Maggie Appleton
Maggie Appleton — Designer, illustrator, and anthropologist
Essays on programming, design, and anthropology
maggieappleton.comPart blog, part digital garden, part illustrated encyclopedia. Maggie combines design, programming, and anthropology into visual essays that make complex ideas feel tangible. Her illustrated explanations of technical concepts are unlike anything else on the web — closer to a beautifully annotated notebook than a typical dev blog.
Written by Maggie Appleton since 2020.
Occasional
Publishes a few times per month
13
Independent Blog
English
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Recent posts from Maggie Appleton's RSS feed.
Gas Town’s Agent Patterns, Design Bottlenecks, and Vibecoding at Scale
On agent orchestration patterns, why design and critical thinking are the new bottlenecks, and whether we should let go of looking at code
January 2026
I entered the new year holding an inconsolable, shrieking baby while London set off an armageddon of fireworks around us. So goes parenthood. The baby is fine, just congested and teething. I am as “fine” as anyone can be after months of chronic sickness, broken sleep, and parental troubleshooting. I am very tired and full of stoic perspective, but still savouring the baby babble sounds, tiny fingers on my face, and three-teeth grins. When people ask me how parenting is going, I've taken to sayin...
A Treatise on AI Chatbots Undermining the Enlightenment
On chatbot sycophancy, passivity, and the case for more intellectually challenging companions
Vibe Code is Legacy Code
Vibe code is legacy code A lovely little write-up by my friend Steve Krouse on how vibe code and legacy code are roughly the same thing; “code that nobody understands.” I particularly like this graph which illustrates the relationship between vibe code and understanding: <img src="https://maggieappleton.com//images/smidgeons/vibe-code.png" alt="A line chart with vibe on the Y axis and understanding on the X axis with a downwards diagonal line" /> This type of discussion feels helpful in a...
May 2025
In a wonderfully dramatic change to my life, I became a mother two months ago. My son was born at the end of March via an unplanned but otherwise uncomplicated c-section. Parenthood has been predictably overwhelming, exhausting, and existentially glorious. My days are now spent holding a sleeping newborn on my chest, timing wake windows, picking up the dropped pacifier for the 19th time, trying to eat with 0.5 hands free, and watching an eternal stream of Gilmore Girls episodes on a precariously...
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Maggie makes you see ideas differently — literally. Her illustrated essays turn abstract concepts into something you can hold in your head.