Erica Pisani

Erica Pisani

@ericapisani.dev

Sr. Software Engineer @ Sentry https://www.ericapisani.dev/ Public speaker Co-founder of The 418 zine

173 followers203 following77 posts

Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

✍️ New blog post: side project (Trillium) updates on results after adjusting models, prompts, and other configuration. Looking forward to seeing their impact when the Ontario parliament starts up again in a couple of days and I have more bills to work with. www.ericapisani.dev/trillium-upd...

ericapisani.devTrillium Updates: Adjusting models, prompts, and other configurationFor those who are new to my blog, I've been working on a side project that creates a weekly AI-generated newsletter that summarizes the bills that are debated and (potentially) become law in Ontario's...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Had a great time at AI Engineer Paris last week 👩‍💻🇫🇷 Interesting to hear all the different things that people are building with AI these days, and what they look for from their observability platforms. Shout out to the Mistral AI folks for putting on a great event!

Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Decided to try and draw the image for a blog post rather than use an AI-generated one this time around Kind of enjoy the unpolished vibe 👩‍🎨

Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

✍️Another blog post! Why my side project runs off my laptop instead of the ☁️. Priced out running it properly (DigitalOcean + PlanetScale + Bupstash backups) — ~$10 USD/month for a weekly cron job. Now it just runs locally via launchd 🙃 www.ericapisani.dev/trillium-updates-choosing-to-self-host/

buttondown.comKnow Your Stuff Ontario!A newsletter that uses AI to summarize bills and their impacts as they move through the Ontario Legislative Assembly. Stay informed without subjecting yourself to the click-bait and stress of the news...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

✍️Wrote up some fun lessons from a few months of building Trillium (my Ontario bill-tracker side project) with Claude's API, including the time it flat-out refused to make up a bill summary when my prompt was faulty. 😅 www.ericapisani.dev/trillium-upd...

ericapisani.devTrillium Update: Lessons from Steering Claude and Building on Its APISince sharing what I've learned in my initial post about Trillium a few months back, I've gotten much further with it. There was about a month of legislative activity (~February/March) that gave me a...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Built a Claude skill in a codeathon that generates codebase diagrams from unfamiliar repos 🗺️ tldr: Claude is great at code structure, terrible at line numbers (like, off by hundreds), and subagents make a real difference for complex workflows write-up here 👇 www.ericapisani.dev/generating-d...

ericapisani.devGenerating diagrams for unfamiliar codebases using an AI skillEveryone who has worked in software has experience poring over multiple codebases trying to understand how all the different pieces of functionality interact. One of my first starter tasks when I joi...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

✍️ New blog post: I built the same project twice to see how much initial structure affects AI coding assistant results. Spoiler: quite a bit. www.ericapisani.dev/give-your-ai-coding-assistant-something-to-work-with-a-case-study/

ericapisani.devGive Your AI Coding Assistant Something to Work With: A Case StudyOver my winter break, I'd been noodling over a new side project idea related to Ontario politics. I used to enjoy following what goes on, but these days looking at news articles and reading the email...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Had a great chat with Olimpiu Pop on the InfoQ podcast about hosting QCon London's "Performance and Sustainability" track and how developers can take small steps to improve software's environmental and social impact. You can listen or read the transcript here: www.infoq.com/podcasts/dev... 🎧

infoq.comDevelopers Can Improve the ESG Aspects of Software By Tackling Early Ethical DebtErica Pisani, host of the Performance and Sustainability track at QCon London 2025, reflects on lessons from assembling the track and from attending the talks. She touches on the importance of the env...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

✍️ New blog post alert: What I learned from Anthropic's "Building with the Claude API" course My biggest learnings from the course and what I'm excited to explore next. www.ericapisani.dev/what-i-learn...

ericapisani.devWhat I learned from Anthropic's "Building with the Claude API" courseI decided to take this course in order to get a high-level understanding of all the features that Claude had to offer, and a better understanding of how these services worked under the hood, as well a...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Built my first side project in ages: a Toronto independent grocer finder! 🛒 Turns out parsing municipal data is tricky, but I had a blast working on something I actually wanted to use. Can read more about it here: www.ericapisani.dev/building-my-...

ericapisani.devBuilding "My Local Grocer"This is a side project that I've been picking away at on-and-off for the past few years, and I'm finally at a place where I can say I'm "done". My Local Grocer was my attempt to make small mom-and-po...

Erica Pisani reposted

InfoQ
@infoq.com

Building a conference track? A new guide by Erica Pisani on #InfoQ shares lessons from hosting a track at #QConLondon. 💡 Pro tip: Start outreach months early & be upfront about speaker benefits (travel, etc.). It’s a game-changer. Read the playbook: bit.ly/4feFxCH

bit.lyA First-Timer’s Guide to Curating a Technical Conference TrackOne first-time track host shares the process, constraints, and takeaways from building a track from scratch at QCon London 2025.
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Joined Gaël Duez on the GreenIO podcast to chat about the track I hosted at @qconferences.com London this year, the tight relationship between performance and sustainability in software, and so much more! 🎙️ Episode is on all major platforms, and also here! ⬇️ podcast.greenio.tech/e/r8km95l8-5...

podcast.greenio.tech#59 Debriefing Qcon Sustainability track with Erica PisaniHow is sustainability covered in main tech conferences? Sure cybersecurity, DevOps, or anything related to SRE, is covered at length. Not to mention AI… But what room is left for the environmental i...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Alex Good talking about how we can build build more local-first software - removing the high level of dependency that often exists in software today on centralized servers that are often outside of our control at @qconferences.com London 2025

Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

I'm excited to announce I'll be hosting the "Performance and Sustainability: How to make Software Greener" track at #QConLondon, April 7–11, 2025! You can check out all the amazing speakers that will be a part of it here: qconlondon.com/track/apr202... Hope to see you there!

qconlondon.comQCon London 2025 | Performance and Sustainability in Practice: How to Make Software GreenerGet practical inspiration and best practices on emerging software trends directly from senior software developers at early adopter companies.
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

TIL about "The Copenhagen Catalog" and I kind of want a poster of these. Anyone know where I can find one (or even the ebook for it)? Sadly, it looks like the original site no longer runs, but I found what it used to look like on the internet archive - web.archive.org/web/20180914...

web.archive.orgThe Copenhagen Catalog150 principles for a new direction in tech - The principles were created by hundred and fifty humans in 48 hours at Techfestival in Copenhagen as the next step after The Copenhagen Letter.
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

For those who need something light hearted in their feed right now: Here's a clip of my dog Ada walking down stairs entirely on her front paws because she hates the feeling of her winter boots on her back paws

Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Really cool to see how folks used to program. I can't imagine the fear of dropping the cards and having to figure out how to put them back in order though 😅

Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Missing the ability to easily fold code blocks since switching to Neovim from another IDE? I definitely was, and I wrote a small guide to help folks using LazyVim to quickly install the nvim-ufo plugin that adds this functionality: www.ericapisani.dev/how-to-insta...

ericapisani.devHow to install nvim-ufo in LazyVim to enable foldable code blocksA feature that I've found myself missing since making the switch to Vim as my editor of choice is the ability to easily fold and expand code blocks. I know this functionality is included in Neovim, b...
Erica Pisani
@ericapisani.dev

Finished my move off of 🐦 by locking my posts and uninstalling the app this morning (rather than deactivating/deleting which would've given other folks the ability to take my old handle after 30 days). Feels real good to have that finally sorted.