About

Thomas Schilling builds Spring Boot products, developer tooling, and engineering workflows with coding agents.

I’m a software engineer, founder, and speaker based in Stuttgart — a Microsoft Most Valuable Professional (Java) and Spring Certified Professional.

I build software products and developer tooling, mostly with Spring Boot, Kotlin, and server-rendered UI. I want systems that stay readable as they grow, with fast feedback and quality checks close to the work.

What I work on

  • Founder of PhotoQuest, an interactive photo game for weddings — printed cards plus a no-app QR gallery (photo, video, and audio) that get guests capturing the day from their own perspective — built with Spring Boot and Kotlin
  • Creator of Spring ViewComponent
  • Writer about Spring Boot, htmx, Kotlin, and engineering workflows with coding agents
  • Speaker at conferences and user groups including Spring I/O, Devoxx, and JavaZone

How I think

I prefer pragmatic systems over fashionable ones: clear boundaries, server-rendered applications where they fit, and tooling that helps teams ship without creating accidental complexity.

With coding agents, I’m interested in the boring part: where they fit in planning, review, tests, and feedback loops so teams can keep code maintainable.

How these posts are written

Most posts here are drafted by a coding agent — Claude or Codex — from my real working sessions, then reviewed and edited by me before they ship. The experiences, opinions, and technical judgment are mine; the agent writes the first draft from the actual transcripts and files of the work.

I do this deliberately. My time is limited, and the honest choice is usually between sharing an experience this way or not sharing it at all — I’d rather share it. It’s also the workflow I write about: coding agents with a human in the review loop, not instead of one.

If something reads as wrong or careless, that’s on me. Tell me and I’ll fix it.

Elsewhere