DEV Community: Sean Boult

AWS Waddles: What the Duck?

Sean Boult — Mon, 01 Jun 2026 23:33:50 +0000

For over a decade, there's been a tiny ASCII duck hiding in plain sight. Open the page source for amazon.com, scroll all the way to the bottom, and there it is, surfing the web and quietly meowing at anyone who looks.

<!--       _
       .__(.)< (MEOW)
        \___)
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-->

A few years ago I stumbled onto this meowing duck, and it turns out the internet had too. MEOW has lived in that source code for years. If you've never seen it, go look now!

One day I thought, why not bring that same duck energy to AWS? So I made my own mascot. Same surfing spirit, except this one doesn't meow. It barks. Meet Waddles.

<!--       _
       .__(.)< (woof)
        \___)
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-->

Waddles made his first appearance on March 12, 2026 and landed on the timeline on X/Twitter.
// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-2032135107977322989-291'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=2032135107977322989&theme=dark" }

You'll be seeing Waddles around more, but I figured I owe the internet an explanation of sorts.

Ok, I think all my ducks are in a row now 😂.

# Waddles takin a nap
    _
.__(_)<
 \___)

Want your own Waddles? I built a little tool called ducksay. Check out the repo here. Give it a message and it hands it right back to you, duck included:

$ ducksay "woof"
<!--       _
       .__(.)< (woof)
        \___)
 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~-->

If ducks aren't your thing, drop some of your favorite ASCII art in the comments. Waddles could use some friends.

Happy Coding 🤗!

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Developer. Hacker. Creator.

Markdown Should be Supported Everywhere Natively

Sean Boult — Fri, 29 May 2026 19:27:54 +0000

You've probably seen this tweet by @trq212 floating around on Twitter about letting agents write HTML instead of markdown...

// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-2052811606032269638-893'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=2052811606032269638&theme=dark" }

Listed below are some of the reasons mentioned in the article:

Information Density
Visual Clarity & Ease of Reading
Ease of Sharing (to me this is the most compelling)

I don't disagree with Tariq, but rather than switch to HTML, I think the answer is to make markdown supported everywhere. We've been using it for years and it's powering much of the modern web. However, if we look at how software and platforms have evolved, markdown support is very dependent on the platform to render it.

Why does markdown work for humans and machines? Well, it's pretty simple, humans write simple syntax that gets rendered into something rich, and unironically, that's often by converting it to HTML and a browser engine rendering it. For machines, it's lightweight to parse and easy to generate token by token without the verbosity of HTML.

We write headers, code blocks, pull quotes, bold text, and what typically happens is something is converting that markdown to HTML.

For example, I am literally typing this blog in markdown, and the only way I can share it to the masses is through a platform like dev.to that converts it to HTML and hosts it for me.

So if the feature is available in some places, why is it not everywhere? I believe that software vendors haven't prioritized adding markdown rendering support, and they should.

We should be able to send a standalone index.md file and view it in all web browsers, chat applications, and emails. Some apps already do this like Discord and Slack (Slack's markdown support disappoints me). We can do this with HTML today, all modern browsers will render something nice, but if you load up markdown in your browser today you will become sad.

We have to reach for things like Obsidian or Kiro to render the markdown, which I feel limits the portability of it all.

Curious what you think and where you see yourself heading in terms of AI agent output. Let me know in the comments if you're switching to HTML or sticking with markdown.

As always, happy coding 🫡!

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Terminal Superpowers You Should Be Using in 2026

Sean Boult — Tue, 19 May 2026 15:00:00 +0000

I live in my terminal. Here's what I use to stay fast.

Fuzzy finder (fzf)
Terminal motions
Sudo shortcut
Tab completion
Autosuggestion
Autocompletion
Syntax highlighting
Command buffering
Terminal clearing

⚠️ NOTE: Some of these are zsh-specific, so make sure you have that set up first.

Fuzzy finder (fzf)

Please please stop spamming up arrow to find that command you ran. Instead you can make this so much simpler with fzf.

Once installed, hit Ctrl+R and your shell history becomes searchable. No more mashing the up arrow 47 times to find that docker command you ran last Tuesday.

You can also use it to find files:

# fuzzy find a file and open it in your editor
vim $(fzf)

Or pipe anything into it:

# search git branches
git branch | fzf

Seriously, just install fzf.

