DEV Community: Laura de Oliveira

From guitar to code: Building GripShift

Laura de Oliveira — Wed, 09 Sep 2026 01:06:04 +0000

Motivation

For almost a year now, unwilling to accept its purely decorative fate, I decided to take my left-handed guitar off its stand and learn to play on my own. This guitar's story is a common one. It was bought with the intention of being learned someday, but ended up stored away forever in its bag, in a dark corner of the bedroom. Fortunately, it saw daylight again last year, when we turned one of the bedrooms into an office and decided to hang it on the wall.

Having it in sight inspired me, and even though I'm right-handed, it was inevitable that I'd try to play it and start understanding how it worked. Since I knew absolutely nothing about guitar, not even playing it the conventional way, the challenge of building muscle memory would be pretty much the same either way. From the need to practice guitar and my curiosity, as a tech professional, about how Spec-Driven Development applies to web development, GripShift was born.

The Problem

The more I searched for guitar content and courses on YouTube, the less direction I had. Until I found the JustinGuitar channel and its beginner course. There, the main practice method is simple: get used to the chords, finger positioning, and the feel of the strings. So, starting with two chords, you practice constant switching for one minute, aiming for increasing accuracy and speed, with a goal of at least 30 switches in that period.

I'll admit I didn't have much patience to follow the course to the letter. I wanted to skip steps, play my favorite songs, but my lack of dexterity was still holding me back. At the same time, there was no element of surprise when practicing a minute of chord switching. I'd pick two chords I felt like playing that sounded good together, but I kept getting stuck on the same sequences — A and D, G and E. Then, during an AI-assisted development course, the idea for an app came up. The basic concept is to randomize two chords to be practiced in one-minute sessions. No sign-up, no login, no distractions. Simple as that.

From Concept to Product

Building the MVP

With the problem defined, my first step was creating the documentation the agent building the project would need. In AGENTS.md, I specified the project's high-level decisions and the expected behavior of the agent — what to do, how to do it, where to look for information, and what rules and constraints to follow. The first version of SPEC.md was responsible for describing the project's goal, each feature technically detailed with its expected behavior, layout and UI specifications, and establishing the boundaries and out-of-scope items.

I used OpenCode as the development agent, with the DeepSeek V4 Flash model and an MCP connection to Context7. The result was satisfactory, but needed adjustments. Some were made manually, others through interaction with the agent, updating the SPEC whenever necessary so it correctly reflected the feature.

Glow Up

The app was so simple and had so few elements that the idea of publishing it that way, without any introduction, bothered me. That made me start treating what was just a project for testing tools and methodologies as a real product. It deserved an identity and a minimally decent landing page where I could share its reason for existing and, who knows, help more practitioners find it.

I'm not a designer, but I remember a thing or two about creating logos, plus I have some confidence in my aesthetic sense. I sometimes like to get lost in Figma, creating whatever comes to mind. I used the identity of my study profile on Instagram (@stringsinreverse) as a base for the colors, looked for logo references on Pinterest and Dribbble, and arrived at the final result.

In parallel, I used Google Gemini's great HTML page-building capability to create the first reference for the landing page, where I was aiming for good information architecture more than a page that matched the identity I'd created. With that, I was able to update the project documentation, keeping a SPEC-app.md for the app and creating a new SPEC-root.md for the landing page, repeating the AI-assisted development process.

Lessons Learned

Building a project that solves a problem of your own is definitely very motivating. I've been using the app less often than I'd like, but it always meets my needs, whether on my phone or tablet (I rarely use it on the computer). After my personal website, it was the first real project I put out into the world in a long time.

Building MVPs end to end can be fun, but exposing them to the public is scary. As of this post's publication, I haven't received any feedback. Vercel's dashboard shows 10 visitors since I made this post on my LinkedIn (in Portuguese). I didn't plan any promotion strategy, but I might work on that skill more in the coming weeks.

Besides practicing guitar, I got to practice my creativity, my skills as a software developer, and learn new concepts about applying AI to document and build products. Using Spec-Driven Development, even in its simplest possible form, showed me firsthand a bit of what's becoming the reality in the field. Since I've been more distant from the technical side of my profession for a while, it feels like a fresh start. But my concerns now are much more mature — more focused on problem-solving and less on personal pressure around very specific technical knowledge.

