This week's tech news: Claude Opus 4.6 released
Anthropic released a new model, Opus 4.6. I use Claude Code daily, and this update brings a noticeably larger context window. In the past, working through coding problems with Claude Code, it would sometimes forget earlier context — that seems to have improved.
I've only had about two days with it, so I haven't fully felt the performance gains yet, but once I get a better sense of it, I'd like to dedicate a full episode to it.
Main topic
1. Add a docs directory to your repository
I've started creating a documents or docs directory at the root of my repositories to hold project specs and anything that doesn't fit neatly into the README. A friend had already recommended writing requirements documents, and on top of that I've started recording things like:
- Infrastructure setup (Firebase / GCP / AWS configuration and service architecture)
- Project-specific knowledge that doesn't fit in the README
You could also use a wiki, but keeping things in .md format inside the repository has the advantage of being readable in any environment.
Using it as a "development diary" in the age of vibe coding
In the vibe coding era, as AI gets more capable, it's increasingly common for AI to implement things you've never personally implemented yourself. Git commit messages alone aren't enough context, but asking the AI to explain itself every single time burns tokens and adds noise.
So I've found it effective to create a directory like docs/diary/ and have Claude Code or Cursor write a development diary at natural checkpoints — when a branch's work wraps up, at the feature level, or per commit.
In team development this risks piling up unnecessary files, but for one-on-one vibe coding between a human and AI, I've genuinely found it quite effective.
2. Design guidelines should be written in Markdown
I originally built my career as a frontend engineer specializing in UI design, and I used to build out detailed design guidelines in Figma — defining everything down to colors, font sizes, spacing, animation, and border radius.
But going forward, it's better to write these in Markdown format. The reason is simple: AI can read it.
Right now, AI-generated designs tend to converge toward the same generic look — something like "black background, blue as the main color, built on Material UI." Handing the AI a design guideline as a .md file lets it produce something with actual personality, even when AI is doing the building.
Furthermore, if you're using an autonomous tool like OpenClaw, it helps to feed the AI knowledge such as:
- Apple's Human Interface Guidelines
- Knowledge of object-oriented UI (OOUI)
Registering these as skills lets the AI build apps with a real, foundational understanding of what makes something easy for humans to use.
3. Now is exactly the time to learn security fundamentals
When you build apps through vibe coding, the backend and security side of things tends to become opaque, and that scares me a bit. If you're building an application that handles customer data through vibe coding, a human needs to make up for that gap with solid security fundamentals.
I originally specialized in design and frontend work myself, but the arrival of AI has given me a lot more opportunities to actively work with backend and infrastructure (AWS/GCP). Through that, I've really felt the gaps in my security knowledge, and I've started studying through books and video courses.
At a bigger company you could hand this off to a security or infrastructure specialist, but as the founder, I think I need to have that baseline knowledge myself.
Weekly: what I did this week
This week I continued working on an XR development project from last week. But a client meeting ate up an entire day, so I barely had time left for development. It was a week that really drove home how hard things can be for a young venture like ours.
Lately I've started visualizing how I spend each day in my journal using a pie chart. It only takes about five minutes to make, so I'd recommend it to anyone self-employed or freelancing — it makes it immediately obvious what you did and didn't get done.
coiai works on web development, XR development, core systems, and support for adopting on-premise AI. If you've been turned down elsewhere or gotten a quote that felt too high, feel free to reach out — quotes are free.