AI Pricing Is Becoming UX
GPT-5.6 turns capability into a price ladder, while Codex Spark turns speed into a separate button. AI pricing is becoming part of the interface.
Read the pieceKahWee Teng · Staff software engineer
Complex systems deserve clear thinking.
I work on frontend systems and developer experience, then write about what the diagrams leave out: migrations, performance, AI-assisted engineering, and the tradeoffs that make software last.
Bearings
KahWee in 30 seconds
- Role
- Staff software engineer
- Focus
- Frontend systems + developer experience
- Journal
- 89 field notes since 2016
- Perspective
- Singapore → San Francisco
Working terrain
Experience, shown through the work.
Four recurring questions, each grounded in a piece that shows the decisions, evidence, and tradeoffs behind it.
TanStack Table v9 Trades Monoliths for Explicit Feature Trees
Upgrading TanStack Table v8 to v9 cuts rendering time by 28% on 5,000-row tables. The real migration effort lives in TypeScript generic boundaries.
Read the pieceMigrating from Remix to React Router v7 - Part 1
My Remix-to-React Router v7 migration touched 40 files and removed 591 net lines. Imports were easy; TypeScript took the time.
Read the piece
Why Adobe Animate's Flash-to-HTML5 Bridge Failed
Adobe Animate kept the Flash timeline alive for HTML5, but the web moved on. Maintenance mode confirms the bridge could not hold.
Read the pieceFrom the trail
Latest field notes
Five Hermes Agent Patterns I Wish I Had Started With
The Hermes patterns that work in practice: deterministic watchdogs, scheduled research, reusable skills, Telegram delivery, WhatsApp tradeoffs, and safer tool boundaries.
AI Pricing Is Becoming UX
GPT-5.6 turns capability into a price ladder, while Codex Spark turns speed into a separate button. AI pricing is becoming part of the interface.
TanStack Table v9 Trades Monoliths for Explicit Feature Trees
Upgrading TanStack Table v8 to v9 cuts rendering time by 28% on 5,000-row tables. The real migration effort lives in TypeScript generic boundaries.
React Router v8 Learned to Make Upgrades Boring
React Router v8 keeps the framework-mode API familiar and moves v7's future flags into defaults. That restraint matters after an expensive v6-to-v7 migration.