Originally posted in Portuguese on my website

🤖 Assisted by AI to translate the text

OpenCode + Penpot: Cheap Setup for Interface Creation

Laura de Oliveira — Mon, 10 Aug 2026 15:35:43 +0000

The truth is, I’m a bit of a cheapskate. Not surprisingly, one of my last projects at my previous company, focused on cost reduction, engaged me so much.

Whether we’re in an AI hype or non-hype period (the market still doesn’t seem quite decided), a large portion of developers are firmly on board with Claude Code, Anthropic, and the whole gang, despite the high subscription costs. I’m tempted to try the tool and its ecosystem, but the pricing, especially here in Brazil, is quite prohibitive, at least in my view.

A person who wants to experiment and build products doesn’t live by code alone. Figma has also created its own dependencies for web development. And, sadly, it offers development, AI, and MCP features at anything but modest prices. In this scenario, I set out in search of free and open-source solutions and found a few that are at least usable and can help speed up the design + code creation process.

For the past few months, I’ve been exploring tools such as Google Antigravity and OpenCode to develop a few projects. Both are free and offer a certain quota of model usage at no cost, including some Claude models in Antigravity. Additionally, using an OpenRouter key is an alternative in both tools if the quota for the native models runs out.

As an alternative to Figma, I found Penpot, a fairly similar tool that works with agents via MCP. Through this connection, it’s possible to have a two-way workflow for creating interfaces. You can use a prompt to ask it to create whatever wireframe you want (as shown in the video below), or ask the agent to code the interface currently displayed on the screen.

In short, you can build a practical, capable setup without spending a fortune on subscriptions. By combining free alternatives for coding and models with an open-source design tool integrated via MCP, I gain speed and freedom to prototype and implement almost any interface.

Originally posted in Portuguese at my LinkedIn.

🤖 Assisted by AI to translate and create the cover

My First Time as a Maintainer at Hacktoberfest

Laura de Oliveira — Mon, 07 Oct 2024 13:49:00 +0000

In this post, I’d like to share my experience as a maintainer since Hacktoberfest 2022. Also, this is my first time writing in English, so feedback on this aspect would be greatly appreciated. Of course, AI helped me a little with the translation, so please be kind. 😊

Some context

The first time I participated in Hacktoberfest was in 2020. My leader suggested it as a learning activity for the whole team. At this point, I was developing my leadership skills and had put coding aside. I was a bit worried about my technical skills and wasn’t sure if I was capable of contributing to Open Source projects.

In my mind, Open Source was a space full of amazing projects that helped developers like me to build other projects for customers and end users. I mistakenly believed that becoming part of this community wasn’t really possible for me. When I received my swag months later, I felt proud of my achievement and kept Hacktoberfest in mind every year. This year, with the start of the 11th Hacktoberfest, I decided to write about my experience as a project maintainer.

Getting started

First I had to choose a simple project to maintain on GitHub. As a beginner maintainer, I wanted to attract beginner contributors too. The idea of helping people improve their skills and grow motivates me. There’s nothing better than a calculator built with simple HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. We have a bunch of DOM elements and events to handle. The math is almost a side quest.

After starting the project, I opened some issues with simple tasks to improve it, like adding keyboard support, adding new math operations, etc. One of the simplest contributions was adding themes. Anyone could open an issue and submit a PR with a brand-new theme for the calculator.

I was so excited when the first contributions arrived that I stopped everything I was doing to check the new PRs and merge them immediately.

Conclusion

Since then, the project had 13 contributors, closed 16 issues, merged 23 PRs, and received 4 stars. The project hasn’t received any contributions other than mine recently, but if you’re looking for something to contribute to, feel free to join! :)

l4ur4oliveira / hacktober-calc

A simple calculator using HTML, CSS and Javascript.

2025

🟢🟡 Leia em Português

What?

Hacktober Calc 🧮 is a simple calculator using HTML, CSS and Javascript.

Why?

It's the simplest project to exercise programming skills, DOM manipulation and layout construction. Plus, you can start to contribute to Open Source from this project and learn the Git workflow.

How to contribute?

Including some themes
Adding new math operations
Improving keybord usage
Writing some tests
Refactoring something
Translating
Using your creativity \o/

Do you need a guide about PR? Watch this video.

Getting started

As a simple web project built with pure HTML, CSS and JS, you can run it using Live Server extension if you want. But if you want to explore the testing environment, follow the steps below.

