A faster, cheaper Claude Code alternative with automatic provider failover using Hermes Agent

After yet another Claude Code outage that lasted multiple hours, I decided to find out what it actually takes to replace it. Specifically: what does running Hermes Agent (Nous Research's open-source, self-improving agent framework) with open and open-weight models via hosted inference providers actually look like in practice, and how does it stack up against Claude Code on the Max 20x plan?

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Tools of the Trade

A list of hardware, software, and services that I use day to day as a software engineer.

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How to use .env files with Spring Boot

Ideally you want to define property values in a single place and reuse them in your docker-compose.yml file and your Spring Boot application. This is where .env files come in handy. In this post we'll quickly walk through how to use .env files with Spring Boot.

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How to build a self-executable jar file

I'm always looking for ways to simplify the management of Java services. Recently, I've learned how to create a self-executing jar file without the need for an extra bash script.

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