Fletcher Nichol
@fnichol.com
Principal engineer at System Initiative @systeminit.com
Systems, infrastructure, programming, home automation, smiling, open source, cycling
Edmonton, Alberta, 🇨🇦
Systems, infrastructure, programming, home automation, smiling, open source, cycling
Edmonton, Alberta, 🇨🇦
I just blew Claude Code's mind.
At least, it's been over 6 minutes since I had an admittedly great idea & it's still "thinking".
Human += 1
At least, it's been over 6 minutes since I had an admittedly great idea & it's still "thinking".
Human += 1
November 18, 2025 at 3:38 AM
I just blew Claude Code's mind.
At least, it's been over 6 minutes since I had an admittedly great idea & it's still "thinking".
Human += 1
At least, it's been over 6 minutes since I had an admittedly great idea & it's still "thinking".
Human += 1
I still remain highly skeptical of blanket trust in & applications of LLMs but I'm finding an intentionally configured Claude Code with Skills leads to a powerful brainstorming & planning system.
I haven't felt this generally creative in a long time & it's mostly due to "writing things down".
I haven't felt this generally creative in a long time & it's mostly due to "writing things down".
November 16, 2025 at 9:15 PM
I still remain highly skeptical of blanket trust in & applications of LLMs but I'm finding an intentionally configured Claude Code with Skills leads to a powerful brainstorming & planning system.
I haven't felt this generally creative in a long time & it's mostly due to "writing things down".
I haven't felt this generally creative in a long time & it's mostly due to "writing things down".
Last night I had a pretty vivid dream of playing the original Battlefield 1942. I remember when my friend showed me this game for the first time. I've never been so blown away by any video game experience as that day. It felt like anything in the environment could be manipulated and used.
October 4, 2025 at 10:52 PM
Last night I had a pretty vivid dream of playing the original Battlefield 1942. I remember when my friend showed me this game for the first time. I've never been so blown away by any video game experience as that day. It felt like anything in the environment could be manipulated and used.
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
Your annual reminder that the "oct" in October is because it's the eighth month
October 2, 2025 at 1:56 PM
Your annual reminder that the "oct" in October is because it's the eighth month
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
State files drift, lock, and lie. Real-time simulation keeps infra accurate, collaborative, and safe to change. That’s @systeminit.com
Read @stack72.dev 's post to help you realise the pain www.systeminit.com/blog/statefi...
Read @stack72.dev 's post to help you realise the pain www.systeminit.com/blog/statefi...
State Files Are a Crime Scene
State files stall collaboration and punish refactoring. System Initiative fixes both with real-time simulation and change sets.
www.systeminit.com
October 2, 2025 at 2:17 PM
State files drift, lock, and lie. Real-time simulation keeps infra accurate, collaborative, and safe to change. That’s @systeminit.com
Read @stack72.dev 's post to help you realise the pain www.systeminit.com/blog/statefi...
Read @stack72.dev 's post to help you realise the pain www.systeminit.com/blog/statefi...
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
// Don't ask me why, but this line makes everything 100x faster.
March 6, 2025 at 5:55 PM
// Don't ask me why, but this line makes everything 100x faster.
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
Most tools promise faster automation.
@systeminit.com promises something different: a new way to think about infrastructure.
Not just code. Not just pipelines.
A system that models reality, simulates change, and shifts how you approach every decision.
www.systeminit.com/blog/what-wi...
@systeminit.com promises something different: a new way to think about infrastructure.
Not just code. Not just pipelines.
A system that models reality, simulates change, and shifts how you approach every decision.
www.systeminit.com/blog/what-wi...
What Will Surprise You About System Initiative
Five surprising things that happen when people first see a System Initiative demo - it's not another DevOps tool at all
www.systeminit.com
September 30, 2025 at 2:37 PM
Most tools promise faster automation.
@systeminit.com promises something different: a new way to think about infrastructure.
Not just code. Not just pipelines.
A system that models reality, simulates change, and shifts how you approach every decision.
www.systeminit.com/blog/what-wi...
@systeminit.com promises something different: a new way to think about infrastructure.
Not just code. Not just pipelines.
A system that models reality, simulates change, and shifts how you approach every decision.
www.systeminit.com/blog/what-wi...
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
Our friends at Cloud Life were directly the inspiration for what SI is today.
www.cloudlife.io/resources/in...
www.cloudlife.io/resources/in...
Blog | How We Rebuilt Cloud Life’s Infrastructure Delivery with System Initiative
This is the story of how we eliminated static configuration files from our infrastructure workflows at Cloud Life, and, in the process, cut delivery times by more than half, improved reliability, and ...
www.cloudlife.io
August 27, 2025 at 3:22 PM
Our friends at Cloud Life were directly the inspiration for what SI is today.
www.cloudlife.io/resources/in...
www.cloudlife.io/resources/in...
