Pip: Richard Morrison dot co dot nz — where a WordPress developer builds reading apps, experiments with AI block makers, and somehow finds time to write about cupcakes.

Mara: Today we're covering the territory of building WordPress tools and what a career at Automattic actually looks like in practice. Let's start with the tools being built and tested.

Building WordPress Tools

Mara: This segment is about what it looks like to actually make things with WordPress — experimenting with new software, poking at how the platform works, and building something substantial from scratch.

Pip: The Telex AI block maker post sets the tone early: "Today I have been experimenting with the new Telex assisted block maker software by Automattic, and created a not all that helpful, but rather fun block."

Mara: That block is called Eyes Follow Cursor — which tells you everything about the spirit of the experiment. Not every build needs a business case. Sometimes you just want to see what the tool does.

Pip: The shortcode post operates in the same exploratory register — testing whether shortcodes still work, discovering that the year shortcode was quietly removed in WordPress 6.2. Useful to know, even if the finding is just "oops."

Mara: The most substantial piece here is A New Dev Blog and Something I've Been Building. It introduces Cozy Reader, a mobile reading app for WordPress blogs, Android first, built with Expo and React Native, using the WordPress REST API and SQLite for local storage.

Pip: The design philosophy is deliberately minimal — no comments, no sharing, no notifications. Just posts rendered as chapters in what amounts to a personal library.

Mara: The post describes the reading experience as complete, with five themes including Paper, Linen, and Lamplit, and notes that device testing is underway on a Nothing Phone 3a, checking scroll performance, cold start times, and offline behavior.

Pip: A companion blog called breathofthehorizon.blog exists specifically so the app has a real WordPress site to test against — which is either very practical or a very elaborate excuse to start another blog.

Mara: Probably both. The plan is open source, free to use, released when stable. That's the throughline across all of this — building things openly and sharing them.

Pip: The tools being built connect directly to how working at Automattic shapes what someone spends their time on — worth looking at that context next.

Working at Automattic

Mara: This segment is about what a career at Automattic looks like — the culture, the benefits, and what it means to work for the company behind WordPress.com.

Pip: The cupcake post is the anchor here, and it earns its place. After a full recipe for blog-themed cupcakes — yes, a real recipe — it pivots to: "Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com, WooCommerce, Tumblr, and more, is not your typical workplace."

Mara: The upshot is that Automattic runs as a distributed, remote-first team, with employees working across time zones and connecting through virtual channels and in-person meetups. The post highlights health insurance, parental leave, a sabbatical program, and internal learning opportunities as standout benefits.

Pip: The VIP Support Engineer post is leaner — it establishes the professional background: graphic design training, self-taught web development, focused on eCommerce solutions. It's the foundation the rest of the career context sits on.

Mara: And the short post titled Your Did It rounds things out — two words of celebration, no elaboration needed. Sometimes the milestone speaks for itself.

Pip: The throughline is someone building a career in public, from early credentials through to the cupcake-adjacent company overview. It's a portrait assembled in installments.

Mara: Building tools, testing limits, working in the open — the ideas here are about what a slow, deliberate relationship with the web looks like.

Pip: Next time, more of that — same site, new posts.