Side Project Spotlight

The desktop has barely changed in decades, even as we’ve all become digital hoarders. Scott Jenson’s Local-First Conf talk, “How the Desktop UX Needs to Evolve to Keep Up With Local First,” gives The Trio a jumping-off point to explore spatial window management, document context, customizable dashboards, private workflows, and the surprising return of widgets. Kotaro then catches the game development bug and weighs rebuilding Retro Sparkle against the much more ambitious idea of a mobile-first pixel fighting game.

## Chapters

00:00 Introductions

01:15 Local-First Computing and the Future of Desktop UX

11:16 Widgets, Dashboards, and Personal Workflows

21:58 The Future of Software and AI Automation

38:35 Building Games in the AI Era

50:04 Closing and Community Updates

50:48 Tag

## Show Notes

- The discussion begins with Scott Jenson’s Local-First Conf talk, shared by Mike Zornek, a former PhillyCocoa organizer and one of its OGs who now works in Elixir.

- Overlapping windows made sense on tiny early displays, but modern screens and growing piles of context expose the metaphor’s limits.

- Scott’s prototypes rethink window management, attach research context to documents, and turn desktop history into a navigable timeline.

- Brett Terpstra’s TerminalWidget lets scripts power personal dashboards for network health, revenue, GitHub activity, and almost anything else.

- Apple’s old Dashboard sparks nostalgia for web-built widgets, glorious skeuomorphism, and the GPU-powered ripple effect.

- Kotaro and Steve imagine desktops that help people assemble private, local workflows without needing to become programmers.

- Steve argues that safer abstractions, plug-ins, and focused local models make more sense than asking everyone to generate raw application code.

- Kotaro wonders whether the app era is giving way to workflows that connect software, data, and automation at a higher level.

- Kotaro weighs rebuilding [RetroSparkle](https://tomatoboy.co/retro) with a pixel-inspired look against making a mobile-first fighting game in Godot.

- PhillyCocoa meets in person Thursday, August 13, from 5:45 to 8:00 PM at Vanguard, 2300 Chestnut Street, with talks by Bill Atkins, Kotaro Fujita, and Chris Hiester.

## Links

**Desktop UX and Local First**

How the Desktop UX Needs to Evolve to Keep Up With Local First: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-IOLRcFC6OY | Mike Zornek: https://mikezornek.com

**Widgets and Personal Workflows**

Brett Terpstra’s TerminalWidget Dashboard: https://brettterpstra.com/2026/08/10/my-terminalwidget-dashboard/

**Kotaro’s Project Ideas**

Retro Sparkle: https://tomatoboy.co/retro

**PhillyCocoa IRL Meetup**

Beyond the Simulator: Perspectives on Modern App Development: https://luma.com/mwcqd1cl

**PhillyCocoa:** https://phillycocoa.org

Intro music: "When I Hit the Floor", © 2021 Lorne Behrman. Used with permission of the artist.