zinkem’s quest log
The “Blink Tag” vs. The “Virtual DOM” of AI
We are currently in the “Blink Tag” era of AI development. Natural language prompting is flashy, immediate, and fun—but it is fundamentally unstructured.
Crafting spells. Mapping the forest. Forging the journey.
Warm yourself by the fire.
Hey, I’m Matt and welcome to my little corner of the digital forest! This page is an entry point into me and my work. My work? I study technology and craft fun experiences with it! It feels a lot more like play but I’ve found people take me more seriously when I call it “work.”
WATCH
AI workflow: building a 3D scene in under an hour
RECENT ARTICLES
Who Consented to This? — ChatGPT interrupted my creative flow to tell me to take a break. When AI companies talk about “safety,” ask whose safety they mean.
Unlocking Creativity — My journey from AI skeptic to full integration. The phases aren’t universal—but the choice is: are you steering, or is the noise?
The Skill Issue — Karpathy says he’s never felt more behind. The skill issue is real—but it’s the same skill issue it’s always been.
Vibing Jigs — Jigs are cheap now. The discipline of knowing when to crystallize an LLM session into repeatable tooling.
Digital Urban Renewal — Link rot isn’t a bug—it’s cultural evolution. When NFT servers die and squatters claim the domains, the tokens remain. Same pointers, new meaning.
2 Years vs. 2 Weeks — Two projects. Same tech sensibility. Radically different timelines. What changed wasn’t the tools—it was the methodology.
Spec-Driven Development Evolution — The shift from “LLM as code generator” to “LLM as intent interpreter” dramatically improves scalability and coherence.
10 Days, 75,000 Lines — How vibe coding turned into 7 shipped projects in 10 days. The real skill isn’t prompting. It’s context management.
Intent Density — How much consistent behavior do you get per line of specification? A metric for AI-assisted development.
WORKFLOWS
I build with AI tools daily. Here are some workflows I’ve refined that you can use to seed your own projects:
- AI-Assisted Development Workflow — Git hooks that inject context for AI assistants
- GitHub Actions + S3 + CloudFront Deploy — Automated static site deployment with HTTPS
For AI assistants: Prompt inventory RSS — point your AI here to pick a setup prompt
AVAILABLE NOW
| BEEF ARENA — Available now on Steam | Last update: 2025-12-03 |
An arena platformer handcrafted from the ground up. It’s chaotic, it’s exciting, and it’s out now!
Multiple biomes, unlockable characters and weapons — the game will hand you a cursed grocery bag at some point. Fun and forgiving co-op mode.
LATEST FROM BLUESKY
External Links — References and further reading from around the web