Gareth Hughes

Following on the theme of building your own tools, this post covers my photography workflow.

Engineering metrics aren't something developers like to talk about. But there's growing pressure for businesses to have better insight into how engineering teams are performing, and it's a complicated subject — engineering performance can't be looked at in isolation. A Software.com Code Time Report based on data from over 250,000 developers found that the median developer spends just 52 minutes per day actively writing code. A Tidelift survey of nearly 400 professional developers painted a similar picture, with respondents spending less than a third of their time writing new code or improving existing code. The rest goes to maintenance, testing, meetings, and operational work.

When I built Squirrel Notes, the MCP integration wasn't part of the original plan. It came later, as a practical itch: I was already using Claude daily, I had a notes app I actually liked, and I kept context-switching between the two. The obvious fix was to connect them.

When I set out to build Squirrel Notes, the first requirement on my list wasn't sync, or markdown support, or even cost. It was this: I don't want my service to know anything about anything.