August 2023 Summaries

Warp, a remote-first company, recently held a "Why Not?" Week during which they launched a new feature every day. These features were developed during a company Hack Week only one month ago. The week was planned with clear objectives and communication channels to ensure the success of the projects. After the Hack Week, some of the features were made release-ready and delivered to customers through Warp's Thursday releases. This innovative approach allowed for increased collaboration, creativity, and innovation within the company.

Warp introduces a new feature called "richer information" about recently run commands, making it easier for users to rerun them with confidence. Unlike the Command Palette, Command Search is scoped to show only artifacts ready to run on the command line. Rich history now includes exit code, working directory, git branch (if applicable), run time, and completion time, allowing users to identify when commands were last run and whether they succeeded or failed. This feature is useful for debugging or knowing which command to rerun again.

Warp introduces a new customizable prompt feature that allows users to add useful metadata without editing their config files. The prompt builder, accessible through right-clicking on the prompt or via Settings > Appearance > Prompt, enables users to drag and drop "context chips" into an editor canvas to create a personalized prompt. These context chips dynamically update across multiple sessions, making it easier for users to switch between tasks. Warp's customizable prompt is being highlighted during their "Why Not? Week," and the company encourages feedback and suggestions from its community.

The Warp app now allows users to create their own terminal themes by uploading an image, which is then used to generate a theme with a background image and colors that complement each other. This feature was inspired by the popularity of custom themes created by Warp community members. Users can choose from various colors for their background and further customize the theme by manually editing the .yaml file in the .warp/themes directory. A contest has been launched to encourage users to share their unique terminal looks, with winners receiving a Warp hat.

Warp AI has introduced new enhancements to its command suggestions feature, making it easier and quicker to find the right commands when typing in natural language. The updated version generates multiple results as you type and can now autofill names and descriptions for saved workflows, improving efficiency and productivity. These improvements are part of "Why Not? Week," a celebration of new features in the Discord community.

The first few months of the author's time as a software engineer at Warp have been challenging yet rewarding. They were given three "small" starter tasks and one larger starter project, which involved implementing a broadcast input functionality similar to that in other terminals like iTerm2. However, this task proved more complex due to Warp's unique IDE-style input box, which supports mouse input and various actions not directly sent to or from the programs on the computer. The author had to navigate through numerous ambiguities and questions related to broadcasting inputs while receiving support from their engineering mentor, manager, designer, and team members. They followed Warp's product development process effectively throughout this starter project, learning valuable lessons about uncovering and clearing up ambiguity, balancing perfection with speed, and prioritizing user needs over simply adding cool terminal features. The author encourages users to try out the "synced inputs" feature in Warp and provide feedback on GitHub or Twitter.