Elijah Potter

slop paralysis - noun A complete or partial loss of function while reviewing the output of a coding agent. elijahpotter.dev/articles/slo...

I've never had the chance to meet Paul, but I've always admired his work. He created an app that produces real measurable improvements in quality of life for so many.

New goal: the merge queue should never be empty.

The leaves in Durango, Colorado are so dynamic.

The Atlantic's style guide suggests that you forgo any and all contractions in your writing ("don't", "can't", "isn't", etc.) because they're ugly. I happen to agree. If you use Harper, you can enable checks for contracts by enabling the "AvoidContractions" rule.

I had never heard of Om Malik be­fore he died. In the time since, I’ve pe­rused his ex­ten­sive cat­a­log of blog posts and ar­ti­cles. No de­scrip­tion of his writ­ing could be more ac­cu­rate than just one word: en­gross­ing. elijahpotter.dev/articles/the...

I'm convinced that Fireboy and Watergirl were the peak of web gaming.

Yet another word processor has adopted Harper. LFG.

This ar­ti­cle is not about vibe cod­ing. In fact, this ar­ti­cle is about all the things you can do with an AI agent that are sep­a­rate from writ­ing code. elijahpotter.dev/articles/use...

In my ex­per­i­men­ta­tion this week, I found that I was right about one thing and wrong about an­other. I was right that there is an ideal av­er­age to­ken size for our work­load. I was wrong that it was a sin­gle byte. elijahpotter.dev/articles/byt...

Another project that uses Harper! zennotes.org

"Can we start working on soulless meat that can't feel pain instead of computers that can?" — @hankgreen.bsky.social, an hour ago at the Colorado School of Mines (paraphrased)

As a non-native english speaker, I’m very self-conscious about grammar. I installed Harper on Obsidian and I just want it everywhere. A couple of clicks and I found out you can have it everywhere. Thanks @elijahpotter.dev this is amazing work. writewithharper.com/desktop

“Quality of life” is a business strategy. Automattic software engineer and Harper founder Elijah Potter looks back at 37signals “Getting Real” and how its ideas continue to shape the way we build and work today. Read the blog: wp.me/pe4R-3TFA

Another book written with Harper! ben.balter.com/2026/08/17/h...

I frequently find that the correct decisions for my customers also tend to improve my and my collaborator's quality of life. It becomes a nice mental shortcut when you think about it. automattic.com/2026/08/18/g...

Despite our permissive LLM policy, your PR is probably 10 times more likely to be merged if it is not written by a clanker.

It is the end of an era. Jeff Dean is leav­ing Google. Long live Demis Hassabis. I have long looked up to Jeff Dean as a bea­con of en­gi­neer­ing ex­cel­lence. I am quite ex­cited to see what he does at Discovery Loop. elijahpotter.dev/articles/adi...

Someone is cooking! harper.js is nearing 20k downloads per week. www.npmjs.com/package/harp...

"One could imagine Sisyphus circling back and putting a pin in it and hoping his message finds you well." www.youtube.com/watch?v=--3Q...

If you previously opened a PR on the Harper repo, and you have a test failing mysteriously, please merge the recent commits from master.

I wish I could tell myself there isn't a platonic ideal of software engineering methodologies. That there is more than one way of doing things that is Good™.

I work with these people! codeforthepeople.com

God, this speaks to me. jerodsanto.net/2026/06/clau...

and here‘s your daily maths-pop culture crossover brought to you by yours truly

Another project using Harper: Phraise github.com/hqrrr/Phraise

I am pleased to say, with much fanfare, that Andrew Dunbar (known by online moniker hippietrail) is becoming Harper's first committer. elijahpotter.dev/articles/har...

Star Trek captains are great role models for technology governance. They see a harmful technology and… don't use it. They see a technology that can be harmful and… develop policies for themselves for how to use it responsibly.

While reading an old essay of mine, I was reminded of the wonderful book by Robert Persig titled Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance. It serves to help anyone in any profession, but I think it speaks particularly well to the lives of open source maintainers. elijahpotter.dev/articles/zen...

The new Olivia Rodrigo album is so unbelievably good.

Neat! It looks like they used Harper. www.digitaltrends.com/computing/i-...

sinclairtarget.com/blog/2026/06... This is, far and away, the best blog post I have read in months, if not ever.

Programming with an agent is simply not as fun.

They used Harper to write a book? Awesome.

OpenVSX is in read only mode. How inconvenient.

Day #422 of going back to restart all of the GitHub Actions workflows that stopped mid-run due to another outage.

Currently battling a ton of bugs in Harper Desktop. Expect major improvements in the coming days.

Cool to see that QOwnNotes supports Harper! www.qownnotes.org/editor/harpe...

Alex Kladov is an amazing engineer. His blog is word-class. I highly recommend his latest essay on good software architecture. matklad.github.io/2026/05/12/s...

Sharing this a bit late, but I recently reflected on my blog on the importance of capital-Q "Quality" while iterating on Harper Desktop. elijahpotter.dev/articles/pro...

Done. github.com/Automattic/h...

Jason Adams just merged a delightful redesign of the Harper editor. github.com/Automattic/h...

Open sourcing is slightly delayed. Currently in integration hell, as Shane Wighton would say.

Will be making Harper Desktop open source tomorrow. Stay tuned.