Terminal motions

Stop holding backspace and typing everything all over again...

Here are the motions that saved me the most time:

Shortcut	What it does
`Option + ←/→`	Jump by word
`Option + Backspace`	Delete a word
`Ctrl + A`	Jump to beginning of line
`Ctrl + E`	Jump to end of line
`Ctrl + K`	Delete everything after cursor

Drill these for a week and holding backspace will start to physically hurt you.

Sudo shortcut

You've done this before:

apt install something
# Permission denied

Instead of retyping the whole thing, just run:

sudo !!

!! expands to your last command. Done.

Tab completion

ZSH tab completion goes further than bash:

Tab into directories and keep going (no need to hit enter between each level)
Cycle through matches with repeated tab presses
Case-insensitive matching by default

In this case I did ~/.aw<tab>/co<tab>.

If you're typing full paths by hand, you're doing it wrong.

Autocompletion

Some CLI tools ship with their own completions for subcommands and flags. The AWS CLI is a good example:

# Add this to your .zshrc
autoload bashcompinit && bashcompinit
autoload -Uz compinit && compinit
complete -C '/usr/local/bin/aws_completer' aws

Now aws s3<TAB> shows you all the s3 subcommands. Most popular CLIs (docker, kubectl, gh, npm) have similar setups. Check their docs.

Autosuggestions

zsh-autosuggestions gives you fish-like behavior in ZSH. As you type, it shows a grayed-out suggestion based on your history. Press the right arrow to accept it.

Give it a few days and you won't be able to go back.

Syntax highlighting

zsh-syntax-highlighting highlights your commands as you type. Valid commands go green, invalid go red. It's instant feedback before you even hit enter.

You catch typos before you hit enter. That's it, that's the sell.

Command buffering

Kick off a long-running command like pnpm i, then just type your next command and hit enter. ZSH buffers it and runs it when the first one finishes.

You're typing blind so typos happen, but it beats waiting around.

Terminal clearing

Two quick ones:

clear (or Ctrl + L) - clears the screen but keeps scrollback
Cmd + K - nukes everything including scrollback

I use Cmd + K when I want a clean slate and clear when I just want visual breathing room.

Resources

Here's everything linked in one place:

That's my setup. Most of these take under a minute to install and will save you hours over time. If you found this useful, feel free to follow me for more dev tooling tips.

Happy coding 😀!

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S3 Account Regional Namespaces with CDK

Sean Boult — Tue, 12 May 2026 19:07:20 +0000

THIS HAS BEEN PATCHED AND THE WORKAROUND IS NO LONGER NEEDED 🙌

If you are using aws-cdk-lib@2.256.0 or newer you should be able to use both bucketNamePrefix and bucketNamespace with the native L2 Bucket construct.

So you learned about the new S3 bucket account regional namespace feature and you're thinking "this is amazing, let me try in CDK."

Well... This is where you'll learn that the L2 Bucket construct has not yet been updated to allow for this.

Currently there are the following items which are tracking the long term fix.

You should give both of these a 👍 to help them get prioritized and shipped.

Workaround

Good news there is a workaround! By using the L1 construct as an escape hatch we can then pass in bucketNamePrefix and bucketNamespace.

import * as cdk from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import { Construct } from 'constructs';
import * as s3 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-s3';

export class Cdk101Stack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    // WORKAROUND: use the L1 bucket construct
    new s3.CfnBucket(this, "ConfigBucket", {
      bucketNamePrefix: "config",
      bucketNamespace: "account-regional",
    });
  }
}

After deploying this you'll see your new bucket with {name}-{account}-{region}-an (the an suffix indicates account namespace).

That will work if you only need to deploy the bucket. But if you need an L2 reference (IBucket), use s3.Bucket.fromCfnBucket to convert it.

