[Dev Catch Up #56] - Claude's WebSearch, Gemini's canvas, Kotlin 2.1.20, Oxlint, Docs, CodeTracer, oRPC, Wllama, Konva, OTPAuth, bknd and much more.
Bringing devs up to speed on the latest dev news from the trends including, a bunch of exciting developments and articles
Welcome to the 56th edition of DevShorts, Dev Catch Up!
For those who joined recently or are reading Dev Catch Up for the first time, I write about developer stories and open source, partly based on my work and experience interacting with people all over the globe.
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Must Read
Anthropic has released the most awaited feature, web search for Claude. It now provides more up-to-date responses by pulling information from the internet. Currently available for paid U.S. users. Support for free plans and more regions coming soon. Read Anthropic’s blog for more details.
Last week we covered Gemini's release, and now Google has rolled out two features with Gemini. Canvas - an interactive space for document and code editing, and Audio Overview transforms files into engaging podcast-style discussions. Both are available now for Gemini subscribers globally.
For Kotlin developers, version 2.1.20 is out. The K2 compiler includes updates to the kapt and Lombok plugins, and there's a new DSL for configuring multiplatform projects. Check the release notes for full details.
If you're working with large-scale JavaScript or TypeScript projects, check out Oxlint. A Rust-based linter that runs 93 rules by default with zero setup and is over 50x faster than ESLint. It’s being used by teams at Preact, Shopify, and ByteDance. Learn more about Oxlint at their official page.
OSS Highlight of the Week
As developers, we have all at least once wished we could step back through our code to understand what went wrong. CodeTracer, is an open-source time-traveling debugger, that records program execution into a trace file for step-by-step replay. You can inspect execution in a GUI and trace values back to where they changed. It’s still in early development and may evolve over time.
Good to know
Notion has been the choice for many documents collaboration needs, but Docs has emerged as an open-source alternative with real-time collaboration and AI-powered editing. Check more details on official page.
Working with large codebases often leaves me wondering who's responsible for specific components.
git-whoaddresses this by showing ownership for entire subsystems, rather than the line-by-line approach ofgit blame. Explore the GitHub Repo to learn more about it.Canvas-based graphics can be hard to manage across frameworks. Konva bridges that gap with a 2D canvas library that works well with React, Vue, Angular, and vanilla JS. Check the Konva page to find more details.
When developing APIs, avoiding runtime errors through type safety is always a plus. oRPC combines Remote Procedure Calls with OpenAPI to ensure type-safe APIs that work across popular JavaScript runtimes and frameworks. Learn more about it in this GitHub repo.
Running inference in the browser is an area evolving fast. Wllama brings llama.cpp to the browser using WebAssembly, enabling client-side inference without servers. Check the GitHub repo if you are exploring local inference.
Any developer who has built authentication systems knows the headache of implementing OTP based Auth. I recently found OTPAuth, a library that handles generating and validating HOTP/TOTP codes across Node.js, Deno, Bun, and browsers. Check their GitHub repo if you're building Auth Systems.
Notable FYIs
If you use
ruby-samlfor SAML-based login, be aware of critical vulnerabilities in versions up to 1.17.0. Update to 1.18.0, and ensure dependencies are also updated. Read full details on this page.Reasoning with LLMs is evolving fast but finance-focused reasoning still lags behind. Fin-R1 is a 7B model for financial reasoning, built on DeepSeek-R1. Check out the paper and code if you're working on LLMs for finance.
If you're using Node.js in your projects, note that Corepack won’t be included from version 25 and above. You will need to install it manually if your project relies on it. Check the official announcement for more info.
Even with faster bundlers like Rspack, builds can be hard to understand. Rsdoctor offers visual insights and diagnostics for Rspack and webpack, with support for Next.js and Storybook. Read more on their release notes.
Setting up observability in Node.js usually requires instrumentation code, but I found a simple approach. Running your backend in Deno gives built-in tracing without code changes. Check this Deno blog for more details.
Many of us have used Supabase and Firebase, and I found bknd to be an interesting alternative. It is lightweight, runs anywhere and supports databases, authentication, media, and workflows. If you need a flexible backend solution without vendor lock-in, give it a try.
That’s it from us with this edition. We hope you are going away with a ton of new information. Lastly, share this newsletter with your colleagues and pals if you find it valuable. A subscription to the newsletter will be awesome if you are reading it for the first time.