DEV Community: Dhanush N

I Coded Without AI for 30 Days. Here's What It Did to My Brain.

Dhanush N — Tue, 16 Jun 2026 13:06:28 +0000

No Copilot. No ChatGPT. No AI extensions. Just me, a blank editor, and 30 days of pure frustration turned into clarity.

A friend of mine asked a junior dev on his team why he used a recursive approach in a pull request.

The answer: "Copilot suggested it."

He had no idea why his own code worked.

That story haunted me. Because when I looked at my own recent projects, I found functions I couldn't fully explain either. I had just hit tab and moved on.

So I ran an experiment. I uninstalled Copilot, logged out of ChatGPT, and coded with zero AI for 30 days.

What I expected:

Slower output
Minor frustration

What actually happened:

Week 1: My productivity crashed by 60%. I couldn't even write a clean email without waiting for a suggestion that wasn't coming.
Week 2: Flow state returned. For the first time in over a year, I sat in deep focus for 2+ hours without a single interruption from ghost text.
Week 3: The quality of my code got noticeably better. I was catching bugs I would have blindly shipped before.
Week 4: I developed 3 strict rules for how I will use AI going forward. One of them (the "15-Minute Rule") has already changed how I debug permanently.

The 15-Minute Rule:

When you hit a bug, set a timer. For 15 minutes, no AI. Read the error. Check the docs. Trace the logic. Think.

90% of the time, I solved it before the timer went off. And every time, I actually learned something instead of just pasting a fix.

The full story:

I recorded the entire unfiltered breakdown of all 30 days on camera. No slides. No animations. Just the honest truth about what happens when you force your brain to work again.

Be honest in the comments:
Could you survive 7 days of coding without any AI assistance? 👇

Is Copilot Making Us Worse Developers?

Dhanush N — Sun, 07 Jun 2026 15:20:13 +0000

We are outsourcing our logic to AI. Here is why that's dangerous, and the meta-skills you need to learn instead

Be honest. When was the last time you wrote a complex regex from scratch, or set up a boilerplate server without hitting Tab to let GitHub Copilot finish it for you?

I’ve been watching a really disturbing trend in our industry over the last 12 months.

I’m seeing junior devs ship React components they don't actually understand. I'm seeing senior engineers use ChatGPT to debug stack traces instead of actually reading the logs.

We are slowly, quietly, outsourcing our brains.

And look—I get it. I use AI every single day. It makes me faster. But there is a massive difference between using AI to amplify your skills, and using AI to replace your skills.

If you don't know the difference, your career as a developer is in serious danger.

The "Prompt Monkey" Trap 🙈

Right now, everyone thinks "Prompt Engineering" is the holy grail. But let's strip away the hype.

AI gives you exactly what you ask for. If you don't understand the underlying architecture, the system constraints, or the business logic, you are going to ask for the wrong thing. You’ll get a block of code that compiles perfectly, looks beautiful and introduces a massive memory leak in production.

If you lose the ability to verify the output of an AI, you are no longer an engineer. You are a passenger.

So, how do we fix this? How do we future-proof our careers when the tools are getting smarter than us?

You have to pivot. You have to stop focusing solely on syntax and start mastering the meta-skills.

The Meta-Skills AI Can't Replace

I realized this was becoming such an epidemic that I sat down and mapped out exactly what separates a replaceable "AI user" from a truly irreplaceable engineer.

I found 12 specific skills. Here are two of the most critical ones:

1. Systems Thinking 🏗️

AI is terrible at second and third-order consequences. It operates in isolation. It can write a brilliant database query, but it doesn't intuitively know how that query will bottleneck the microservice downstream during a traffic spike.

Great engineers think in networks and loops. You need to understand how the entire system connects.

2. Deep Focus & Unplugging 🧘

We live in an era of instant answers. Got a bug? Ask ChatGPT. But the hardest, most valuable engineering problems aren't solved in 5 seconds. They require sitting in a state of deep, uncomfortable focus for hours. If you train your brain to rely on the instant dopamine hit of an AI-generated answer, you will lose the stamina required to solve actual hard problems.

