Over the past year, I’ve tried several different ADEs (Warp, Antigravity, Xirp, etc.) and IDEs (Cursor, VS Code, etc.). There are plenty of good options for these use cases now. However, I wanted a simple tool to manage AI agents. Something where I could have all of my AI subscriptions easily accessible (not token-based), and the focus isn’t on coding/pushing commits. Essentially a fallback app separate from my coding workflow.
I started by trying Paseo, Conduct, Orca, T3 Code, etc. These are all great products, but I wanted something simpler and faster. None of them really clicked for me. They also had additional overhead simply because they are mostly Electron apps. 🐌
Then I stumbled across Zeron. It’s a new open-source and native Mac app to manage AI agents, built with Rust and GPUI. It looks beautiful and is blazing fast. ⚡ CPU and memory usage are much lower than with anything else, simply because of how it was built. I’ve been using this a lot over the past few weeks, and it’s now a regular part of my workflow.
It’s incredibly easy to set up and have your agents running within seconds. If you already have the CLIs installed, they’ll be automatically detected, and you can just toggle them on. One of the things I really like about Zeron is its focus on minimalism and simplicity. Lots of other tools try to do everything, and it gets messy. Note: I’m just using the local mode at the moment.
Zeron also comes with some great themes out of the box. This is exactly how I would have built it out; Dracula, Ayu, Nord, GitHub, etc. are all there.
I have a Claude subscription, so you might wonder why I am using this? Here are a few reasons:
First off, when it comes to AI management tools like this, they don’t sync your sessions with the memory of the respective desktop app. For example, my memory in Zeron doesn’t sync with Claude desktop. I view this as a huge positive. I’m using Zeron for all the things I don’t want to influence my memory. Think of it like an alternative to using Incognito mode in Claude. On the flip side, memory is a big reason I still use Claude desktop for certain tasks. 🧠
Second, I like having the ability to easily switch between other providers like Codex (ChatGPT) and Grok, without needing multiple other apps installed. I don’t really want 5+ AI apps on my dock.
Third, it’s a great way to not blow through your subscription limits. 💰 For example, I use Claude desktop for intense work-related tasks and research. But for everything else, I’m now using Zeron. If I were to estimate, I use Grok 85% of the time and Codex 15% of the time.
Everyone seems to use AI in a different way. But definitely recommend giving Zeron a try if you are interested in a clean and fast way to manage AI agents. The developer is very active and encourages users to submit PRs.
Updates ✍️
We’ve been traveling a bit with family this month. We pushed out a small update for our Perfmatters WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:
Removed the Script Manager MU Mode dependency on pluggable.php to avoid conflicts with SMTP and other plugins that override core pluggable functions. This makes MU Mode a lot more reliable. 👍
Fixed an issue where Script Manager MU Mode could permanently deactivate plugins when another plugin (such as Freemius) wrote a filtered active_plugins list back to the database.
Fixed an issue where Script Manager MU Mode could resolve some custom post type URLs to the wrong post ID.
Fixed an issue where Fetch Priority would always use the first matched priority value when the same selector had separate device rules. 📱
Added ABSPATH checks to plugin include files where needed.
Hardened license form request verification. 🔒
Added capability checks to Used CSS and Minify clear actions, and sanitized the Used CSS file type parameter.
Improved license and update API request handling to reduce how often sites contact the Perfmatters server, including longer update check caching, cached license status checks, and a staggered retry delay after failed update requests. ⚡
We pushed out a small update for our Novashare WordPress plugin. Here are a few of the changes:
Fixed an issue where custom button and icon colors on the Share Buttons block were not applied when selected from the theme palette. 🎨
Updated share and follow block inspector controls to use ToggleGroupControl instead of the deprecated ButtonGroup component.
Improved license and update API request handling to reduce how often sites contact the Novashare server, including longer update check caching, cached license status checks, and a staggered retry delay after failed update requests. ⚡
We’ll be back in full swing with September updates.
Interesting things 🔎
Misc.
Bluetooth connectivity will soon get a major boost in speed.
Parallels Desktop 27 brings OpenGL 4.3 and AI acceleration to Apple Silicon. 🚀
Want to give Omarchy a try? Eduardo built a version that runs on your MacBook without messing with dual-booting, etc.
Like mechanical keyboard sounds but don’t have one? Or perhaps you’re using a laptop? The Keeby app mimics the sounds for you. ⌨️
This web app game is insane! As the developer said, it shows how far web development has come.
A heads up, Gmail is killing off third-party support for the “send as” feature. It will still work for Gmail/Workspace emails.