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
. @systeminit.com is launching the world’s first AI Native Infrastructure Automation platform. Read more about how to supercharge your productivity on our blog, www.systeminit.com/blog/ai-nati..., and get started today: systeminit.com
August 27, 2025 at 3:01 PM
. @systeminit.com is launching the world’s first AI Native Infrastructure Automation platform. Read more about how to supercharge your productivity on our blog, www.systeminit.com/blog/ai-nati..., and get started today: systeminit.com
Right now 1200 late night show interns are scrambling to get as many zingers in the bag before each show tapes youtu.be/LXQ6Rm9CGTo
Robots run, punch and score at World Humanoid Robot Games in China
YouTube video by Guardian News
youtu.be
August 16, 2025 at 2:22 AM
Right now 1200 late night show interns are scrambling to get as many zingers in the bag before each show tapes youtu.be/LXQ6Rm9CGTo
I’m fascinated how the concepts in Promise Theory (for me: autonomous agents & the idea that “all you can do is ask another, never command”) apply to complex systems, human interaction, societal cooperation, etc. Thank you, Mark!
A brief recap of the status of Promise Theory on its 20th birthday!
mark-burgess-oslo-mb.medium.com/promise-theo...
mark-burgess-oslo-mb.medium.com/promise-theo...
Promise Theory 20 year anniversary
Promise Theory and Semantic Spacetime as a Theory for Agent Systems: a personal review
mark-burgess-oslo-mb.medium.com
August 8, 2025 at 12:39 AM
I’m fascinated how the concepts in Promise Theory (for me: autonomous agents & the idea that “all you can do is ask another, never command”) apply to complex systems, human interaction, societal cooperation, etc. Thank you, Mark!
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
Happy new Rust! 🎆🦀
Rust 1.89.0 has been released!
This release brings you inferrred array length, new lints, u128/i128 in extern "C", NonZero, File::lock, many x86 intrinsics, and much more! ✨
Check out the blog post and release notes for all the details: blog.rust-lang.org/2025/08/07/R...
Rust 1.89.0 has been released!
This release brings you inferrred array length, new lints, u128/i128 in extern "C", NonZero
Check out the blog post and release notes for all the details: blog.rust-lang.org/2025/08/07/R...
Announcing Rust 1.89.0 | Rust Blog
Empowering everyone to build reliable and efficient software.
blog.rust-lang.org
August 7, 2025 at 11:18 AM
Happy new Rust! 🎆🦀
Rust 1.89.0 has been released!
This release brings you inferrred array length, new lints, u128/i128 in extern "C", NonZero, File::lock, many x86 intrinsics, and much more! ✨
Check out the blog post and release notes for all the details: blog.rust-lang.org/2025/08/07/R...
Rust 1.89.0 has been released!
This release brings you inferrred array length, new lints, u128/i128 in extern "C", NonZero
Check out the blog post and release notes for all the details: blog.rust-lang.org/2025/08/07/R...
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
In the last Oxide & Friends, @bcantrill.bsky.social argues in favor of dumb questions for getting real understanding, and I feel that one in my bones.
August 7, 2025 at 2:54 PM
In the last Oxide & Friends, @bcantrill.bsky.social argues in favor of dumb questions for getting real understanding, and I feel that one in my bones.
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
Promise Theory is now 20 years old! 🎂
July 30, 2025 at 4:01 PM
Promise Theory is now 20 years old! 🎂
While I'm on the @oxide.computer cheer team, I'd highly recommend their Oxide and Friends podcast. The transparency and detail of the "epic bug hunt" episodes are a true gift to the software and technology community. 1/2
oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm
oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm
Oxide and Friends
Oxide hosts a weekly Discord show where we discuss a wide range of topics: computer history, startups, Oxide hardware bringup, and other topics du jour. These are the recordings in podcast form.
Join ...
oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm
July 30, 2025 at 4:43 PM
While I'm on the @oxide.computer cheer team, I'd highly recommend their Oxide and Friends podcast. The transparency and detail of the "epic bug hunt" episodes are a true gift to the software and technology community. 1/2
oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm
oxide-and-friends.transistor.fm
Congrats, Oxide!
🎉We raised $100M USD in our Series B financing. Thank you to USIT for leading this round, to our existing investors for their participation, and to our team, customers, and community for getting us to where we are today!
oxide.computer/blog/our-100...
oxide.computer/blog/our-100...
Our $100M Series B / Oxide
Raising our Series B round of financing
oxide.computer
July 30, 2025 at 4:34 PM
Congrats, Oxide!
