Evil Martians
https://evilmartians.com/chronicles
We’ve got articles for junior and experienced developers, case studies for startup founders and managers, and thorough technical deep dives into unexpected terrain. No matter where you’re coming from, you’re certain to gain some insight here, whether it’s more practical, or something that really takes you for a ride.
フィード
5 best practices for preventing chaos in Tailwind CSS
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2Evil Martians
Tailwind CSS has become a very popular CSS framework, and it can speed up development. But using it without proper caution can add mayhem to your code. Learn best practices to avoid getting swept away!
2日前
+14% activated users for AppSignal: designing a new homepage in code
Evil Martians
We designed and shipped a fresh AppSignal homepage in code, then validated it in an A/B test with a 14% lift in activated users.
3日前
The secure way to release an npm package in 2026
Evil Martians
How to protect your npm package from being stolen in a supply chain attack and improve its position in security ratings
10日前
Which AI actually reads your site? Two months of LLM traffic, measured
Evil Martians
We told you to measure. So of course we did it ourselves too: two months of server-side LLM traffic to evilmartians.com. Find out which agents read HTML, which read Markdown, what llms.txt actually does, and the one technique that got zero hits.
17日前
The joy of Inertia Rails: painting your own with 50 happy little lines
Evil Martians
Inertia is Turbolinks with one twist: render JSON instead of HTML on the second visit. We rebuild the whole protocol on a real Rails app with a 50-line client and a 16-line server, then audit what the real gem adds on top.
24日前
Storybook Workbench: audit vibe-coded UIs and find hidden bugs in hours
Evil Martians
Storybook Workbench is a bundle of Agent Skills that turn Storybook into an audit layer for AI-generated UIs: find dead components, design-system drift, and hidden accessibility bugs.
1ヶ月前
AI vs. human illustrators? AI + human illustrators!
Evil Martians
Evil Martians went from attempting to one-shot AI illustrations to a human-in-the-loop workflow with a dedicated illustrator. When a human owns first and last mile of this process, illustrations are crisp, high-quality and fun. Go BTS of our illustration production.
1ヶ月前
Most MCP servers don't need to exist. Your case might be an exception.
Evil Martians
An MCP server is a product interface for the age of agents, not an AI feature itself. This post presents a framework for deciding between direct API calls, CLI, Skills, and MCP, detailing the architectural signals, the hidden costs, and the failure modes you should know about before embarking on an MCP quest.
1ヶ月前
Choose your fighter: benchmarking 5 WebSocket servers for Node.js
Evil Martians
Evil Martians benchmarked five WebSocket servers for Node.js: Socket.io, uWebSockets.js, and AnyCable (OSS and Pro). How we caught our own load generator lying, and how to make WebSocket benchmark numbers honest.
1ヶ月前
Building a design system specced for engineers and agents
Evil Martians
Coding without design guidelines can leave teams with an inconsistent UI design and a complex feature development process. Here's how we built a design system for Currents that's readable by engineers and AI agents.
2ヶ月前
2 Martians, greenfield to MVP in 4 weeks: agentic coding on Rails
Evil Martians
A designer and an engineer shipped a production MVP in four weeks on Rails + Inertia. In this post, we share our agentic coding stack, the skills we built, and why it clicked.
2ヶ月前
Stop writing rules in AGENTS.md: use agent hooks and nano-staged instead
Evil Martians
Move LLM safeguards out of AGENTS.md: how agent hooks plus nano-staged run linters on changed files only, cut tokens, and tighten the agent's feedback loop
2ヶ月前
AI-assisted engineers are burning out, is this fine?
Evil Martians
AI-assisted code generation is not free. It comes with a hidden cost: burnout. Are we dangerously ignorant to this problem? And how can we cope with it? In this post, we discuss this question.
3ヶ月前
600+ million people write right-to-left: 2 fixes your app needs
Evil Martians
Arabic, Hebrew, and other right-to-left script users often can't type properly in apps that never considered them. The fix is usually two HTML attributes. Here's exactly what to add, and when.
3ヶ月前
From React to native web with nanotags: a migration that saved 100 KB
Evil Martians
Most marketing sites ship a SPA framework just to toggle a sidebar. Here's how we migrated an Astro site from React and Ark UI to native Web Components: 100 KB less JavaScript, no functionality lost, and a tiny library called nanotags that makes Custom Elements enjoyable to write.
3ヶ月前
From 0 signal to 128 cold signups: product validation on a $2K budget
Evil Martians
A story of validating product demand on a $2K budget with 128 cold-traffic signups, an A/B winner at 95% confidence, and a sequenced playbook founders can run themselves.
3ヶ月前
3 rules for getting AI agents to find, use—and not exploit—your devtool
Evil Martians
The agent-led growth playbook: how to make AI agents discover, use, and pay for your developer tool, and defend against the ones you didn't invite. LLM discoverability, agent-first onboarding, agent payments, AX security.
4ヶ月前
Making your site visible to LLMs: 6 techniques that work, 8 that don't
Evil Martians
Most AI SEO advice is unproven. We tested what ChatGPT, Claude, and Perplexity actually read on our own site. Six LLM visibility techniques that worked, eight that didn't, and the metrics to tell the difference.
4ヶ月前
Now you see it: Vite on Rails without the proxy
Evil Martians
Introducing rails_vite—a new Vite integration for Rails that works with Propshaft, not against it. Drop it into an existing jsbundling app for instant CSS HMR, or use the full gem for manifest-based asset resolution.
4ヶ月前
Gemfile of dreams: the libraries we use to build Rails apps
Evil Martians
We unveil the gemfile toolbox of the Martian Rails engineer; a universe of Evil Martian gems that encapsulate our philosophy and soul.
4ヶ月前