This post is entirely written by hand, in vim, by me, Jeremy Huntwork, the creator and maintainer of Mere Linux.

The three previous blog articles on this site were shaped and guided by me, but composed by AI.

Similarly, the package manager for Mere Linux, mere, was very strongly shaped and guided by me, but written by AI.

I have no problems stating this openly and clearly. And now that I have a clearer picture of what was produced and what is possible I can say two things:

  • I don’t intend to keep writing blog posts with AI
  • I do intend to keep using AI to craft and grow mere and Mere Linux

My position on AI is that it’s a power tool. And like most power tools, they can be used to make work easier and produce things more quickly. They can also be used irresponsibly and produce garbage. It takes care and skill to use them effectively.

The specification doc is existing proof in the mere repository that I have been carefully spelling out a vision and refining it, something that LLMs working with me must build towards and help implement. For mere, I am not making haphazard or random choices. The goals, design, features, tooling and choice of libraries are all mine. Agents help me deliver.

For blog posts, I feel differently. The previous posts said what I wanted to say, but the voice wasn’t really mine. And if I’m honest, I don’t really love the results. So for that reason, going forward, I don’t plan to write with AI anymore. I want to use my own voice. But it’s not because I am anti-AI.

Recently, I moved the main repositories back from codeberg.org to Github. I would have preferred not to do that, but Codeberg’s recent anti-LLM Terms of Use made it clear they were not welcoming any real use of LLMs. As much as I would prefer something other than Github, that is what works for now.

Up to now I haven’t really entered into the public fray of AI or anti-AI. Nor do I intend to make any points here, only that I plan to continue using it.

So what will that mean going forward? Recently I have been using swamp and I find the shape of it feels mostly right. Already I have published there some extensions that I hope will help me create more deterministic workflows for Mere development. Stay tuned for similar tools that should make Mere easier for humans and AI alike to develop with.

I’m pushing towards a 1.0 release of the package manager, and locally I have a desktop based on river a custom WM written in Zig and Quickshell. I am working on publishing those recipes publicly and am aiming for a release.