Home on Aaron Gabbert

Why MCP finally clicked for me

Tue, 27 May 2025 00:00:00 -0500

It’s not about the API, it’s about the design

Notes from David Gomes’ presentation at Microsoft Build 2025

Obsidian plugin development with Svelte components

Thu, 10 Oct 2024 00:00:00 -0500

Through various work experiences, I’ve had the benefit of being able to contribute to existing JavaScript/TypeScript projects such as browser extensions. During my Computer Science education, I didn’t get a lot of exposure to web or front end development. In fact, front end work used to scare me too (see: Regular expressions used to scare me). I really saw myself as a back end first developer. However, taking an existing webpage and using plugins and browser APIs to manipulate the DOM helped things click for me.

Regular expressions used to scare me

Wed, 18 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0500

It’s hard to remember why, but as a Computer Science student, I was scared of regular expressions. Something about the combination of symbols just made them look ugly and unapproachable to me, I guess. I got the sense that a lot of my peers shared this feeling.

Automating budget spreadsheet entries with iOS Shortcuts

Mon, 09 Sep 2024 00:00:00 -0500

I keep a budget spreadsheet in Google Sheets to track account balances and money in/out. It doesn’t have anything fancy like an API connection to automatically pull data from my accounts, but hey, it’s free.

About

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

I work as an AI and Automation Engineer in the cybersecurity industry. I previously worked as an MDR analyst, and my recent work has focused on using LLMs and agentic systems to make analyst workflows more efficient.

Claude Code Config

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Because sometimes, Googling for these options is difficult.

Links

CLI Reference

settings.json reference

Environment Variables

Changelog

Settings I find useful

`settings.json`

respondToBashCommands: defaults to true as of 2.1.186. I prefer false. I do find it useful to run bash commands in the Claude Code terminal for convenience, but if I want the model to respond, I’ll send a separate message.
showClearContextOnPlanAccept: this used to be the default in Claude Code, and if the plan is sufficiently specific, I find that it can reduce model confusion when executing. However, with Opus/Fable 5, I find that confusion to be less frequent.

IOC Lens

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

IOC Lens is an Obsidian plugin for incident-response note taking. It extracts indicators of compromise (IP addresses, domains, and file hashes) from your notes into a sidebar, with relevant research-tool pivots for each IOC type.

Pattern matching tools

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Pattern matching with various code or no-code tools is a critical skill in the security field. There are countless use cases, so you’re likely to come across and have a use for writing one of these patterns.

Publicly available security research tools

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

Below is a list of publicly available resources I have experience with. This list is certainly not exhaustive. Also note that IOCs can be malicious in the absence of hits/reports at these sources. However, they can help you build context while researching or performing analysis.

Using Claude Code with n8n MCP triggers

Mon, 01 Jan 0001 00:00:00 +0000

n8n has an MCP Server Trigger Node that I’m using to play around with local MCP in Claude Code. This is just some basic testing/exploration for MCP integration between Claude Code and n8n. If I were going to use this for meaningful work, I’d put a lot more thought into curating responses and prompting via the tool parameters/descriptions!