- Who are you and what do you do at GitHub?
Patrick Knight, Staff Product Manager for Repository Governance. I focus on rulesets and customer properties to let you keep you code safe at scale. 2. What did you build? One sentence + a screen recording (Loom link is fine).
A Chrome extension that turns our extensive emoji collection (57k+) into mosaics.
[video]
- How long did v1 take to make?
V1 was an afternoon in VS Code. It started as a Python script to generate a one-off "Emoji Lisa," but after others wanted to use it, I spent a few days porting it to a Chrome extension.
- What’s your favorite model/tool stack to build with?
I usually stick with Sonnet 4.5 (should try Opus 4.6 with this project now), but I’ll mix in GPT models if the agent gets stuck.
- Follow-up loaded question: Do you care what tech stack your apps use now?
I’m a product manager, so no. It’s about the right tool for the job to ensure the best customer outcome, that means not having too strong of a commit to any specific stack.
- How do you keep up-to-date with changes in the industry?
I talk to our community first, it’s a critical part of my job. Beyond that, I follow too many newsletters and blogs, and lately, I’ve been in "try all-the-things mode." I recently built a multiclaude/gastown clone using the Copilot SDK to get hands-on with multi-agent (spoiler: the Copilot CLI just dropped /fleet mode). I used it as an opportunity to add a WebUI and TUI to see if I could push agents to write 100% of the codebase.
- What’s your one-line takeaway for other builders?
Wherever you go, there you are.