Chrome adopts what may be the best protection yet against account takeovers.
Yahoo just redesigned its weather app for the weather geek in us all. Never thought I would be installing a Yahoo app in 2026, but I actually switched over to it. It’s beautiful! ☀️
WordPress
WordPress 7.1 was officially launched this month. 🎉 Carlo has an excellent summary of the main changes.
WordPress Contributor Toolkit 1.0 is now available for Windows, macOS, and Linux. This should make it easier for beginners to start contributing.
Many of you probably know the Killed by Google website. Muhammad launched the same thing, but for WordPress plugins. Pretty cool!
A 2026 State of the Community survey found most still back open source but feel worse about WordPress as a project. Some interesting data.
Ahmed migrated a website with 800+ articles from WordPress to a static HTML site managed with Claude Code. He later moved it back to WordPress. A lot of comments going back and forth in this thread.
Are the new WordPress delayed updates making security problems worse? 🔒
A great post from Nick Gray on discovering that 99% of his traffic was bots and what to do about it. I noticed this as well during our last DDoS attack on our WordPress site.
What 3,400 WordPress plugin reviews tell you about what makes a great plugin. An interesting read from Matt.
Anne McCarthy joins The PHP Foundation board.
WS Form added an auto-delete submission option after a period of time in version 1.12.4. This gets rid of one more thing I need to worry about. 👍
The WordPress security team has begun a coordinated effort called the Core Security Initiative to make WordPress safer.
Marketing
Introducing Open Analytics. An open-source, AI-native and privacy-first web analytics platform with no cookies or IP tracking. 📈 It’s definitely worth a look. It’s around 9 KB in terms of front-end JS and is jam-packed full of features. I’m sticking with Fathom though. Love what they have done since day one, and less than 3 KB. But always good to have more affordable options.
Namecheap is getting into the top-level domain name business. It applied for 40 TLDs.
Bending Spoons acquires Airtable. These guys have a playbook and are really good at it. Unfortunately, it’s usually the end users that pay the price.
Performance
Ross dives into how he made his WordPress plugin 30x faster.
One of the biggest performance wins from WordPress 7.1 is that the browser now compresses and resizes images. This means it won’t hit PHP or run into memory limits. ⚡ Native AVIF images are also now supported. I wouldn’t use this as a replacement if you already have an image optimization workflow in place, but it will drastically speed things up for beginners or those who forget.
Year to date, HTTP/3 support is up 18.5% on mobile, and 18.3% on desktop.
Gutenberg 23.8 is getting a performance improvement. On a post with 1,000 paragraphs, “Select all” dropped from 16.8 seconds to 0.4 seconds. 😮
Chrome 152 brings a new “preloaded” column in Chrome DevTools! I’ve been wanting this for a long time. This will be very helpful in optimizing sites. Early Hints are also now categorized under the Initiator column.
AI
Cursor launched Origin, a GitHub alternative.
Google Discover is getting an AI chatbot-tuned feed. This is one of the few ways I get my news. The Google app is actually very accurate in terms of showing me what I want to see, without all the junk or politics. Hoping this makes it to iOS.
Have you tried Grok Bot? I haven’t pulled the trigger yet. When it comes to paid subscriptions, I usually like to let them work out the kinks first. They just lowered the plan required to get access this last week. But it seems many are hitting their weekly limits really fast.
An insightful thread on how Claude is now watermarking content.
OpenAI is giving ChatGPT free users unlimited text chats.
Gemini Robotics 2 brings whole-body intelligence to robots. 🫳🤖
Grok Imagine Image 2.0 is now generally available as the new quality mode.
Grok 4.6 is officially out. I’ve seen a lot of folks now starting to switch to Grok more. I’m using it quite a bit now in Zeron.
Your sessions can now message each other in Claude Code. And Chrome sessions now carry over to desktop (I’ve been waiting for this one!). 👏 Cowork is also now available everywhere.
ChatGPT can now remember your activity across the apps and websites on your computer.
AI could bring Mayo-quality health care to everyone. As someone with an autoimmune disease, I think AI and medical breakthroughs/automation are the thing I’m most excited about.
Another example is a robot that draws your blood without a human. 💉 I have to get my blood drawn every 3 months. The actual blood part takes three minutes. The other 10-20 minutes? Waiting in line so that the nurses can see me. If you automate the blood draws, the lines probably disappear. That alone would be amazing!
If you're in the Scottsdale, AZ area, hit me up, and we can grab lunch! 🥗👋