tl;dr; I've worked 117.5h/week for a month because of a project lead that doesn't understand what I do despite countless attempts at explaining

So, once a year I do this large project for a voluntary organization, it takes me about 80h (and this is of course on top of my normal work and voluntary engagement (60-80h/week))

This year, I realized I don't have as much spare time as I used to, so I emailed the project lead several months in advance like "hey, you know that I do all my work on this before the rest of you start working on it, and you know I need you to sit down for about an hour and put together the list of things I need to know to get this done properly. Could you please do that a bit earlier than usual, a week or two extra would make a big difference", they replied "absolutely, no problem!"

Time went by, and about two weeks before I wanted that info I emailed a small reminder. Shit me not, a month later, after a countless amount of reminders I finally get a half finnished version of the list I need, note that this is two weeks before I'm supposed to be done. Which is fine, it's the usual timespan, not what I hoped for as I hoped for an extra two weeks, but not too late either.

Then shit starts to happen

I reply to the list I've gotten with some requests for the project lead to complete some of the information, to which I receive multiple replies with different answers to the same questions, okay, that's fine, I'll just use the last answer.(?)

So, I finnish the thing on time, clocking out on a total of 117.5h of work per week, two weeks in a row. Still fine, it's just two weeks.

Release day!

I arrive at the release meeting, and is greeted by the project lead handing me two papers with the words "we haven't been able to look through your work yet to make sure it's like we want it, but we sat down yesterday and here's a list of how we want things to be". So I remind them that the thing is supposed to be done that day, and that it takes me 80h to redo, and those papers will require me to redo everything from scratch. To which the project lead responds "but it doesn't have to be finnished until December, right?"

That is not true, not at all, in any way.

See, there are 600 people that depend on this project, and they need, yes, need to be able to access it from the day it's launched every year. That is an absolute requirement.

So after trying to tell this project lead, for multiple years, how much time I devote to this project (for free) every year, during a short period of time, and after trying countless times to explain why it has to be done when the project is released, I became quite irritated.

So, during the two weeks that have passed since, I've been receiving about 200 emails from people wondering why the thing isn't finished yet and why they can't use it. (forwarded every single one of them to the project lead) and have been redoing it all during the past two weeks, from scratch.

I'm finally done, I released it yesterday, finally! I accompanied it with a bitter email to the project lead.

Because seriously, this is the worst respect for both my time and the people that should use the project's time in all of those years I've been doing this. This year, I've been ignored multiple times; they've shat on my work because it didn't live up to their expectations, even tough they never told me their expectations; I've been misinformed etc.

And now it's starting to get to me, this is the first weekend in a month when I've been able to shut down my laptop, sit down, drink a cup of tea, read a fricking book, chat with some friends etc, and most importantly, sleep. Signs of the stress I've had for a month now is starting to remind themselves.

And there's this little though nagging me in the back of my head: if the project lead would've worked for an hour in September I would've had to do half the job I ended up doing, on double the time. I hate realizing that they don't give a shit about my part of this, even tough I do half the work.

Then why do I continue, year after year? Because I feel that those 600 people that benefit from this really deserve it! But why does there have to be a dick project lead in the middle that makes me feel sick working on the thing I love the most!

So, as I'm not really used to ranting like this, i have to add that I really have no point with this rant. Just had to get it off my chest!

🚀 “I Wanted GitHub Copilot in My Pocket — So I Built It Myself”

For years, I’ve had this weird habit of coding from random places — cafés, buses, hospital waiting rooms, you name it. But every time inspiration hit, I found myself thinking the same thing:

“Man, I wish I could just use Copilot on my phone.”

It’s 2025. We’ve got AI writing novels, generating music, and summarizing 500-page research papers in 2 seconds — yet somehow, GitHub Copilot still refuses to leave the comfort of VS Code on desktop.

So I decided to fix that.

💡 The Idea

It started as frustration — a “wouldn’t it be cool if” moment. I was halfway through an idea for a small project on a train, and my brain screamed:

“Why can’t I just ask Copilot to finish this function right now?”

VS Code was sitting at home, my laptop was dead, and all I had was my phone.

That night, I scribbled this into my notes app:

“Bridge Copilot from VS Code → phone → secure channel → no cloud.”

At the time, it sounded insane. Who even wants to make their life harder by reverse-engineering Copilot responses and piping them into React Native?
Apparently — me.

🧩 The Architecture (aka “How to Lose Sleep in 4 Easy Steps”)

The system ended up like this:

VS Code Extension <-> WebSocket <-> Discovery API (Go + Redis) <-> React Native App

Here’s how it works:

The VS Code extension runs locally, listening to Copilot’s output stream.

A Go backend acts as a matchmaker — helping my phone and PC find each other securely.

The mobile app connects via WebSocket and authenticates with a 6-digit pairing code.

Once paired, they talk directly. No repo data leaves your machine.

It’s like a tiny encrypted tunnel between your phone and VS Code — only it’s not VPN magic, just some careful WebSocket dancing and token rotation.

🛠️ The Stack

Frontend (Mobile): React Native (Expo)

Backend: Go + Redis for connection brokering

VS Code Extension: TypeScript

Security: JWT + rotating session keys

AI Layer: GitHub Copilot (local interface)

🧠 The Challenges

There’s a difference between an “idea” and a “12-hour debugging nightmare that makes you question your life choices.”

Cross-Network Discovery:
How to connect phone and desktop on different networks?
→ A lightweight Redis broker that just handles handshakes.

Security:
I wasn’t making a mini TeamViewer for hackers.
→ Added expiring pairing codes, user-approval dialogs, and local-only token storage.

Copilot Response Streaming:
Copilot doesn’t have a nice public API.
→ Hooked into VS Code’s Copilot output and streamed it over WebSocket.
(Yes, 2% genius and 98% madness.)

UX:
The first version had a 10-second delay.
After optimizing WebSocket batching and Redis latency, it’s now near-instant.

🤯 The “Holy Sh*t, It Works” Moment

The first time my phone sent a prompt — and my VS Code actually answered with Copilot’s suggestion — I legit screamed.

Like, full-on victory dance in the middle of the night.
There’s something surreal about watching your phone chat with your desktop like they’re old coding buddies.

Now I can literally say:

“Copilot, write me a REST API,”
and my phone responds with fully generated code pulled from my local VS Code instance.

No VPN. No cloud syncing. Just pure, geeky magic.

⚡ The Lessons

The hardest problems aren’t technical — they’re psychological.
Fighting “this is impossible” is the real challenge.

Speed matters more than perfection.
Devs don’t want beauty; they want responsiveness. Anything over 1s feels broken.

Security must never be an afterthought.
I treated this like a bank tunnel between devices, not a toy.

Build for yourself first.
I didn’t make this for investors or glory — I made it because I wanted it.
That’s the best reason to build anything.

🧭 The Future

Now that it’s working, I’m turning this experiment into something shareable.
The dream: an app that lets every developer carry Copilot wherever they go — safely and instantly.

Imagine debugging on your couch, or editing code in bed, or just whispering to your AI assistant while waiting for coffee.

Phones today are more powerful than early NASA computers.
Why shouldn’t they also be your code editor sidekick?

So yeah, that’s my story.
I built VSCoder Copilot — because I wanted to code from anywhere, and I refused to wait for permission.

If you’ve ever built something just to scratch your own itch, you already know this feeling.
That mix of frustration, caffeine, and late-night triumph that reminds you why you fell in love with coding in the first place.

Because at the end of the day, that’s what we do:
We make ideas real — one ridiculous hack at a time. 💻🔥