February 23, 2026

#470 A Jolting Episode

25 minutes

Topics covered in this episode:

Better Python tests with inline-snapshot

jolt Battery intelligence for your laptop

Markdown code formatting with ruff

act - run your GitHub actions locally

Extras

Joke

Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by us! Support our work through:

Our courses at Talk Python Training

The Complete pytest Course

Patreon Supporters

Connect with the hosts

Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)

Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social

Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.

Brian #1: Better Python tests with inline-snapshot

Alex Hall, on Pydantic blog

Great for testing complex data structures

Allows you to write a test like this:

from inline_snapshot import snapshot

def test_user_creation():

user = create_user(id=123, name="test_user")

assert user.dict() == snapshot({})

Then run pytest --inline-snapshot=fix

And the library updates the test source code to look like this:

def test_user_creation():

user = create_user(id=123, name="test_user")

assert user.dict() == snapshot({

"id": 123,

"name": "test_user",

"status": "active"

})

Now, when you run the code without “fix” the collected data is used for comparison

Awesome to be able to visually inspect the test data right there in the test code.

Projects mentioned

inline-snapshot

pytest-examples

syrupy

dirty-equals

executing

Michael #2: jolt Battery intelligence for your laptop

Support for both macOS and Linux

Battery Status — Charge percentage, time remaining, health, and cycle count

Power Monitoring — System power draw with CPU/GPU breakdown

Process Tracking — Processes sorted by energy impact with color-coded severity

Historical Graphs — Track battery and power trends over time

Themes — 10+ built-in themes with dark/light auto-detection

Background Daemon — Collect historical data even when the TUI isn't running

Process Management — Kill energy-hungry processes directly

Brian #3: Markdown code formatting with ruff

Suggested by Matthias Schoettle

ruff can now format code within markdown files

Will format valid Python code in code blocks marked with python, py, python3 or py3.

Also recognizes pyi as Python type stub files.

Includes the ability to turn off formatting with comment [HTML_REMOVED] , [HTML_REMOVED] blocks.

Requires preview mode

[tool.ruff.lint]

preview = true

Michael #4: act - run your GitHub actions locally

Run your GitHub Actions locally! Why would you want to do this? Two reasons:

Fast Feedback - Rather than having to commit/push every time you want to test out the changes you are making to your .github/workflows/ files (or for any changes to embedded GitHub actions), you can use act to run the actions locally. The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.

Local Task Runner - I love make. However, I also hate repeating myself. With act, you can use the GitHub Actions defined in your .github/workflows/ to replace your Makefile!

When you run act it reads in your GitHub Actions from .github/workflows/ and determines the set of actions that need to be run.

Uses the Docker API to either pull or build the necessary images, as defined in your workflow files and finally determines the execution path based on the dependencies that were defined.

Once it has the execution path, it then uses the Docker API to run containers for each action based on the images prepared earlier.

The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.

Extras

Michael:

Winter is coming: Frozendict accepted

Django ORM stand-alone

Command Book app announcement post

Joke: Plug ‘n Paste

...more

View all episodes

By Michael Kennedy and Brian Okken

4.7

212212 ratings

February 23, 2026

#470 A Jolting Episode

25 minutes

Topics covered in this episode:

Better Python tests with inline-snapshot

jolt Battery intelligence for your laptop

Markdown code formatting with ruff

act - run your GitHub actions locally

Extras

Joke

Watch on YouTube

About the show

Sponsored by us! Support our work through:

Our courses at Talk Python Training

The Complete pytest Course

Patreon Supporters

Connect with the hosts

Michael: @[email protected] / @mkennedy.codes (bsky)

Brian: @[email protected] / @brianokken.bsky.social

Show: @[email protected] / @pythonbytes.fm (bsky)

Join us on YouTube at pythonbytes.fm/live to be part of the audience. Usually Monday at 11am PT. Older video versions available there too.

Finally, if you want an artisanal, hand-crafted digest of every week of the show notes in email form? Add your name and email to our friends of the show list, we'll never share it.

Brian #1: Better Python tests with inline-snapshot

Alex Hall, on Pydantic blog

Great for testing complex data structures

Allows you to write a test like this:

from inline_snapshot import snapshot

def test_user_creation():

user = create_user(id=123, name="test_user")

assert user.dict() == snapshot({})

Then run pytest --inline-snapshot=fix

And the library updates the test source code to look like this:

def test_user_creation():

user = create_user(id=123, name="test_user")

assert user.dict() == snapshot({

"id": 123,

"name": "test_user",

"status": "active"

})

Now, when you run the code without “fix” the collected data is used for comparison

Awesome to be able to visually inspect the test data right there in the test code.

Projects mentioned

inline-snapshot

pytest-examples

syrupy

dirty-equals

executing

Michael #2: jolt Battery intelligence for your laptop

Support for both macOS and Linux

Battery Status — Charge percentage, time remaining, health, and cycle count

Power Monitoring — System power draw with CPU/GPU breakdown

Process Tracking — Processes sorted by energy impact with color-coded severity

Historical Graphs — Track battery and power trends over time

Themes — 10+ built-in themes with dark/light auto-detection

Background Daemon — Collect historical data even when the TUI isn't running

Process Management — Kill energy-hungry processes directly

Brian #3: Markdown code formatting with ruff

Suggested by Matthias Schoettle

ruff can now format code within markdown files

Will format valid Python code in code blocks marked with python, py, python3 or py3.

Also recognizes pyi as Python type stub files.

Includes the ability to turn off formatting with comment [HTML_REMOVED] , [HTML_REMOVED] blocks.

Requires preview mode

[tool.ruff.lint]

preview = true

Michael #4: act - run your GitHub actions locally

Run your GitHub Actions locally! Why would you want to do this? Two reasons:

Local Task Runner - I love make. However, I also hate repeating myself. With act, you can use the GitHub Actions defined in your .github/workflows/ to replace your Makefile!

When you run act it reads in your GitHub Actions from .github/workflows/ and determines the set of actions that need to be run.

Uses the Docker API to either pull or build the necessary images, as defined in your workflow files and finally determines the execution path based on the dependencies that were defined.

Once it has the execution path, it then uses the Docker API to run containers for each action based on the images prepared earlier.

The environment variables and filesystem are all configured to match what GitHub provides.

Extras

Michael:

Winter is coming: Frozendict accepted

Django ORM stand-alone

Command Book app announcement post

Joke: Plug ‘n Paste

...more