Install dependencies with npm install
Run the project with npm run dev
For tests use npm run test

Hall of Fame

Made by contrib.rocks

View on GitHub

I think the Hacktoberfest hype isn’t the same anymore, maybe because of changes in the swag policy (the tees and stickers were awesome). Even so, my experience in 2022 taught me a lot about Git and GitHub, English, communication, and, most importantly, Open Source contribution and its ecosystem.

Realmente é possível aprender em bootcamps?

Laura de Oliveira — Fri, 30 Jul 2021 00:24:04 +0000

Faz alguns meses que finalizei meu trabalho de conclusão do MBA em Educação Corporativa e Gestão do Conhecimento e trago aqui alguns pontos abordados na minha pesquisa. Recentemente publiquei o material no meu repositório do Github para que qualquer pessoa possa acessar.

O objetivo do artigo era traçar um paralelo entre três tipos de eventos bem conhecidos dos profissionais de tecnologia: os meetups, os hackathons e os bootcamps. Com isso, validar se esses eventos contribuem com a gestão do conhecimento de uma empresa de tecnologia e fazer alguns comparativos entre eles.

Um pouco de contexto

A gestão do conhecimento estuda os diversos métodos e processos para aquisição, organização e compartilhamento do conhecimento. O tema está diretamente ligado à gestão do capital intelectual das empresas, ou seja, o conhecimento contido nas pessoas que compõem as organizações. Sendo você profissional de tecnologia ou não, é muito provável que já tenha se deparado com a seguinte situação: você precisa de algum histórico sobre uma demanda que está fazendo e descobre que o responsável por aquilo não trabalha mais na empresa. Ninguém mais sabe onde ficaram os registros sobre aquela determinada demanda ou se eles algum dia existiram.

Em linhas gerais, a pessoa que detinha tal conhecimento sobre determinado processo pode não ter feito a documentação necessária ou não tomou nenhuma ação para compartilhá-la com o restante de sua equipe. O conhecimento não deve ser refém de um único portador, mas como compartilhar o que se sabe sem que se tenha estruturado algum processo que sirva como guia? É aqui que a gestão do conhecimento entra, em geral organizado nos setores de RH e Treinamento, a fim de entender quais conhecimentos são necessários à organização, como documentá-los da melhor forma e como fazer com que esse conhecimento seja difundido a todos que precisam.

Bootcamps for the win!

A pesquisa foi realizada com 24 profissionais de diversas áreas de uma empresa, em sua maioria desenvolvedores. As perguntas variaram entre saber o quanto os profissionais aprenderam participando de cada evento até o quanto foi possível inovar em seu trabalho com o conhecimento adquirido. Entre os três tipos de eventos estudados, o bootcamp se mostrou o mais proveitoso no que diz respeito a adquirir novos conhecimentos e colocá-los em prática no ambiente de trabalho, além de ter um resultado relevante no quesito "compartilhamento".

Bootcamps são cursos imersivos focados em prática e baseados em projetos da vida real. Comparados com a educação formal (graduação, tecnólogos, etc) ocorrem geralmente em um curto período de tempo e são focados em alguma tecnologia ou função específica. Tendem a criar ambientes bastante colaborativos, mesmo que virtuais, o que estimula também o desenvolvimento de competências interpessoais e as chamadas soft skills.

Mas e os hackathons?

A amostragem da pesquisa foi bastante pequena para desconsiderar os outros dois tipos de eventos, mas os hackathons em especial têm uma característica importante que pode ter um efeito contrário ao engajamento no aprendizado: a competitividade. Muitos desses eventos oferecem premiações para as soluções mais criativas ao problema apresentado. Além disso, em muitos casos você tem apenas algumas horas ou poucos dias para concluir um esboço de projeto ou até mesmo a solução final. Na minha opinião, hackathons podem ser ótimos criadores de MVPs ou provas de conceito, mas não fornecem aos participantes uma continuidade do aprendizado.

Concluindo

Cada um dos eventos pode cumprir um papel importante quando falamos em adquirir novos conhecimentos, seja na troca social que os meetups proporcionam ou no ambiente imersivo encontrado nos bootcamps. Cabe a análise de cada empresa ou time sobre os pontos que devem ser fortalecidos e qual método é o mais eficaz para cada grupo. O importante é sempre ter em mente que conhecimento se compartilha e compartilhar conhecimento consolida o aprendizado.