The Full Survival Guide

I couldn't fit the nuance of all 12 skills into a single DEV post without turning it into a textbook.

So, I recorded a completely unfiltered, deep-dive video breaking down exactly what these 12 skills are, why they matter, and how to start building them today.

If you rely on Copilot, ChatGPT or any other AI for your daily dev work, you cannot afford to skip this.

💬 Let’s discuss in the comments: Do you feel like your foundational coding skills have gotten slightly worse since you started using AI tools? Or has it genuinely made you a better engineer?
Let me know below! 👇

A tool to make your GitHub README impossible to ignore 🚀

Dhanush N — Sat, 23 May 2026 08:43:38 +0000

Your GitHub profile is your developer resume. It's the first thing recruiters, open-source maintainers and other developers see when they click on your name.

But let's be honest... most READMEs look exactly the same.

I wanted to add something dynamic, eye-catching and personalized to my profile. I loved the idea of a "typing text" effect, but existing tools felt limited. You couldn't add modern design trends like neon glows, linear gradients, or glassmorphic macOS windows.

So, I decided to build my own.

Enter ScribeSVG: An ultra-fast, highly customizable typing animation generator for your GitHub README.

✨ What makes ScribeSVG different?

I didn't just want to build another standard text generator. I wanted this to feel like a premium design tool for developers. Here is what I added:

🎨 14+ Developer Fonts: From Fira Code to Space Mono and Press Start 2P.
🌈 Linear Gradients & Neon Glows: Add cyber-punk glows or sleek Tokyo Night gradients to your text.
🪟 Custom Layouts: Choose between Raw Text, a macOS Terminal Frame, or a Glassmorphic Card.
⚡ Next.js Edge Runtime: It renders in milliseconds globally so your README never lags.

🛠️ The Technical Challenge: Bypassing GitHub's Sandbox

Building this wasn't as simple as just returning an SVG. If you've ever tried to embed external assets in a GitHub README, you know that GitHub's camo image proxy is ruthless.

GitHub strips out external stylesheets, blocks <script> tags, and prevents standard web font imports via @import or <link>.

So, how did I get custom fonts like Fira Code to work inside an <img> tag on GitHub?

I had to build a custom renderer that fetches the font file directly from Google Fonts at runtime, converts the .woff2 font into a Base64 Data URI, and dynamically injects it directly into the <style> block of the SVG payload.

Combine that with CSS-only @keyframes animations, and everything is bundled into a single, self-contained SVG response that GitHub's proxy has no choice but to render perfectly! 🎯

🚀 How to use it in your README

You don't need to write any code to use it. I built a visual builder that lets you customize everything and generates the Markdown for you.

Go to scribesvg.vercel.app
Type your text lines, pick your colors, and tweak the speed.
Click the Markdown tab under "Get The Code".
Paste it into your README.md!

It looks like this:

[![Typing SVG](https://scribesvg.vercel.app/api/render?lines=Hello+World;Rebuilding+in+Next.js;Attracting+Sponsors&font=Fira+Code&size=24&color=36bcf7&center=true&vCenter=true&width=600&height=120)](https://github.com/DhanushNehru/ScribeSVG)

Checkout my github readme to see how things are rendered.

Star 🌟 the github repository to show your support

Auto-Generate Optimized GitHub Actions Workflows For Any Stack With This New CLI Tool

Dhanush N — Fri, 22 May 2026 15:09:53 +0000

We’ve all been there.

You finish building a new project. It’s clean, it’s working, and it’s ready to ship.

But then comes the worst part: Writing the CI/CD pipeline.

You open Google, copy a 3-year-old GitHub Actions workflow from Stack Overflow, spend 45 minutes debugging YAML indentation errors, and realize you forgot to configure dependency caching or security scans.

I got tired of repeating this manual process, so I built a zero-config CLI tool to solve it once and for all: ciraft.

