Author profile

Russ McKendrick

DevOps and cloud author. 181 posts published on russ.cloud, plus 14+ technical books on Docker, Kubernetes, Ansible, Terraform, and Infrastructure as Code.

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What I write about

Recent posts

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

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.

11 min readAI 🤖

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

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.

9 min readAI 🤖

Counting the Cost of Vibe Coding

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.

16 min readAI 🤖

Is my blog Agent-Ready?

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.

8 min readAI 🤖

Introducing AI Commit

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.

10 min readTools 🧰

Introducing Hosts Butler

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.

6 min readTools 🧰

Creating Custom Skills for Copilot Cowork

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.

7 min readAI 🤖

Introducing ssl-toolkit

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.

8 min readTools 🧰

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

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.

7 min readAI 🤖

Day to Day Tools, the 2025 edition

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.

5 min readTools 🧰

Save money by pausing Microsoft Fabric Capacities with Azure Logic Apps

Save money by pausing Microsoft Fabric Capacities with Azure Logic Apps

Learn how to automatically pause Microsoft Fabric capacities outside of working hours using Azure Logic Apps. This step-by-step guide shows you how to deploy a cost-saving automation that can significantly reduce your Fabric spend.

7 min readAzure ☁️

Azure Soft Delete: Recovering Resources and Preventing Accidental Deletions

Azure Soft Delete: Recovering Resources and Preventing Accidental Deletions

A practical guide to recovering accidentally deleted Azure resources that support soft delete, covering API Management, Key Vault, Storage Accounts, and more. Plus, how to use delete locks to prevent these situations in the first place.