Tool builder · since 2003
I learn by building. When reading doesn’t answer a question, I ship a prototype and find out.
Software developer and tool builder. Founder of Blackbelt Labs, currently building Daslab.
Twenty years of buildingCurrently
What I'm building right now
Daslab is the main line of work. Around it sit smaller open-source tools for observability, privacy, and compilation.
Daslab
You set the scene, agents run it. Content-addressed state, so every run is a commit you can audit. The job runner works in a browser, on a Mac, on an iPhone, or on an ESP32.
agent-otel
OpenTelemetry router for agentic AI. Declarative fanout, retroactive replay, reversible PII redaction.
pii-proxy
Privacy proxy for AI agents. Mask PII before sending to LLMs, unmask responses to write back.
autocompile
Compile AI agent traces into deterministic programs via Answer Set Programming. Process mining + neural slot policies + trust-layer supervision.
Writing
Posts and notes
Newest first. Most of it comes out of something I was building at the time.
Twenty years of building
What I have built since 2003, from a Heidelberg cancer lab to agent infrastructure, and the questions that are still open.
Taming the Streams API in Deno
A working guide to the Streams API following the latest web standards — using Deno to fetch a large file and stream it to disk.
Leadership Short Course
Timeless leadership principles by Dee Hock, founder of Visa — a short, high-signal collection on management, hiring, compensation, and self-leadership.
CMake by Example
A short, beginner-friendly CMake introduction. Building C/C++ executables, libraries, and linking them together — distilled from the CMake docs and Stack Overflow.
Histo: A Protocol for Peer-to-Peer Data Synchronization in Mobile Apps
The full 2013 thesis. Histo is a framework for peer-to-peer data synchronization in mobile apps, built around a Merkle DAG, three-way merging, and a lowest common ancestor kept so the application can resolve conflicts itself.
Earlier projects
Things I've built and helped ship
A selection — most are public, some completed engagements. The full path is on the research page.
Daslab
You set the scene, agents run it. Every run leaves a signed commit you can audit — reads run free, writes wait for approval.
Zeit
Every city on one timeline. Hour strips with working hours shaded and a scrubber to preview any time, so you find the overlap without the mental math. iPhone and Mac.
Model Reliability Benchmark
Which models hold up when agents do real work. Aggregates from live runs across seven kinds of task, from finance and ERP to robotics: how often each model finishes, and what it costs per task.
Talks and workshops
What agents actually do in production: where they hold, where they break, and what the audit trail has to look like before anyone lets one near a live system. For teams, conferences, and boards.
Blackbelt Labs
My software studio specializing in LLM eval stacks, app development with hardware integrations and NoCode automation.
SME Automation Community
Join my Zapier and LLM focused automation community of 9000+ SMEs.
Zappy
A screen capture tool for macOS. Quickly capture, annotate, and share screenshots and screen recordings.
New York Fashion Week
Wearable electronics with Studio XO, the house behind Lady Gaga's Flying Dress. Fiber optic LEDs woven into the garments, driven over Bluetooth Low Energy from embedded microcontrollers and animated by mood from an app we built. Worn by the dancers who opened the VFILES runway show at NYFW in February 2016. Behind-the-scenes video by Mashable.
Daimler
Product consulting for custom CRM workflow solution with intelligent demand prediction.
Zapier for Mobile
NoCode workflow automation from your phone.
Discotalk
The AI creativity app. Latest AI image and video models on iOS.
ShortcutAI
AI inside Apple Notes. Built on the raw OpenAI completion API before ChatGPT shipped — with a Skills catalog, marketplace, and multi-channel agent dashboard.
Folio
A boutique digital art platform in collaboration with an LA based designer collective.
Histo
Distributed history-based state syncing. Merkle DAG, three-way merge, semantic conflict resolution, history tracking. The full 2013 thesis, with the merge running live in the browser.