Author profile

Russ McKendrick

DevOps and cloud author. 183 posts published on russ.cloud, plus 14+ technical books on Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, and Infrastructure as Code.

Where else to find me

What I write about

Token Use: Coach Mode and a Week of Releases

A week after Token Use hit 1.0.0 by cutting features, it's on 1.2.2. Coach mode, a Rust port of Microsoft's AI-Engineering-Coach rules, full-text scrollback, an MCP server, and a 3D graph.

12 Jul 2026

A Catch-Up: terminal-svg and Token Use v1

Two projects worth writing about: terminal-svg, a new Rust tool for pixel-perfect terminal screenshots, and Token Use finally reaching v1

13 Jun 2026

Playing with Headroom: Compressing the Context Going to My AI Coding Agents

I spent a few days running Headroom, a local proxy that promises to cut the tokens your AI coding agent sends to the provider. The savings are real, but they're not where the dashboard first makes you think they are.

10 May 2026

codebase-memory-mcp: Giving Claude Code (and Codex) a Map

A short look at codebase-memory-mcp, an MCP server that indexes your codebase into a queryable knowledge graph so Claude Code or Codex can answer structural questions without grepping every file.

1 May 2026

Counting the Cost of Vibe Coding

A local-first dashboard for tracking AI coding tool spend across Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Copilot, and Gemini CLI - with a TUI, a desktop app, and zero API keys required.

19 Apr 2026

Is my blog Agent-Ready?

Running russ.cloud through isitagentready.com and wiring up the checks that actually make sense for a static blog - Link headers, Content Signals, agent-skills discovery, llms.txt, and a tiny Cloudflare Worker to serve markdown on demand.

11 Apr 2026

Introducing AI Commit

A Rust CLI I built to stop writing terrible commit messages - aic generates AI-powered commit messages, PR drafts, diff reviews, and repo visualisations from your staged changes.

5 Apr 2026

Introducing Hosts Butler

A terminal-based hosts file manager built in Rust that I wrote to stop manually editing /etc/hosts with a text editor and hoping I didn't break anything.

3 Apr 2026

Creating Custom Skills for Copilot Cowork

Copilot Cowork just landed in Microsoft's Frontier preview programme, and one of its most useful features is the ability to extend it with your own custom skills stored in OneDrive. Here's how to create one.

1 Feb 2026

Introducing ssl-toolkit

A comprehensive SSL/TLS diagnostic tool built in Rust that I created to replace my ever-growing document of random certificate checking notes.

31 Jan 2026

OpenClaw: Giving Claude a Body (and a Telegram Bot)

A quick guide to installing OpenClaw, an open-source AI agent framework that gives LLMs persistence, tools, and messaging - turning a chatbot into an actual assistant.

29 Dec 2025

Day to Day Tools, the 2025 edition

The 2025 edition of my day-to-day tools: Ghostty, Claude Code, Google's Antigravity IDE, and the AI services that have become central to how I work.