Mostly Technical Sweet Hang #3: Matching Tattoos w/ John O'Nolan
16 snips
Nov 20, 2025 
In this engaging conversation, John O'Nolan, founder of Ghost, dives into his passion for side projects and modernizing RSS. He shares insights on his double Laravel New strategy and how he leverages Claude AI for rapid development. John discusses his upcoming RSS reader and the challenges of existing solutions. He also touches on the intricacies of building features, optimizing code, and the balance between leading a sizable team and pursuing personal projects. Plus, a peek into his side-side project—a simpler applicant tracking system!
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Bootstrap Projects With Laravel New
- Use Laravel New plus your favorite starter kit to kick off side projects quickly and consistently.
- Keep a small set of reusable commands and prompts to speed repetitive tasks like testing and linting.
RSS Revival Is A Design Opportunity
- Building an RSS reader can be a designer's playground because many existing readers are slow and unloved.
- Modern web tech and structured data let you reimagine RSS beyond its 15-year-old constraints.
Design Feeds Around Real Business Needs
- Consider adding structured features (like payments) to feed formats to support premium content cleanly.
- Design readers and specs together so apps can natively support subscriptions and private feeds.