personal lab & portfolio

AI, with a
human pulse.

I'm a developer exploring what happens when modern AI meets thoughtful design, clear constraints, and a genuine respect for the human on the other side of the screen.

Developer at a glowing terminal — retro-futuristic AI scene

My entry point into software wasn't a computer science degree or a bootcamp. It was WordPress — back when building a website meant wrestling with PHP templates, reading source code to understand how hooks worked, and caring deeply about whether the thing you shipped actually helped the person using it. Design decisions, user experience, and real-world constraints mattered just as much as the code.

That foundation pulled me deeper over time — into custom applications, creative tooling, and eventually artificial intelligence. Not as a novelty to chase, and not because it's the next big thing. But because AI is genuinely the most interesting problem space I've encountered in twenty years of building software — and it demands exactly the kind of thinking I've always cared about.

"The question isn't what AI can do. It's what it should do — and how to build systems that stay honest about the difference."

I still have a soft spot for the early days of computing — when it was just you, a keyboard, and a blinking cursor. No abstractions piled on top. No noise. Just clear feedback and a direct conversation with the machine. That mindset informs everything I build today.

AIscripty is a personal lab, portfolio, and proving ground. It's where I think out loud about what thoughtful AI actually looks like — and ship the things I'm building along the way.

A few things I won't compromise on

Augmentation, not replacement

AI should make you think better, not think for you. The goal is extending human capability — not outsourcing human judgment.

Clarity over cleverness

Impressive on paper means nothing if it's confusing in practice. Interfaces should be intentional, legible, and calm.

Constraints as design tools

I work best when limits are treated as creative leverage — not obstacles to route around.

Cohesion over features

When the technology, the interface, and the intent all reinforce each other — that's when something goes from good to worth building.

Things I'm building

01

Canonic

In Beta

A desktop world-building engine for writers and creators. Canonic lets you build the complete infrastructure of a fictional world — geography, factions, lore, characters, rules — so that the stories you tell inside it actually make sense. Built on Tauri, TypeScript, and SQLite.

Tauri TypeScript React SQLite AI-assisted

02

Arc

Upcoming

The narrative companion to Canonic. Arc is a storytelling app where AI-generated narratives are governed by the rules of your world — not the other way around. Your Canon is the prompt. The story has to earn its way in.

Narrative AI World-building Anthropic API

03

Lumen Dashboard

Active

A personal command center — part CMS, part creative toolkit, part AI integration layer. Lumen powers this site, manages my AI assistant Iris, and handles everything from blog publishing to file management. Built on FastAPI and SQLite.

FastAPI Python SQLite Personal tooling

Latest from the blog

Two Camps, Two Blind Spots

The debate about AI and software development has largely split into two camps. Both have a point. Both are missing something critical. Understanding where each goes wrong might be more useful than picking a side.

My AI Toolkit, Honestly

There's no shortage of articles telling you which AI tool is best. Most of them are wrong — not because the information is inaccurate, but because "best" is doing a lot of work that it can't actually carry.

The Canon Is the Prompt

There's a version of AI-assisted writing I wanted no part of. You've seen it — a text editor with an AI button. Write a paragraph, highlight it, click "make it better." That's not what I'm building Canonic to be.

Less broadcasting,
more thinking together.

If you're thinking about AI, interfaces, creative tooling, or just how to build software that actually respects the person using it — those are conversations worth having.

eric@cobaltapps.com