[Dev Catch Up # 81] - ChatGPT Pulse, DevTools MCP Server, How Kafka Works, GraphQL 101, How Claude Code is built, Perplexity's Search API, OpenCut, Cloudflare's VibeSDK, WebSearch in Ollama, and 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 81st 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
OpenAI has launched ChatGPT Pulse. It gives you quick daily updates as cards. It can deliver personalized updates every day based on chats and connected apps. For example, it can check your calendar and show an update about your meeting. We’ll have to see if this feature becomes a hit or just gets muted when it’s not relevant. Check OpenAI’s post on ChatGPT Pulse.
Chrome has released DevTools MCP Server. So, AI agents can now connect directly to DevTools. Agents can check if UI changes are reflected in the browser and spot console issues. Anything you’d normally do in DevTools is now possible for agents too. Check Chrome’s blog to know more about DevTools MCP Server.
Apache Kafka is the popular open source distributed event streaming platform. It’s durable, scalable, and comes with strong integration and stream processing capabilities. Check the Substack post if you want to know more about how Kafka works.
REST API is a popular way to build APIs. But it has limits, like sending too much or not the right data. GraphQL fixes this by letting clients ask for exactly what they need. It makes APIs more flexible and efficient. If you want to know more, check out this Substack post on GraphQL 101.
OSS Highlight of the Week
OpenCut is an open-source video editor. It’s the best alternative for CapCut, which is now under paywalls. It supports timeline editing, multi-track design, real-time preview, transitions, filters, and export without watermarks. You can use it across Windows, macOS, and Linux. Check the GitHub repo to know more details on OpenCut video editor.
Good to know
Claude Code is being used by most developers today. But how many of us know how it is built? Claude Code is built with TypeScript and React, and about 90% of its own code is written by Claude itself. Check this Substack post, which covers the interesting tech details of how Claude Code is built.
Writing clean code is the key to building good software. This post shares 100 practical tips for clean code. It covers meaningful naming, focused functions, helpful comments, proper tests, and formatting. Check the post if you want to level up your coding skills.
Many companies are building their own AI coding platforms to fit their needs. By building your own, you can add custom logic to prompt LLMs and give users more relevant results. Cloudflare has released VibeSDK. So now anyone can build a vibe coding platform and deploy it with just one click. Check Cloudflare’s blog for more details.
Developers must have heard about Claude Code subagents. They bring parallel development. Instead of step-by-step work, you can spin up different agents for different work at the same time. This shift speeds up iterations and lowers the cost of failure. Check the article to see how to use Claude Code sub-agents for parallel development.
OpenAI’s APIs have grown through different stages. The first Completions API was basic, then Chat Completions added conversations, and Assistants brought tools, but each had limits. The new Responses API unifies it all, built for reasoning, multimodal input, and agents. Check this post to see why OpenAI built Responses API.
Notable FYIs
I recently worked with the Figma MCP server to build UI code directly from a Figma design. They also have a remote MCP server for easier setup. Now Figma has launched an MCP catalog that shows how to connect Figma with top MCP clients like VS Code, Cursor, Claude Code, Windsurf, and more. It’s a useful resource if you want to build UI faster from designs.
Ollama has added a web search API. Models can now pull the latest info from the web to reduce hallucinations and improve accuracy. It works as a REST API and is built into their Python and JavaScript libraries. Check Ollama’s blog to know more about their web search API.
Microsoft has added Claude 4 models to Copilot. Claude 4 Sonnet and Claude 4 Opus are now part of the existing model catalog, alongside OpenAI models. Check Microsoft’s blog on this. You can now start using Claude 4 models in Copilot.
Perplexity has launched a new Search API. It gives developers access to the same engine that works behind Perplexity App. It covers hundreds of billions of webpages and returns ranked snippets ready for AI use. Check their blog to know more about Perplexity’s web search API.
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.