Product architecture
Small tools, solo SaaS ideas, anti-bloat thinking, workflow design, and the line where a useful feature starts turning into a platform.
- I Tried to Make Structured File Intake Boring
I tested one configuration-driven intake path against clinical-trial, provider-registry, and public-transit files, including bad rows and retries.
- The Data Was Already in the Browser
WireData turns JSON responses and page tables into local SQL datasets, but the real design problem was preserving consent, bytes, and lineage.
- A Web Interface for the NHTSA Evidence System
An NHTSA evidence interface limits users to eight validated questions, separates record types, and labels approximate retrieval with similarity scores.
- They Took the Jack
The headphone jack was universal and zero-configuration, yet disappeared because most people did not miss it—the cost of designing for the average.
- What Changed When Models Could Answer Each Other
I compared parallel model responses with a sequential, stateful debate in which each model could rebut or concede points made in earlier turns.
- I Built Automatic Backlinks Before Testing the Writing
A writing tool extracted entities and contradictions, but months of data-model refinement happened before testing whether it improved a real manuscript.
- Building Durable Memory Around a Stateless Model
A durable memory design stores facts and narrative history outside the model, retrieves them differently, and reviews every proposed update.
- You Don't Need the Whole Map — Usually
Learning by moving before the whole map is clear often works, but AI makes the same habit easier to attempt and harder to recognize when it fails.
- Why I Keep Shelving My Pipeline Generator
Repeated attempts to generate PySpark pipelines failed at the same boundary: names and types were insufficient without schema contracts and business roles.
- The Missing Middle in Data Tooling
Between enterprise platforms and one-off query tools lies a missing class of focused utilities for reconciliation, schema drift, and file comparison.
- AI Is Good at the Work You Can Check
Coding assistants saved time when tests, schemas, or reconciliations could check their work; without those checks, plausible mistakes consumed the gain.