I do a lot of things because "I wonder..." And I'm paying a monthly subscription for AI, so why not find out?
A broken promo system, a new way to prototype, production code, an enablement ecosystem, and a design system nobody asked for.
A backend engineering team needed a front-end builder. They asked a designer. I'm the first non-engineer to push code to a Zoro production database. I'm documenting everything so others can follow.
Zoro's promo infrastructure was broken. We rebuilt it over 15 months, one phase at a time. The biggest win was a three-line text change: +27% revenue per user.
I wondered if I could prototype in Cursor instead of Figma. Turns out I could. Sixteen months of compounding later, my AI-generated code was running in production.
Aaron and I were the only designers prototyping in code. So we built a component library on our exact stack, wrapped it in skills, and made it so anyone can start prototyping in about 90 seconds. Nobody asked us to.
Zoro tried twice to build a design system and stalled twice. Attempt three is underway, built on the Storybook nobody asked for. Week one: all 772 production components, audited.
The stuff I build after hours.
Most of these started with a spark I wanted to explore. Sometimes I just wonder how something works, so I have AI help me build it and then explain it all to me. Some became tools I use every day. Some taught me that just because I can doesn't mean it's worth it.
See everything I'm building →Mack
An AI personal trainer that programs workouts, tracks progress, and adapts to equipment I actually own.
Gary
My second brain. Real ideas get logged here so I can look for patterns and figure out which ones are worth building.
sambuilt.it
This site. I used to pay Framer $120 a year to host my portfolio. Now I design it, build it in Nuxt, and ship it myself for free.