How to Build Reliable AI Products: A Production Engineering Guide
AI demos are easy. Reliable AI products are an engineering problem.
Notes written while doing the work.
Technical posts, product decisions, and honest observations — written while building, not after.
Start here
The best place to start if you want to understand how I think and work.
How Chrome Extensions Actually Work in 2026 (Manifest V3 Explained)
MV3 is four moving parts — manifest, service worker, content scripts, and UI — not a single script tag anymore.
Personal Page - From Personal Site to Product
Stop presenting projects. Start shipping a system that compounds trust.
Build in public
Build log
What shipped, what broke, and what changed — written as it happened.
ResistGate 1.3.3 — clearer popup, better first glance
Shipped a popup refresh focused on first-glance clarity: the popup now states the job plainly, the current-tab shortcut says exactly what it does, and the empty state lost its duplicate copy. Small release, but every session starts at the popup.
Amethyst 1.6.2 — the popup stops trying to be the dashboard
Rebuilt the Amethyst popup around one question: where did today go? It now opens with the daily total, top sites, and a single button into the full dashboard. Removed the tracking badge, comparison chip, sync button, and feedback card — the glance view answers fast, then gets out of the way.
Published the agent-readable portfolio series
A run of notes on making this site readable by AI agents: the MCP server, the public API, the data model, and the security lessons from exposing it all. Personal sites are becoming APIs — this series documents doing it for real.
AI engineering
What AI features look like when regular people use them in real life.
Why I Won't Sell "Unlimited AI"
Every AI call has a marginal cost. 'Unlimited' on a fixed price means one of three things: weaker models, hidden limits later, or burning cash.
Your MCP Server Is Only as Good as Its Tool Descriptions
An MCP tool is not useful because it exists. It is useful when the agent understands when, why, and how to call it.
Chrome extensions
Practical guides for Manifest V3, privacy-first browser tools, and extension distribution.
How to Publish a Chrome Extension to the Web Store in 2026 (Full Checklist)
The Web Store review is a product gate — privacy policy, assets, and MV3 compliance matter as much as your code.
How I Built ResistGate: A Chrome Extension That Makes You Earn Distractions
Real products need friction by design — ResistGate makes you type before distraction, not just block URLs.
Product decisions
Pricing, product choices, and what I've learned trying to make things people actually buy.
What Loot Boxes and Battle Passes Teach Every Builder
Game monetization splits cleanly into predictable-and-fair and random-and-manipulative. Regulators are banning the second — and the same line runs through how any product charges.
Subscription Fatigue and the Real Cost of Dark Patterns
Retention won through dark patterns is debt. It builds regulatory and reputational liability and makes every future price increase impossible.
Systems design
Architecture tradeoffs, primitives over complexity, and durable system patterns.
The Data Model Behind My Personal Hub
A personal site is not just content. It is a data model.
The Architecture Behind My Agent-Readable Personal Hub
I rebuilt my personal hub as a three-layer system: website for humans, API for software, MCP for agents.
How I think
How I make decisions, stay focused, and keep moving without a team.
Ten users and a five-star rating
You can't skip the ten. Every million starts as ten people who actually stayed.
Ten Questions Before You Pick a Business Model
The right model isn't the trendy one — it's the one your product's costs, users, and habits actually point to. Ten questions get you there.
How I work
Sleep, routines, learning, and what actually keeps me at full capacity.