Hey there 👋

Welcome to this installment of Pixel Perfect Picks. Here I'm sharing something that I heard, read, and saw. You can subscribe to this newsletter here. I'm additionally publishing a more extended essay about software development, design, and freelancing every month.

I've fallen back into D&D hard and I'm actively trying to get a group together to play regularly. Perfect timing, because I also started Critical Role Campaign 4, and it's a great watch even if you've never played a session in your life. Brennan Lee Mulligan takes over as Dungeon Master for the first time, running a brand new West Marches style world called Aramán. The Fall of Thjazi Fang, episode one, sets the whole thing in motion. I also came across a great breakdown of exactly what makes Brennan such a good DM: he treats philosophy as the actual foundation of his campaigns rather than decoration on top, and builds real moral stakes through fair mechanics. The Brennan Method Every DM Should Be Stealing is genuinely useful if, like me, you're thinking about running your own table.

Domenic Denicola wrote a detailed breakdown of his current agentic coding setup, and it's one of the more grounded, practical pieces I've read on the topic in a while. A Linux VM, Tailscale for remote access, and Claude and ChatGPT desktop apps working together so agents can keep fixing code even when he's away from his main machine. My Agentic Coding Setup, July 2026. No hype, just a clear look at how someone actually wired this together.

Garry Tan made an argument this week that stuck with me: what he calls personal AGI, AI agents running on your own infrastructure with access to your own private context and memory, is the real path to staying independent rather than permanently renting intelligence from a handful of corporations. Worth the watch. Whether or not you agree with the framing, it's a genuinely interesting way to think about where all this is heading.

Keep Creating Awesome Stuff ✌️

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-Marvin