I lead product and engineering, and I still ship.

I build systems that show their work.

The lines behind this page are a topographic map of a year of my GitHub contributions. Every system has a terrain like it: where the load runs, what depends on what, where people get lost. I map it before I build on it.

  • 2M+monthly visitors on search I built
  • $6Mdelivery audited before we accepted it
  • 99.9%uptime, from several crashes a day
  • 90+engineers trained
  • 2patents pending
  • 8,731commits shipped at GARDE1

You only find what’s universal by living where everything else is different. Then you build from first principles.

Tell me what you’re working on For hiring managers: the record

The latest is GARDE1: compliance AI that has to show its work.

01

GARDE1

CMMC tooling was stuck in 2010: checklists, and software that needed an expert to use it. 110 controls, 320 assessment objectives. GARDE1 does the work.

  1. PWTL (Prompt Workflow & Task Language)

    A task language for AI judgment. Instead of writing an answer, the model chooses one, cites the evidence it relied on, and keeps its reasoning, including what it ruled out.

    It can’t invent an outcome, and an uploaded file can inform a decision but never instruct the model, so prompt injection has nothing to grab. Patent pending. It runs every decision GARDE1’s AI makes.

  2. The GARDE1 document system

    Compliance documents written only from what an organization’s facts require, with a receipt for every sentence.

    Every statement can answer an auditor’s “why is this here?” Nothing is invented. Same facts, same policy, every run, and changing one fact changes only what it affects. Patent pending.

  3. Locus

    Gives AI a map of the website, so it can show people the way.

    GARDE1’s customers run machine shops, not IT departments, so they shouldn’t have to learn the software to use it. With the map, the chat points to where things are instead of navigating them away. The map is the rendered tree: the page you’re on, plus the other pages soft-rendered in the background, so it only knows what you could actually see. A transformer running in the browser in WebAssembly matches what you ask to it. Anything sensitive stops at the product’s own confirmation.

See the work

It took nine years and ten steps to get there.

02

The path

Founder of GARDE1. Two patents pending. Nine years of production systems, from a Y Combinator startup to AbbVie.

Self-taughtcode, at 13Elexasmart homeThought Catalogdigital mediaLabRecruitrecruitingHooplasales softwareAbbVie (Allē)pharma, aestheticsPangea (YC W21)talent marketplaceOC Sports & Entertainmentsports, entertainmentLitehousesmart districtsGARDE1compliance AIWhat’s nextyour team?

The full record

Along the way, I write about what AI will actually change.

03

Grounded

“AI made producing the report free, left the judgment exactly as expensive as it was, and then multiplied how much judgment was needed.”

From The Wrong Layer of Abstraction

All writing and papers

None of it makes sense without the places.

04

Lived

Understanding humanity, through the systems of our lives.

Medellín: El Poblado
Mexico City: La Condesa
Chicago: the Loop

Every place

Tell me what you’re working on

I read every message myself and reply within two business days.

Have something urgent to say? call or text. Feel free to call. I prefer a text.