Building and Thinking
One-off posts, plus a few ongoing series. Click a series to read only its posts.
- Autonomous companiesOngoing efforts to build and grow several products sustainably. I want to be as effective as I can (10x+), solo.
- Signals over vibesThe harnesses I build across products to work on signal instead of vibes, especially after sprints.
- Society essaysReading books and writing about business models that put respect for all life first. I'll turn my theories into action, eventually.
- Product postsTechnical breakdowns of what I'm building. Usually post-sprint reflections.
- Game devArt plus coding = short games I make on the side.
By productMortrel
2026
- The true nature of dark patterns
Why dark patterns are really about disconnecting people from their own best interests — and what a company that genuinely respects human life would measure beyond revenue.
- Build your own harness
Everyone's selling 20-agent orchestration templates. I'd rather grow my own harness out of real pain — and spend 90% of my time actually shipping.
- Why I moved Mortrel's encryption to the server
I wanted the best design in terms of privacy and encryption, but because Mortrel is a consumer AI app, the worker has to decrypt to do RAG. I moved encryption and decryption to the server. Along the way, I did a bug hunt and went down a research rabbit hole.
- How I went from vibe coding to signal coding
I did plan-driven development and had Codex review every plan and every diff. The codebase rotted anyway. Here's the harness I built for V2 — and why yours will look nothing like mine.
- A tale of two crons
I tried to fix a one-line SQL bug. It turned into ~180 LOC deleted, a refactor, and three new design checks I now run on every plan.
- The product vision for Mortrel (formerly TimeBox)
What TimeBox is and isn't
- Why I'm building Mortrel (formerly TimeBox)
And my research on time