Full code demo:

import * as cdk from 'aws-cdk-lib';
import { Construct } from 'constructs';
import * as s3 from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-s3';
import * as s3deploy from 'aws-cdk-lib/aws-s3-deployment';
import * as path from 'path';

export class Cdk101Stack extends cdk.Stack {
  constructor(scope: Construct, id: string, props?: cdk.StackProps) {
    super(scope, id, props);

    // NOTE: workaround for the following CDK issues
    // https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/issues/37760
    // https://github.com/aws/aws-cdk/pull/37386
    const cfnBucket = new s3.CfnBucket(this, "ConfigBucket", {
      bucketNamePrefix: "config",
      bucketNamespace: "account-regional",
    });

    const bucket = s3.Bucket.fromCfnBucket(cfnBucket);

    // Upload a config file to the bucket on deploy
    new s3deploy.BucketDeployment(this, 'DeployConfig', {
      sources: [s3deploy.Source.asset(path.join(__dirname, '../config'))],
      destinationBucket: bucket,
    });

  }
}

Hope this blog helped you get a workaround for now and once aws-cdk-lib is patched I'll update this blog.

Happy coding 😃!

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Embed These Websites In Your Blog Today

Sean Boult — Thu, 07 May 2026 18:34:41 +0000

I stumbled onto the DEV supported URL embeds list, which revealed some interesting supported platforms.

You'll want to refer to the link above to figure out the syntax for the DEV specific ones but most are just:

{% embed <url> %}

If you would like to jump around.

asciinema
StackBlitz
GitHub
X/Twitter
YouTube
DEV specific

asciinema

A video-like player which is so cool because you can actually pause it and copy the text from it.

StackBlitz

Interactive code editor right in a blog post 😍. Seems like the embedded terminal and preview will fail due to some postMessage shenanigans, but perhaps it can be fixed.

GitHub

It supports rendering the README to give some brief context with a CTA to open the repo.

strands-agents / sdk-typescript

A model-driven approach to building AI agents in just a few lines of code.

Strands Agents - TypeScript SDK

A model-driven approach to building AI agents in TypeScript/JavaScript

Documentation ◆ Samples ◆ Python SDK ◆ Tools ◆ Agent Builder ◆ MCP Server

Overview

Strands Agents is a simple yet powerful SDK that takes a model-driven approach to building and running AI agents. The TypeScript SDK brings key features from the Python Strands framework to Node.js environments, enabling type-safe agent development for everything from simple assistants to complex workflows.

Key Features

🪶 Lightweight & Flexible: Simple agent loop that works seamlessly in Node.js and browser environments
🔒 Type-Safe Tools: Define tools easily using Zod schemas for robust input validation and type inference
📋 Structured Output: Get type-safe, validated responses from LLMs using Zod schemas with automatic retry on validation errors
🔌 Model Agnostic: First-class support for Amazon Bedrock and OpenAI, with extensible architecture for custom providers
🔗 Built-in MCP: Native…

View on GitHub

X/Twitter

Useful when a tweet has some context you want to reference.

// Detect dark theme var iframe = document.getElementById('tweet-2052162536301072643-169'); if (document.body.className.includes('dark-theme')) { iframe.src = "https://platform.twitter.com/embed/Tweet.html?id=2052162536301072643&theme=dark" }

YouTube

Video is king 👑. However, I'd probably reach for the "Cover Video Link" feature, where you can have the video be your banner instead of an image.

DEV specific

These are some of the custom things that DEV supports outside of third party site embeds.

Article Link:

Erik Hanchett for AWS

May 4

Stop Reaching for Python: Strands Agents TypeScript SDK Just Hit 1.0

#typescript #ai #aws #agents

Comments 1

8 min read

User Profile:

Brooke JamiesonFollow

🌥️ I’ll teach you tech tips in bite sized videos 📣 Keynote Speaker 👩🏻‍💻 AI/ML Specialist 💼 AWS Sr Developer Advocate (views are my own) 🇦🇺AU ➡️ NYC🗽

Tag Profile:

#aws Follow

Amazon Web Services (AWS) is a collection of web services for computing, storage, machine learning, security, and more There are over 200+ AWS services as of 2023.

Comment:

Comment on What Even Is AI? (I Took a Break & Had to Relearn Everything)

Jess Lee May 5

I just came back from maternity leave. And honestly? I felt like I'd missed a decade in six months.

I feel this so hard.

Looking forward to your series!

Podcast Episode:

120. Lambda Best Practices

AWS Bites

Your browser does not support the audio element.

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Organization:

AWS Follow

Articles written by current and past AWS Developer Advocates to help people interested in building on AWS. Opinions are each author's own.

Well, this one is not a website, but it's useful when you want to add some CTA at the end of a blog.

