Reading Notes #718

This week’s Reading Notes covers key updates ranging from new Blazor AI components that handle agent UIs to Docker announcements you definitely shouldn’t have missed at the recent WeAreDevelopers event. I also recommend checking out resources on why SDK integrations like Squad now support HydraFusion and how MCP servers might help restore our speed with Aspire infrastructure work today.

Programming

• Build Agentic UI with the new Blazor AI components (Daniel Roth) - A second set of AI-packed components for Blazor. Just like the first time, it looks very useful, assuming they match the scenario in your applications

AI

• How to be more ambitious: A tutorial for humans with models - Four different ways to use AI, and you probably already use one. Learn how else you could approach the next task

• Docker Cloud Sandboxes: Recap from WeAreDevelopers | Docker - This post recaps all the announcements made at the WeAreDevelopers event, and oh boy, I wish I hadn't missed it.

• Coming in Squad 1.1.0: you won't have to choose between Squad and HydraFusion anymore (Brady Gaster) - I really like those posts that explain the why. Why the version number? Why this change now?

• AG-UI Protocol now has a first-class .NET SDK - .NET Blog (Daniel Roth) - Nice native way to orchestrate agent connections.

Miscellaneous

• Console and worker apps | Aspire - I used to spend my days around Azure resources and IaC files, but much less recently. This MCP server is, I believe, what will help me get back to my speed
  

~frank

Reading Notes #694

A fast-moving mix this week: AI tooling, ARM readiness, Docker sandboxes, and real-world lessons from agents. Practical insights across .NET, DevOps, and local-first workflows.

Suggestion of the week

• Token Exhaustion: What Three AI Coding Agents Taught Me in a Single Week (Alexandre Brisebois) - Great post! Everyone needs to learn this lesson. Now you have an alternative instead of the hard way.

AI

• How Intelligent is AI? (Shawn Wildermuth) - Interesting thoughts about the current situation between code, developers, and AI

• How to Analyze Hugging Face for Arm64 Readiness (Ajeet Singh Raina) - This is a great tutorial that explains in detail how, in 7 steps, you can produce a stable arm container image.

• Foundry Local is now Generally Available (sam kemp) - Interesting solution when you need to stay local.

• Copilot CLI vs VS Code - When I Use Each (Golnaz) - Learn when some prefer using a CLI or an editor. There are so many different angles and things to do.

Programming

• Running AI agents with customized templates using docker sandbox (Andrew Lock) - The post have been waiting for! This post goes further than the happy path. Shows how to add the tools you want or the os you need.

• Why .NET MAUI Popups Lag and How to Fix Performance Issues (Kompelli Sravan Kumar) - Good to know performance as such a huge impact[on the user experience.

DevOps

• Reclaim Developer Hours through Smarter Vulnerability Prioritization with Docker and Mend.io (Adam Dawson, Dor Hayun) - Understand better the vulnerabilities with the new integration of mend.io to Docker

Podcasts

• Our Favorite Agent Setups (Agentic DevOps) - Nice discussion that goes through many AI harnesses, agents, models, and what they are playing with right now. OpenClaw, OpenCode, Claude Code, Copilot, and all of it.

• Michael Perry: AI-assisted Development - Episode 397 (AI DevOps Podcast) - Interesting discussion about AI-assisted Development (or can we say programming?) with a focus on skills and how they could be defined.