# Encore Shao — Personal Blog

> Personal blog of Encore Shao, a full-stack engineer and AI researcher based in Shanghai. Writing on Rails/Ruby engineering, agentic AI systems, open-source gems, and lessons from shipping production software.

This is a bilingual site (English and Chinese). Each article below is a standalone Markdown-rendered page. See /llms-full.txt for the complete text of every article in one file.

## Articles (English)

- [encore-skills: Stop Re-Teaching Your AI](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/13-encore-skills-gitlab-loop): I kept re-teaching the same GitLab workflow to Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex, until an MR shipped with no issue number linked — so I built one skills library that talks to all three.
- [More Than a Decade Building a VC Intelligence Platform](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/11-vc-intelligence-platform): What it actually takes to build a venture capital intelligence platform — data quality problems, 30+ integrations, and the infrastructure that makes it run at 3am.
- [Setting Up PostgreSQL 10 Streaming Replication the Hard Way](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/10-postgres-replication): What it actually takes to get Postgres streaming replication working between two local VMs — without skipping the parts that matter.
- [Building github-trending: From a Cron Script to a React App](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/09-github-trending): I wanted to track what was rising on GitHub each week without manually scrolling. A Node.js script became a full React app — here's what that journey looked like.
- [Building bamboohr-mcp: An MCP Server for HR APIs](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/01-bamboohr-mcp): I wanted to let any LLM talk to BambooHR's API. Three days later I had a production MCP server in TypeScript. Here's exactly what I built and what surprised me along the way.
- [AI-Powered Bookmark Dashboard: A Chrome Extension Story](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/03-bookmark-dashboard): Replacing the new tab page with something actually useful — how I built a bookmark dashboard powered by agentic AI, and what I'd do differently.
- [Agentic AI in Production: What I Learned Building RanBOT](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/04-agentic-ai-ranbot): Autonomous workflows sound great until they hit the real world. Twelve months of running agentic systems in production, and the lessons I keep coming back to.
- [The Whiteboard That Fired My Video Editor](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/14-excalidraw-recording): I kept losing forty minutes to captions and cropping after every client walkthrough, until I built a whiteboard that records, transcribes, and exports itself.
- [10 Years of Rails: What I Still Reach For Every Day](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/05-ten-years-rails): Not a framework review. A personal account of which Rails patterns aged well, which didn't, and what I've built that I'm still proud of.
- [Building TrendShop: When AI Meets Fashion Discovery](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/06-trendshop): How we built a social fashion platform powered by AI recommendation — what worked, what the users actually wanted, and the pivot we almost didn't make.
- [WorkflowPro: Building Office Automation That Actually Gets Used](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/08-workflowpro): How I built an approval workflow system for an elevator manufacturer that ran three years without downtime — and what I learned about getting enterprise software right the first time.
- [ruby-office365: A Ruby Client for Microsoft Graph](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/12-office365-ruby-gem): Why I built a small Ruby gem for Office 365 instead of using what already existed, and what it actually looks like to pull mail, calendars, and contacts through it.
- [Building a Ruby Wrapper for the Crunchbase API](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/07-crunchbase-ruby): What I learned wrapping a third-party API in idiomatic Ruby — rate limits, authentication flows, model design, and the V3 to V4 migration I didn't see coming.
- [china_regions: Lessons from a Ruby Gem](https://blog.icmoc.com/en/02-china-regions): What I learned shipping a Ruby library for Chinese administrative regions — and why documentation matters more than the code itself.

## 中文 (Chinese)

- [encore-skills：别再重复教你的 AI](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/13-encore-skills-gitlab-loop): 同一套 GitLab 工作流，我在 Claude Code、Cursor、Codex 里各教了一遍，直到某天一个 MR 漏了 issue 编号——于是干脆做了一个三端共用的技能库。
- [十余年，为风投构建一套情报平台](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/11-vc-intelligence-platform): 做一套风投情报平台真正需要什么——数据质量、三十多个集成、以及让系统在凌晨三点还能跑的那些无聊基础设施。
- [用 Vagrant 搭建 PostgreSQL 10 主从复制](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/10-postgres-replication): 团队只有一台数据库，没有备份节点。我用两台虚拟机把流复制从头搭了一遍，搞清楚每一步为什么这么做。
- [github-trending：从一个定时脚本到 React 应用](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/09-github-trending): 我想每周追踪 GitHub 上快速上升的项目，不想靠手动刷页面。一个 Node.js 脚本最后变成了一个完整的 React 应用——记录这个过程。
- [开发 bamboohr-mcp：让 AI 直接对话 HR 系统](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/01-bamboohr-mcp): 我想让任何 LLM 都能直接调用 BambooHR 的 API。三天后，一个生产可用的 MCP 服务器诞生了。记录整个过程，以及那些出乎意料的收获。
- [AI 书签仪表盘：一个 Chrome 扩展的开发故事](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/03-bookmark-dashboard): 用真正有用的东西替换新标签页——我如何开发了一个 AI 驱动的书签仪表盘，以及我下次会怎么做。
- [生产环境中的 Agentic AI：RanBOT 带给我的十二个月](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/04-agentic-ai-ranbot): 自主工作流听起来很美，直到碰上真实世界。十二个月在生产环境运行 AI Agent 系统的经验，以及那些我一再想起的教训。
- [这块白板,把我的剪辑软件炒了鱿鱼](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/14-excalidraw-recording): 每次给客户录完讲解都要搭四十分钟补字幕、调裁切,直到我做了一块能自己录制、自己转录、自己导出的白板。
- [写了十年 Rails：那些我至今每天都在用的东西](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/05-ten-years-rails): 这不是一篇框架评测，而是一份个人记录——哪些 Rails 模式经受住了时间考验，哪些没有，以及我仍然为之骄傲的几个项目。
- [构建 TrendShop：当 AI 遇上时尚发现](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/06-trendshop): 我们做了一个由 AI 推荐驱动的社交时尚平台。用户说他们想要什么，和他们真正做了什么，完全是两回事。
- [WorkflowPro：做一个真正被人用的企业自动化系统](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/08-workflowpro): 为一家电梯制造商开发的审批工作流系统，运行三年从未宕机。我学到了什么叫第一次就把企业软件做对。
- [ruby-office365：一个 Microsoft Graph 的 Ruby 客户端](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/12-office365-ruby-gem): 为什么我没用现成方案，而是自己写了个 Office 365 的 Ruby Gem——以及用它拉邮件、日历、联系人到底是什么样子。
- [为 Crunchbase API 开发一个 Ruby 封装库](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/07-crunchbase-ruby): 把一个第三方 API 包装成惯用 Ruby 的过程中，我学到了什么——限流、认证流程、模型设计，以及那次我没预料到的 V3 到 V4 迁移。
- [china_regions：一个 Ruby Gem 的诞生](https://blog.icmoc.com/zh/02-china-regions): 我为什么要写一个中国行政区划的 Ruby 库，为什么文档比代码本身更重要，以及那 Gem 背后真正的原因。

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