Overcommitted | Software Engineering and Programming Insights

Overcommitted brings you software engineers who are genuinely passionate about their craft, discussing the technical decisions, learning strategies, and career challenges that matter.



69: Building Terminal Graph, a Spatial Development Environment, with Caidan Williams

Caidan Williams put your terminals, browsers, editors, and AI agents on one infinite canvas. He joins Erika and Brittany to talk about Terminal Graph, the spatial development environment for macOS he built for himself first, and the self-taught path that took ...

Show Notes

Caidan Williams put your terminals, browsers, editors, and AI agents on one infinite canvas. He joins Erika and Brittany to talk about Terminal Graph, the spatial development environment for macOS he built for himself first, and the self-taught path that took him from Minecraft mods at 13 to partner at a Seattle dev studio.


We get into the dataflow model that sets Terminal Graph apart, like piping a git diff straight into Claude Code or grepping a dev server's logs into a browser node. Caidan explains Blueprints, his approach to sharing a whole team workflow as a single file, and what it's like to run a product inside a holacracy with no bosses and no venture money.


Then he tells his career story. No college degree. A gap year spent applying to around 500 companies. Computer vision on dental and MRI images. Burnout, a layoff, and a cross-country move to Seattle with one duffel bag. His honest takeaway is that persistence, not raw talent, is what got him here.


If you build your own tools, wire agents into your workflow, or you're finding a non-traditional way into engineering, this one is for you.


Links

Terminal Graph: https://terminalgraph.com/

Caidan Williams: https://caidan.dev/


Tools mentioned

LazyGit: https://lazygit.dev/

Neovim: https://neovim.io/


Hosts

Overcommitted: ⁠⁠https://overcommitted.dev⁠

Erika Eggemeyer: ⁠⁠https://github.com/eggyhead

Brittany Ellich: https://brittanyellich.com/


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Episode Transcript

No transcript available for this episode.