A list of useful things I've done with LLMs

A refrain that I still see quite frequently, although less often than I used to, goes something like “If LLMs are so great, then where is all this new incredible software?”

LLMs are doing ridiculous magical shit for me on such a routine basis that it feels nearly invisible. I would like to start tracking them. So here we go.

I will update this list periodically.

Composite Obsidian vault configuration

July 17 ’26 - Sol 5.6

I have a number of markdown buckets that I would like to be available in Obsidian on all of my computers. However, the access controls need to be very different. One of them is my personal diary, which I consider quite private, and would not sync to something like an employer-owned computer. Another is my agent memory store, And another is a document store that powers some productivity software that I use on both personal and work machines.

Sol configured a mix of TrueNAS, SyncThing, and TailScale that builds composite vaults, stitching folders with different locations and permissions into a vault that Obsidian sees as a single thing.

This allows me to do things like sync the productivity vault direction to my work computer, but not the diary. It serves my diary via Ignis to the tailnet, so I can still hit it from the browser to take notes without friction. This is a good middle ground for my personal threat model w/r/t both employer access and agent exfiltration risk. The diary can sync directly for native obsidian on machines where I’m not running agentic workflows, and the agent only machines write their memory natively while having no concept of the diary’s existence, since the agent boxes are excluded from that portion of the tailnet.

Now all of my crap is backed up, kept in sync, has a uniform view/edit surface, and all of this is free, local, and offline, avoiding paid services like Obsidian Sync entirely.

Automated offline document scanning, OCR, backup, and task extraction.

July 13 ’26 – Sol 5.6

Brother ADS-1700W scanner and Mac Mini. Inserting paper triggers duplex scanning without buttons or app interaction, because there is no app at all. Typically this requires a network-connected Brother desktop app and providing the scanner with wifi credentials and a SMB destination, all of which skeeves me out.

Instead, NAPS2 uses Brother’s macOS ICA scanner driver directly via the CLI. This lets us skip Brother’s desktop application, the mac app store’s icloud identity requirements, and keep the scanner USB-only and fully offline.

Scanned documents are backed up to TrueNAS and converted into plaintext by a local OCRmyPDF util. OCR’d text is fed to an agent for triage. I am using online models for this, but it’s compatible with local models for privacy at this layer as well. Agent creates a task for your task, if relevant, and leaves an audit trail of the decision.

I had to do a lot of manual testing and tweaking to get this working right, but it is excellent, highly configurable, and privacy compatible in a satisfying way. There is no way I would have done this the without the LLM’s assistance, as evidenced by the fact that I’ve had this scanner collecting dust for three years.

TrueNAS + Syncthing configuration and backup

July 13 ’26 – Sol 5.6

I already configured TrueNOS to have static manual backups of some of my most important documents. With the LLM’s assistance, I got SyncThing turning those into live folders that back up automatically on a schedule. In addition to the local backups, it configured Restic backups for offsite storage at Hetzner.

This is something I could have done myself but it would have been a big pain in the ass. It was much easier this way.

Custom keyboard controls for voice input and agent shortcuts

July 11 ’26 – Sol 5.6

Using the aforementioned tool, I mapped some unused keyboard keys to available glyphs like numpad-multiply, numpad-divide, etcetera.

Karabiner intecepts one key to run Handy for FOSS voice recognition that pastes speech into any text field. A script checks Handy’s logs to confirm the action and automatically restarts and retries Handy if it has become unresponsive. Audio is processed locally via the Parakeet V3 speech-recognition model.

Rather than pasting directly in a field, I have some extra steps: text is fed to a script that uses Hammerspoon to paste into the focused application via macOS Accessibility tools, enabling me to paste voice output through a mothefucking screen sharing session into another goddamn compter.

Not only can I speak my prompts on this computer, I can speak them into my OpenClaw computer, a cursor setup that’s running there, whatever. When I need to drive something on another machine, I just vnc:// in, talk about it, and pop out. No KVM, no leaving my main machine. It’s incredible.

My wrist is cooked. Being able to continue authoring software and keep the ship running almost entirely by voice is a genuinely restorative ability. I’m not in pain as much. This rules.

The other keys are mapped to new session instantiation for Claude and Codex in superset.sh and a generic /clear + enter command, so I can wipe sessions with one button and keep going.

Bypasssing Nuphy’s proprietary software for Air75v3 key remaps

July 11 ’26 – Sol 5.6

I want to change the key mapping on my keyboard. NuPhy’s v3 models abandoned the standard QMK editing path in favor of some proprietary NuPhyIO software. Fuck that. Sol bypassed this by implementing the keyboard’s configuration protocol directly in a Swift utility. With the Air75 V3 connected in wired mode, the tool opens its otherwise non-keyboard HID control interface through macOS IOKit, performs NuPhy’s challenge/response session-key exchange, then reads the keyboard’s complete onboard key matrix using 64-byte HID reports. Viola, custom key mappings without downloading Nuphy’s locked down garbage.

Microcontroller software for proximity controlled relay

May 10 ’26 – Opus 4.6

I have some moderately intense electrical things that need to turn on in response to proximity. All of this is controlled by an ESP32 with a relay, a debug screen, and a cheap proximity sensor. Opus wrote the software to get all of that working well in a way where I could come in and define the thresholds and exact behavior, monitoring everything on a debug screen. There are some nice safeguards like failing closed and behaving correctly in the face of sensor data interruption, power loss, etc.

I already knew how to do all of this, and it’s something I could have done without LLM assistance. It would have taken me at least five times longer.

It was particularly useful in debugging some IC2 communication issues where in the sensor was sending flaky data unless the timing and sequence of IC2 signals were just right. That’s the kind of thing that would previously have required one or two very late evenings of intense swearing, and instead were sorted out in about ninety seconds of poking around.