Shawn @swyx Wang
Ai engineering writer and curator · latent.space · San Francisco
“ai/software 3.0: https://latent.space/”
— Shawn @swyx Wang, on their site
Known for
Why we track them
Shawn Wang, known as swyx, is one of the most visible writers defining what it means to be an AI engineer. His catalog of repos shows a consistent pattern: he builds tools that make his own workflow more efficient, then open-sources them as references for others. Spark-joy is a list of design delights, ai-notes is a living notebook that feeds his writing, and brain is his second brain in public. Each repo is a skill in the sense that it captures a repeatable practice — how to add whimsy, how to stay current on AI, how to publish a blog from GitHub issues.
What makes him worth tracking is that he has turned curation and note-taking into a career. His site latent.space is a hub for AI engineering content, and his dx.tips site covers developer experience. He also wrote a career book, Learn in Public, which codifies the ethos behind his own output: share what you learn as you learn it. His repos are the artifacts of that philosophy.
His work is a case study in how a builder can use GitHub not just for code, but as a publishing platform. The swyxdotio repo, where blog posts are drafted as issues and published as pages, is a particularly clear example of a skill that blurs the line between development and writing. If you want to see how a prolific technical writer structures their workflow, his repos are the blueprint.
What they've built
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A curated list of 2000+ ways to add design flair, user delight, and whimsy to your product.
Treats delight as a checklistable skill — a catalog of small touches that developers can copy-paste rather than invent.
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Notes for software engineers getting up to speed on new AI developments, serving as a datastore for latent.space writing.
Shows that a skill can be a living reference document that doubles as a writing engine and product brainstorming tool.
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Swyx's second brain — a personal knowledge management system in public.
Demonstrates that a skill can be a public thinking tool, not just a finished output.
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An opinionated blog starter for SvelteKit, Tailwind, and Netlify, refreshed for SvelteKit 1.0.
Packages his own blogging workflow into a reusable skill, showing that a starter template is a skill too.
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The repo for swyx's blog, where content is created in GitHub issues and posted as blog pages.
Treats the blog itself as a skill — a GitHub-native publishing workflow that turns issues into posts.
The idea worth stealing
Steal his workflow for publishing a blog from GitHub issues. The swyxdotio repo treats each blog post as a GitHub issue, then renders those issues as pages on swyx.io. This turns GitHub into a CMS, and it means readers can comment on drafts, watch for new posts, and even submit pull requests. It is a skill that makes the writing process transparent and collaborative.
He also frames his approach in his bio: 'ai/software 3.0.' That is a shorthand for the idea that AI is the third era of software, after the web and mobile. His entire catalog — from ai-notes to spark-joy — is an attempt to map what that era looks like for engineers. The insight worth stealing is that you can define a new role (AI engineer) by simply showing your work as you figure it out.
Where to follow Shawn
We track Shawn as part of our editorial layer, not our scraped index. His repos are standalone projects rather than the SKILL.md folder format we currently crawl, so his skills are not in our published set — this profile is editorial recognition. We have linked out to his repos and his writing throughout. We do not speak for him. Corrections welcome.