Finding speedups in a codebase is always fun github.com/systeminit/s...
chore(edda): speed up external connection count in ComponentMv by 1000% by fnichol · Pull Request #6576 · systeminit/si
That much huh? Pretty much, yeah. Happy Friday ;)
This change implements a method external_source_count() on
WorkspaceSnapshotSelector which computes this count using lower level
abstractions on th...
github.com
July 4, 2025 at 3:34 AM
Finding speedups in a codebase is always fun github.com/systeminit/s...
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
years after working with a team that was vehemently against deleting any test, no matter how flaky, I have assembled my counter-doctrine: you should delete tests
andre.arko.net/2025/06/30/y...
andre.arko.net/2025/06/30/y...
You should delete tests
We’ve had decades of thought leadership around testing, especially coming from wholistic development philosophies like Agile, TDD, and BDD. After all that time and several supposedly superseding movem...
andre.arko.net
July 1, 2025 at 7:20 PM
years after working with a team that was vehemently against deleting any test, no matter how flaky, I have assembled my counter-doctrine: you should delete tests
andre.arko.net/2025/06/30/y...
andre.arko.net/2025/06/30/y...
Another case where #rustlang is fast, which can lead to bugs. I forgot to handle this Tokio task cancellation, so the task got locked in a tight loop. Enough to pin CPU cores once deployed. Well *that* explains what happened! github.com/systeminit/s...
github.com
June 27, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Another case where #rustlang is fast, which can lead to bugs. I forgot to handle this Tokio task cancellation, so the task got locked in a tight loop. Enough to pin CPU cores once deployed. Well *that* explains what happened! github.com/systeminit/s...
Honestly, if I could figure out how to make *this* a little more a part of my working day…some days the creativity flows like water out on the “road desk”
June 3, 2025 at 12:36 AM
Honestly, if I could figure out how to make *this* a little more a part of my working day…some days the creativity flows like water out on the “road desk”
Reposted by Fletcher Nichol
Sometimes I imagine someone from the past visiting 2025 and being amazed at our technology!
- Can't watch the game because the TV is doing a mandatory OS update
- Can't make a cup of coffee because the machine can't connect to wifi
- Can’t drive the car because the fob battery died
- Can't watch the game because the TV is doing a mandatory OS update
- Can't make a cup of coffee because the machine can't connect to wifi
- Can’t drive the car because the fob battery died
May 21, 2025 at 7:55 PM
Sometimes I imagine someone from the past visiting 2025 and being amazed at our technology!
- Can't watch the game because the TV is doing a mandatory OS update
- Can't make a cup of coffee because the machine can't connect to wifi
- Can’t drive the car because the fob battery died
- Can't watch the game because the TV is doing a mandatory OS update
- Can't make a cup of coffee because the machine can't connect to wifi
- Can’t drive the car because the fob battery died
Happy Canada Election Day! It’s our right, our privilege, and our freedom to elect our representatives and leaders. If you haven’t already, please do vote!
April 28, 2025 at 4:38 PM
Happy Canada Election Day! It’s our right, our privilege, and our freedom to elect our representatives and leaders. If you haven’t already, please do vote!
Do I have a problem? I can stop anytime I want to. But now that you mention it, maybe the garage could use some yummy @mikrotik.social power-over-ethernet…
March 4, 2025 at 2:35 AM
Do I have a problem? I can stop anytime I want to. But now that you mention it, maybe the garage could use some yummy @mikrotik.social power-over-ethernet…
I just found the website of the year: www.allacronyms.com
I will be using this site next week
I will be using this site next week
All Acronyms - Acronym Lookup and Abbreviation Guide
Discover acronyms and abbreviations effortlessly with All Acronyms, your comprehensive resource for decoding and abbreviating words across tech, health, and more sectors.
www.allacronyms.com
February 17, 2025 at 3:11 AM
I just found the website of the year: www.allacronyms.com
I will be using this site next week
I will be using this site next week
I'm kind sad that due to lack of prefs & clear navigation (that I can find), I'm up to 3 browser bookmarks for my primary work GitHub repo. Among those are open/non-draft prs reverse sorted (github.com/systeminit/s...) & active merge queue runs (github.com/systeminit/s...).
Pull requests · systeminit/si
The System Initiative software. Contribute to systeminit/si development by creating an account on GitHub.
github.com
February 13, 2025 at 11:08 PM
I'm kind sad that due to lack of prefs & clear navigation (that I can find), I'm up to 3 browser bookmarks for my primary work GitHub repo. Among those are open/non-draft prs reverse sorted (github.com/systeminit/s...) & active merge queue runs (github.com/systeminit/s...).