Making Music with AI (and Kids)

Last weekend I upgraded our Google One account to access Gemini's newer models. The first thing I built wasn't work-related.

Our Elf on the Shelf is named Donut. My kids asked if we could write a song about him. I used Gemini to draft lyrics about the things Donut sees and does around the house, then fed those into Suno to generate an actual song.

The kids loved it. We spent an hour iterating on lyrics and trying different music styles. Country Donut. Rock Donut. A surprisingly catchy pop version that's been stuck in my head for days.

What made it fun wasn't the AI output itself. It was the iteration loop with my kids. They'd suggest changes ("make it funnier" or "add the part about the dog"), I'd tweak the prompt, and we'd listen to the new version together. They were collaborating with AI without knowing or caring about the tech.

I'm planning to make a few more songs for family members before Christmas. Different styles, different inside jokes. Suno is impressive for what it can generate, and the barrier to entry is low enough that my kids could almost run it themselves (but they won't).

AI gets pitched as a productivity tool. Sometimes it's just a fun thing to make with your family.

This Week on Slightly Caffeinated

No new episode this week. Schedules were packed and some extra family stuff came up. We're also off for our planned holiday break, so we'll see you in the new year!

Subscribe at slightlycaffeinated.fm to catch up on old episodes.

What I'm Learning

I've been setting up observability for Claude Code at work. Claude uses OpenTelemetry under the hood, and it's straightforward to plug into.

I started with a pre-built Grafana dashboard (link below), then customized it. Added metrics for skill activation hook success rates, tool usage counts, error rates, and timing. Now I can see what's happening inside Claude during sessions.

The goal: use these metrics to tune my setup, then roll improvements out to the team.

On that same note, I started building a plugin repo for our engineering team. I moved my custom agents and commands there, added simple install/uninstall scripts, and packaged it into something shareable. Still rough, but it's a start. I'll add skills and hooks next. Having these plugins available should help with future onboarding.

Links Worth Your Time

claude-code-otel - OpenTelemetry integration for Claude Code with a Grafana dashboard. I used this as a starting point, then extended it with custom metrics for skill hooks and tool usage. If you're trying to understand what Claude is doing under the hood, this gives you visibility.

Side Project: NAS + Plex

My wife and I are planning some tech changes at home. We have large music and movie collections scattered across devices, and accessing them is a pain. Looking into setting up a NAS with Plex on top so we can centralize everything, stream to any device, and let the kids watch our movies while traveling.

I used to build PCs years ago but haven't done anything like this in a long time. Server setups and storage have come a long way.

If you've done a NAS/Plex setup and have tips, I'd love to hear them. Reply and let me know what worked (or didn't) for you.

That's it for this week. Happy holidays if you're celebrating. See you in the new year.

-Chris