🔍 What is ciraft?

ciraft is a lightweight CLI utility that scans your codebase, auto-detects your programming languages, package managers, and container setups, and instantly generates a production-grade CI/CD pipeline in seconds.

Instead of writing YAML from scratch, you just run:

npx ciraft

🛠️ How It Works (Behind the Scenes)

When you run ciraft, it performs a local analysis of your project files:

Detects your package managers: npm, pnpm, yarn, pip, poetry, go, or cargo.
Scans for tests and linters: Jest, pytest, vitest, ruff, etc.
Looks for Docker configuration: Dockerfiles, multi-stage targets, and Compose configurations.
Applies security best practices: Sets strict permissions, sets up matrix builds, configures concurrency gates, and automatically appends a Trivy vulnerability scan for Docker images.
It then renders a optimized .github/workflows/ci.yml using pre-compiled templates.

⚡ Try It Right Now
You can run it via npx or install it directly using Homebrew:

bash

Install via Homebrew

brew install https://raw.githubusercontent.com/DhanushNehru/ciraft/main/Formula/ciraft.rb

# Scan and generate
ciraft

🤝 Let's Collaborate (PRs Welcome!)

ciraft is 100% open-source, and I want to support every stack under the sun.

Currently, it supports Node.js, TypeScript, Python, Go, Rust, and Docker.

If you want to add support for a new language (like PHP, Java, Ruby, or Elixir) or a new CI provider (like GitLab CI or Jenkins), check out the repository! I have pre-written 30+ detailed GitHub Issues tagged with good first issue and hacktoberfest to help you get started.

👉 Check out the repository, drop a ⭐ if it saves you time, and let's build this together: ciraft

💬 What's the most annoying part of writing CI/CD pipelines for you? Let's discuss in the comments below! 👇

Goodbye S3 SDK! AWS Just Turned Every Bucket Into a High-Speed Hard Drive

Dhanush N — Wed, 08 Apr 2026 12:27:16 +0000

For years, developers have shared a common, silent pain.

If you wanted to do anything and I mean anything with a file stored in Amazon S3, you had to follow a ritual. You had to initialize a complex SDK, fetch the object, download it to a temporary folder on your server, do your work and then upload it back.

It was slow. It was expensive. And honestly? It was annoying.

But everything changed with the launch of Amazon S3 Files .

AWS just did the one thing we’ve all been dreaming of: They turned S3 into a high-performance local hard drive.

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The Simplified Version

Imagine you have a giant warehouse (S3) full of documents. In the past, if you wanted to read one page, you had to hire a courier (the SDK) to drive to the warehouse, find the box, and bring the whole thing to your office.

With S3 Files, it's like AWS just built a magic bridge between your office and the warehouse. You can reach out of your window, grab any document you want and read it instantly. No couriers. No waiting.

Why This is a Big Deal (and Why It's Going Viral)

If you aren't an infrastructure nerd, this might sound like a small tweak. But for anyone building modern apps, this is a massive shift. Here is why:

1. Zero Code Changes

You don't need to learn a new library. If your code knows how to read a file from a disk (using standard commands like open() or fs.readFile), it now automatically knows how to read from S3. You can literally use the terminal commands you use every day like ls to list files or grep to search text directly on your S3 buckets.

2. Sub-Millisecond Speed

We are used to S3 being "fast enough," but this new release pushes it to another level. We're talking about 1ms latency. That is so fast that your application won't even realize it's talking to a remote cloud server thousands of miles away. It feels like the data is sitting right there on your computer.

3. No More "Storage Math"

One of the biggest headaches in scaling apps is worrying about "disk space." With S3 Files, your local disk is now effectively infinite. You can mount a bucket with petabytes of data onto a tiny server and it will just… work. No more capacity planning. No more OOM (Out of Memory) crashes because you downloaded a file that was too big.

What Can You Actually Do With This?

The possibilities are kind of wild.

