No idea. Let's make tmux label windows usefully.

🧪 Tested with Claude Code 2.1.x · macOS / Linux

New to tmux? It’s a “terminal multiplexer”: it splits one terminal into many windows and panes that survive disconnects. The only vocabulary you need here: a window is like a browser tab inside tmux; the bar at the bottom lists them. The prefix is the key you press before a tmux command, commonly Ctrl+b (mine is Ctrl+a).

Why everything is named `zsh`
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By default tmux has a setting called automatic-rename turned on. It renames each window after whatever program is running in it. A shell? zsh. A Node program (like Claude Code)? node. Helpful in theory, useless when everything collapses to the same word.

Stop Losing Your Claude Code Conversations

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 21 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

You're deep in a great Claude Code conversation. You close the terminal. The next day you want to pick up where you left off… and you can't find it. Sound familiar? Let's fix that.

🧪 Tested with Claude Code 2.1.x · macOS / Linux

What is a “session,” and where does it go?
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Every time you run claude, you start a session, one conversation, with its full history. When you quit, that history doesn’t vanish. Claude Code saves it to disk, organized per project folder, here:

Claude Code vs Cursor vs Copilot vs Windsurf: An Honest 2026 Comparison

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The AI coding tool landscape in 2026 has finally settled into four serious players: Claude Code , Cursor , GitHub Copilot , and Windsurf . I've used all four on real work. This is the honest comparison.

Forget feature checklists. What matters is how each tool feels under real engineering work, the kind I do every day as a senior software engineer at Meta. I built this site primarily with Claude Code, but I’ve put serious hours into the others.

My Vibe Coding Workflow: How I Built This Site with Claude Code

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I rebuilt my portfolio site in a weekend using vibe coding with Claude Code . This is the real workflow, no hype, with honest tradeoffs.

Andrej Karpathy coined “vibe coding” in early 2025. The pitch: describe what you want in natural language, let the AI write the code, spend your time directing instead of typing. Collins Dictionary named it Word of the Year. Most takes on it are either breathless hype or dismissive eye-rolls. Here’s what it looks like when a senior engineer uses it for a real project.

Vibe Coding Won't Replace Senior Engineers. It Amplifies Them.

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 10 May 2026 00:00:00 +0000

The hype says anyone can code now. The reality: vibe coding changes *what* senior engineers do, not *whether* we're needed. And the gap between experienced and inexperienced developers is getting wider, not narrower.

Collins Dictionary named “vibe coding” their Word of the Year for 2025. Search interest spiked over 6,000%. The narrative is seductive: describe what you want, AI writes the code, programming becomes as easy as having a conversation.

Building a Knowledge Base That AI Can Actually Use

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Obsidian + Claude Code is everywhere right now. But pointing an AI at a folder of markdown files and hoping for the best doesn't work. What matters is how you structure the knowledge base. Get that right, and Claude becomes genuinely useful. Get it wrong, and you get confident garbage.

There’s been a wave of posts about this combo lately: James Bedford’s full walkthrough, Greg Isenberg’s “personal OS” approach, kepano (Obsidian’s CEO) sharing Claude Skills. They’re all worth reading.

What I Learned from How Claude Code's Creator Uses Claude Code

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sat, 21 Mar 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Boris Cherny created Claude Code. When he shared how he actually uses it day-to-day, the setup was surprisingly simple. I went through every tip, tried most of them, and have opinions about all of them.

The original thread is on Boris’s X account. A good companion site is howborisusesclaudecode.com which compiles everything in one place.

Catppuccin Mocha: Why I Theme Everything the Same Color

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Your development environment should feel like **one cohesive tool**, not a collection of unrelated windows with clashing colors. I theme everything with the same palette: Catppuccin Mocha . The result is a workspace where context-switching between tools is effortless.

Why One Palette Everywhere?
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Most developers pick a theme for their editor and call it a day. Their terminal is one color, their editor another, their tmux status bar a third, and their Git diffs something else entirely. Every time they switch contexts, their brain spends a fraction of a second recalibrating.

My Terminal Setup in 2026: Ghostty, tmux, and Neovim

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 15 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

After years of refining my terminal workflow, I've landed on a stack I genuinely enjoy using every day: **Ghostty** as the terminal emulator, **tmux** with **sesh** for session management, and **Neovim** with **LazyVim** for editing.

Everything runs on macOS (Apple Silicon) with a consistent Catppuccin Mocha theme across all tools.

Modern CLI Tools That Replaced My Unix Classics

nickboy@users.noreply.github.com (Nick Liu) — Sun, 01 Feb 2026 00:00:00 +0000

I've been gradually replacing classic Unix tools with modern alternatives, mostly written in Rust . After a year of daily use, these aren't experiments anymore. They're muscle memory.

The Replacements
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Classic	Modern	Why
`cat`	bat	Syntax highlighting, line numbers, git integration
`ls`	eza	Icons, git status, tree view, color-coded
`grep`	ripgrep	10x faster, respects `.gitignore`, smart case
`find`	fd	Simpler syntax, respects `.gitignore`, colored output
`cd`	zoxide	Learns your habits, fuzzy matching
`sed`	sd	Intuitive regex syntax, no escaping nightmare
`du`	dust	Visual directory size with a tree view
`df`	duf	Colorful, filterable disk usage
`top`	btop	Beautiful TUI with mouse support, per-core graphs
`ps`	procs	Colorized, searchable, tree view
`history`	atuin	Encrypted sync, full-text search, workspace filtering

Setting Up Aliases
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In my .zshrc, I alias the classics to their replacements so the transition is invisible:

Productivity on Nick Liu - Software Engineer

Make tmux Show What Each Window Is Doing

Why everything is named zsh #

Stop Losing Your Claude Code Conversations

What is a “session,” and where does it go? #

Claude Code vs Cursor vs Copilot vs Windsurf: An Honest 2026 Comparison

My Vibe Coding Workflow: How I Built This Site with Claude Code

Vibe Coding Won't Replace Senior Engineers. It Amplifies Them.

Building a Knowledge Base That AI Can Actually Use

What I Learned from How Claude Code's Creator Uses Claude Code

Catppuccin Mocha: Why I Theme Everything the Same Color

Why One Palette Everywhere? #

My Terminal Setup in 2026: Ghostty, tmux, and Neovim

Modern CLI Tools That Replaced My Unix Classics

The Replacements #

Setting Up Aliases #

Why everything is named `zsh`
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What is a “session,” and where does it go?
#

Why One Palette Everywhere?
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The Replacements
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Setting Up Aliases
#