Buttons:
View @AWSDevelopers on X/Twitter 💻
—
Visit AWS Builder Center

Let me know what your favorite embed is or if I'm missing any amazing ones in the comments.

Happy coding 👨‍💻!

{% embed https://dev.to/hacksore %}

Sean Boult — Thu, 07 May 2026 02:18:21 +0000

Sean Boult - DEV Community

Developer. Hacker. Creator.

dev.to

1Password, GitHub, and Git CLI with Multiple Users

Sean Boult — Fri, 01 May 2026 23:03:23 +0000

Do you use the git, github, and 1password CLI? I do!

I want to be able to act as different users in certain directories to support my personal projects (~/code) and my work projects (~/oss) automatically, because, you know, developers automate everything.

This means I want to be able to run gh commands as the correct user, as well as have git commands pick the correct SSH key.

If you want to have a single dotfiles repo for both work and personal development, this should give you something to follow.

⚠️ If you use a single GitHub account for everything, this article might not be very helpful for you.

Prerequisites

Tools you’ll need to make all this work:

You’ll also want to designate some folders to hold projects. This guide will use the following structure:

~/code - where I do personal development on my personal machine
~/oss - where I do all my work open source code (repros, demos, etc.)

1) Set a global default (personal)

In ~/.gitconfig:

[user]
    name = Sean Boult
    email = 996134+Hacksore@users.noreply.github.com

[includeIf "gitdir:~/oss/"]
    path = ~/.gitconfig-work

So we’ve added the default user in the [user] block and added an includeIf (docs) block that specifies that inside ~/oss we’ll make sure to load the config options in ~/.gitconfig-work.

Given that you need to be “inside a git directory” based on the gitdir clause, it means that ~/oss should be a valid Git directory.

To do that, run this in ~/oss:

# make ~/oss a valid git repo
git init

We will also want to create a .gitignore file to not track anything in this directory.

# ~/oss/.gitignore
# Sentinel repo: exists only so includeIf matches when cwd is ~/oss
# Ignore all subdirs (they're separate repos)
*

2) Put work identity in a separate config

Create ~/.gitconfig-work:

[user]
    name = Sean Boult
    email = <yourWorkEmail> # replace this with your email
    # optional ssh key signing
    # signingkey = ~/.ssh/id_rsa.pub

3) Make SSH key selection automatic

Now configure SSH so Git will pick the right key based on the repo you are in.

In ~/.ssh/config:

# Github and we default personal
Host github.com
    HostName github.com
    User git
    IdentityFile ~/.ssh/id_rsa.personal
    IdentitiesOnly yes

Then, in ~/.gitconfig-work, add:

[core]
    sshCommand = ssh -i ~/.ssh/id_rsa -o IdentitiesOnly=yes

At this point:

Any repo elsewhere uses your personal Git identity and personal SSH key.
Any repo under ~/oss uses your work Git identity and work SSH key.

1Password CLI Plugin

The next step is to allow the gh CLI to know what directory you’re in and use the right GitHub PAT (personal access token).

To put it simply, I have two PATs in my 1Password vault: gh-pat-cli (personal) and gh-pat-cli-sboult (work/oss). In the op setup, instruct 1Password to use the gh-pat-cli-sboult PAT so that when you’re in ~/oss, it uses the correct PAT to authenticate with the GitHub CLI.

Use 1Password to securely authenticate the GitHub CLI is a helpful doc if you get stuck.

Work repos (`~/oss`)

Example:

cd ~/oss

git clone git@github.com:awslabs/mcp.git
# or
# gh repo clone awslabs/mcp

Once the repo is under ~/oss/, Git uses:

your work user.name / user.email
your work SSH key

Then normal commands work:

git remote -v
git push

gh pr list

Personal repos

Outside of ~/oss, everything uses your default (personal) identity.

Example:

git clone git@github.com:Hacksore/test.git
# or
# gh repo clone test

That’s it! You should now be able to reproduce the setup I have.

Happy coding 😊!

Hide regions and services in the AWS console

Sean Boult — Wed, 15 Apr 2026 21:26:43 +0000

Tired of scrolling through regions and services you'll never use?

You just want to...

AWS now lets you hide regions and services from your console. Here's how.