AI & Machine Learning: You can train models on massive datasets directly from S3. No more waiting hours for "data syncing" before you can start.
Media Editing: You can edit 4K video or process high-res images directly from the cloud without downloading them first.
Log Hunting: Need to find an error in 5 years of logs? Just run a search command on the mounted folder. It's instant.
Legacy Apps: Have an old piece of software that only works with local files? You can now move it to the cloud and point it at S3 without changing a single line of code.

Conclusion

AWS just removed the "wall" between object storage and file storage.

We are entering an era where the cloud doesn't feel like a separate place you have to call via an API. It feels like an extension of your own machine.

If you are still manually downloading files from S3 in 2024, it's time to stop. The magic bridge is here.

Who Am I?

Hi, I'm Dhanush Nehru — an Engineer, Cybersecurity Enthusiast, Youtuber and Content creator. I document my journey through articles and videos, sharing real-world insights about DevOps, automation, system design, security, cloud engineering and more.

You can support me / sponsor me or follow my work via X, Instagram, Github or Youtube.

Built a Blazing-Fast OSINT Scanner in Go

Dhanush N — Sun, 22 Feb 2026 12:05:21 +0000

Have you ever used a really cool open-source OSINT tool, only to find that as the maintainers added more features, the UI became a complete, unreadable mess?

I call this the "Masonry Grid Nightmare." Dumping dozens of intelligence data points onto a single scrolling screen simply doesn't scale.

I got tired of slow tools and cluttered dashboards. So, I built my own.

Meet URL Hawk Scanner 🦅: A blazing-fast, concurrent vulnerability and recon scanner built in Go.

🎨 The Solution: A Next-Gen Glassmorphism HUD
To solve the UI clutter problem, I completely redesigned how OSINT data is displayed using a Split-Pane Glassmorphism HUD (Heads Up Display).

Left Sidebar: A sleek, scrollable glass list of all executed modules (DNS Records, Security Headers, Open Ports, etc.). Next to each tab is a pulsing status dot (🟢 Secure, 🟡 Warning, 🔴 Critical).

Right Viewer: A large, elegant glass viewing pane. When you click a module on the left, its rich data beautifully fades into the right pane.

The result? You can add 100 new plugins over the next year and the UI footprint never changes. It always feels like a clean, high-end cybersecurity terminal rather than a crowded grid.

⚡ Built for Speed & Extensibility
Under the hood, URL Hawk Scanner is powered by Go's concurrency model (Goroutines). It's designed with an isolated, pluggable architecture. It hits 10+ different network endpoints simultaneously without breaking a sweat.

Right out of the box, it checks for:

✅ DNS Records, WHOIS, & Open Ports
✅ Security Headers & Exposed Sensitive Files
✅ SSL Certificate Details & IP Geolocation
✅ Technology Stack, Wayback Archives, & More...
🤝 Let's Build Together!

I built this tool to be fast, beautiful, and highly extensible. If you want a fast OSINT scanner, or are looking for a fun open-source Go project to contribute to, check out the repo!

⭐ Drop a star on the repo and try it out:
https://github.com/DhanushNehru/urlhawkscanner

Let me know what you think in the comments! What OSINT feature should be added here?

Dev Retro 2025: Journey in review

Dhanush N — Sat, 10 Jan 2026 14:53:11 +0000

Hey there 👋 it’s Dhanush N back with my annual dev retrospective.

Following the 2022, 2023 and 2024 editions, this year’s retro continues the tradition—but the full story now live.

If you are curious about the complete breakdown of this year—wins, failures, learnings and what is coming next—you can find it all here:

👉 Dev Retro 2025: Journey in review

Thank you for reading, supporting and being part of this journey so far.

Let’s keep learning, sharing and building together in 2026 and beyond. 🚀

Building Markdown Scribe

Dhanush N — Sat, 27 Dec 2025 15:04:39 +0000

I'm a developer who's long wanted to try Rust. This winter break, I finally dove in—no more excuses. As a self-learner, I skipped exhaustive tutorials and focused on building something real: Markdown Scribe, a fast, offline-first Markdown renderer and editor.

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My Learning Approach

Rustlings: Got halfway through for basics like ownership, borrowing, Result/Option, and syntax. That's enough to start building—don't feel guilty skipping the rest.
Resources: YouTube, The Rust Book, Rust by Example and docs.rs. Rust's docs are top-notch compared to JS/Python.

Why I Built It: A Personal Need in Cybersecurity

I write sensitive docs and notes, since I already speak about security often I needed something: Offline and local (no cloud leaks).
Lightweight (no bloated Electron apps).
Auditable and secure.

In security, Rust eliminates vulnerabilities like buffer overflows. Tools like 1Password and Firecracker use it.

Try Markdown Scribe

Star if useful!

GitHub Contributions welcome

AI in One Repo

Dhanush N — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:31:04 +0000

Dhanush N

Nov 2 '25

Everything You Need to Know About AI — In One Repository

#ai #resources #github #beginners

2 min read

[Boost]

Dhanush N — Sun, 16 Nov 2025 13:30:25 +0000

Everything You Need to Know About AI — In One Repository

Dhanush N ・ Nov 2

#ai #resources #github #beginners

Everything You Need to Know About AI — In One Repository

Dhanush N — Sun, 02 Nov 2025 12:08:33 +0000

If you've ever felt overwhelmed by the endless maze of AI tools, courses, frameworks and research papers scattered across the internet, you're not alone.

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I've spent months curating what might be the most comprehensive AI resource collection on GitHub: Ultimate AI Resources

Why This Repository Exists

The AI landscape is exploding. Every day brings new LLMs, frameworks, tools, and "must-read" papers. For developers, researchers, and AI enthusiasts, finding quality resources has become harder than learning AI itself.
This repository solves that problem.

What's Inside

Think of this as your AI Swiss Army knife. Whether you're a complete beginner or building production ML systems, you'll find what you need:

🎓 Learning & Education

Curated courses from Stanford's CS229 to Fast.ai's practical deep learning. No fluff — just the paths that actually work.

🛠️ Frameworks & Libraries

From PyTorch and TensorFlow to cutting-edge tools like LangChain and LlamaIndex. Everything you need to build real AI applications.

🚀 MLOps & Deployment

Because learning AI is one thing. Deploying it to production is another. Find the tools, pipelines, and monitoring solutions that scale.

📊 Datasets

Quality training data makes or breaks your model. Access vetted datasets across domains.

🤖 AI Tools & Apps

The latest AI-powered tools that are actually useful, not just hype.

⚖️ Ethics, Safety & Governance

Building responsibly matters. Resources on AI ethics, safety, and governance frameworks.

👥 Communities & Events

Connect with Discord channels, forums, and events where real AI builders hang out.

The Numbers

500+ vetted resources (and growing)
Organized into clear, searchable categories
Regularly updated with the latest tools and research
Community-driven through open contributions

Who This Is For

Beginners who don't know where to start
Developers building AI-powered applications
ML Engineers deploying models to production
Researchers staying current with the field
Anyone tired of googling "best AI resources" and getting ad-filled listicles

It's Open Source

Found something missing? The repo thrives on contributions. Fork it, add your favorite resource, and open a PR. The goal is to build the definitive AI resource hub — together.

Get Started

Stop bookmarking random Medium articles and scattered GitHub repos. Everything you need is here:
⭐ Ultimate-AI-Resources

Star the repo, bookmark it and use it every time you need a reliable AI resource. Because navigating AI shouldn't be harder than understanding it.

Have a resource that deserves to be included? Contribute here and help make this the go-to hub for the AI community.

My Tech Journey: From Developer to DevOps and Cybersecurity Enthusiast

Dhanush N — Mon, 22 Sep 2025 13:08:58 +0000

Sharing a bit about my journey in the tech world—how I’ve grown from a curious developer to a passionate advocate for DevOps, cybersecurity, and open source.

This video is a quick introduction to who I am, what drives me, and the challenges I’ve faced along the way. If you’re interested in tech, leadership, or personal growth in this space, I’d love for you to watch and connect.