Heads up: This is a visual preference, not a security control. Users can still access hidden regions and services directly.

Hide Regions

That region dropdown doesn't need to show every region AWS offers.

Go to Unified Settings → Account settings.
Find Visible Regions.
Deselect the regions you don't use. Keep the ones where you actually run workloads.
Save.

Done. Your region dropdown now only shows what matters.

Hide Services

Same place, different setting.

Go to Unified Settings → Account settings.
Find Visible Services.
Deselect the services you don't need. I'd recommend keeping Billing so you can still manage costs.
Save.

What Happens When You Access Something Hidden?

You'll see a page like this if you navigate to a hidden region/service directly:

And some parts of the console will show a restricted indicator:

Again, nothing is actually blocked. It's just hidden from the default navigation.

Resources

Reading a blog post about blog posts is so meta 😂

Sean Boult — Thu, 09 Apr 2026 12:26:43 +0000

Beaver-powered databases and ancient AI

Jess Lee for The DEV Team

Apr 6

💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎💎

Sean Boult — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:52:56 +0000

Every AWS S3 Compatible API Provider EVER

Sean Boult — Sun, 22 Mar 2026 16:46:29 +0000

You've probably heard of AWS Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), which allows you to store objects in buckets.

The AWS S3 API was the original blob storage interface, and many storage providers and technology companies have reverse-engineered or emulated it to ensure compatibility.

Some notable examples include services like Cloudflare R2 and Backblaze B2, but there are countless others, as you'll see below.

Provider	S3-Compatible Offering
AWS	Amazon S3
Cloudflare	R2
Backblaze	B2 Cloud Storage
Wasabi	Hot Cloud Storage
DigitalOcean	Spaces
Google Cloud	Cloud Storage (XML API)
IBM Cloud	Cloud Object Storage
Oracle	OCI Object Storage
Akamai	Object Storage
Nebius	Object Storage
Alibaba Cloud	Object Storage Service (OSS)
Tencent Cloud	Cloud Object Storage (COS)
Huawei Cloud	Object Storage Service (OBS)
Vultr	Object Storage
Scaleway	Object Storage
Hetzner	Object Storage
OVHcloud	Object Storage
UpCloud	Object Storage
Contabo	Object Storage
Exoscale	Object Storage
Seagate	Lyve Cloud Object Storage
IDrive	e2
CoreWeave	AI Object Storage
Gcore	Gcore Storage
Synology	C2 Object Storage
MEGA	S4 Object Storage
Storj	Cloud Object Storage

This list is certainly not exhaustive, as there are more services I haven't discovered in my research.

If I missed any, leave me a comment so I can update the list! Also, don’t be shy and tell me which ones are your favorite to use.

anyone shipping anything on Sunday?

Sean Boult — Sun, 08 Mar 2026 21:01:16 +0000

DEV Community: Sean Boult

AWS Waddles: What the Duck?

AWS Follow

Sean BoultFollow

Markdown Should be Supported Everywhere Natively

AWS Follow

Terminal Superpowers You Should Be Using in 2026

Fuzzy finder (fzf)

Terminal motions

Sudo shortcut

Tab completion

Autocompletion

Autosuggestions

Syntax highlighting

Command buffering

Terminal clearing

Resources

AWS Follow

S3 Account Regional Namespaces with CDK

Workaround

AWS Follow

Embed These Websites In Your Blog Today

strands-agents / sdk-typescript

A model-driven approach to building AI agents in just a few lines of code.

Strands Agents - TypeScript SDK

A model-driven approach to building AI agents in TypeScript/JavaScript

Overview

Key Features

DEV specific

Brooke JamiesonFollow

#aws Follow

120. Lambda Best Practices

AWS Bites

AWS Follow

{% embed https://dev.to/hacksore %}

1Password, GitHub, and Git CLI with Multiple Users

Prerequisites

1) Set a global default (personal)

2) Put work identity in a separate config

3) Make SSH key selection automatic

1Password CLI Plugin

Work repos (~/oss)

Personal repos

Hide regions and services in the AWS console

Hide Regions

Hide Services

What Happens When You Access Something Hidden?

Resources

Reading a blog post about blog posts is so meta 😂

Every AWS S3 Compatible API Provider EVER

anyone shipping anything on Sunday?

Work repos (`~/oss`)