Colophon
This site was compiled, not designed.
Most of what you see was rendered from laws, meanings, and contracts that I authored and a machine compiled, then certified before it shipped. This discipline is called context engineering, and it is where my work is heading.
Ten years of making packet systems correct by construction trained the instinct. I now apply the same rigor to design, language, and distribution. The page below renders its evidence from the same source that builds the site.
The discipline
Context engineering — structuring intent, knowledge, and constraint so a system produces correct output by construction.
A router that drops the wrong packet and a renderer that ships the wrong pixel fail the same way: an under-specified system left a decision to chance. The fix is identical — remove the chance. Author the rules precisely, compile them deterministically, and certify the output against them.
This site is the portfolio. Its design is a compiler. Its seven languages derive from a locale-neutral meaning layer. Its social cards and structured data are generated from contracts. Its deploy is gated by 32 checks. None of it was hand-assembled — and all of it is below.
The compiler
Five layers. Lower constrains upper; nothing is eyeballed. A defect is fixed by changing a law or a token and recompiling — never by nudging one element.
What a visitor must feel. The locale-neutral intent, before any pixel.
How the materials behave — borders, motion, color, type, space. Each law cites the felt-state it serves.
The laws compiled to values — ramps, the type scale, the 4px grid. Rule-7 spacing, machine-checked contrast.
Purpose-named aliases to L3 — action, surface, data. Components reference these, never raw hex.
Composed from L4 only. Each ships a manifest declaring the felt-states it serves and the laws it obeys.
8 felt-states (L1)
- 01Engineered Truth — the spine
- 02Structural Permanence
- 03Cognitive Clarity
- 04Craft and Care
- 05Decisive Momentum
- 06Forensic Transparency
- 07Quiet Authority
- 08Earned Depth
15 physics laws (L2)
- precision-hairlines
- angular-geometry
- instant-mechanical-motion
- color-is-information
- dark-mode-co-equal
- modular-type-scale
- mono-marks-data
- fg-five-levels
- 4px-grid
- dense-within-generous-between
- tiered-measure
- opacity-solid-steps
- single-primary-action
- saturation-scarcity
- soft-rhythm
Traceability, unedited
No component ships without justification. Here is one — the Card — printed straight from its manifest. Every governed component carries the same chain.
components/ui/Card.manifest.json
- serves felt-states
- structural-permanenceengineered-truthcraft-and-care
- obeys laws
- precision-hairlinesangular-geometry4px-griddense-within-generous-betweeninstant-mechanical-motioncolor-is-information
- serves 11 tokens · replaced 40 hand-rolled call-sites
- surface-card · line-default · line-hover · data-tier-remote · data-tier-live · data-tier-advisory · data-tier-emergency · data-score-perfect · data-score-excellent · data-score-strong · data-score-solid
13 distinct laws are cited across the 9 component manifests. A standing gate (C14) refuses any component that drops the chain.
Context engineering, at scale
The same pattern — author the rules, compile deterministically, certify the output — runs three more factories.
Language
i18n meaning layer
1,850 locale-neutral meanings render to 10,332 strings across 7 languages — every string a derivation of meaning × stylebook, English included. 11 validation gates; a 3,867-row correction trail.
Distribution
OG · snippet · graph
One deterministic renderer drives 9 card archetypes from page contracts — open-graph images, meta snippets, and JSON-LD knowledge graph, all derived, never hand-written. The social card finally looks like the site.
Release
QA gate pipeline
32 gates across five phases stand between a commit and production — typing, tests, privacy, contrast, structured data, signatures. The pipeline has a soundness institution that proves each gate red-then-green.
The division of labor
The human authors the laws and the judgment. A tiered crew compiles and certifies. The build itself runs no model — it is a pure function from source to artifact.
Tier assignments are measured, not preferred. Agents are read-only by contract; the database carries a hash tripwire; every write is reversible.
The catalog, from source
98 tokens · 77 cite a physics law · 16 carry machine-enforced contrast. Rendered from design-tokens.json.
Color is information — orange acts, the rest encodes data
Foreground ink ramp — stepped for distinctness, all WCAG-AA
9 governed components
I show the craft on this page and leave the security architecture off it on purpose. Deciding what to publish and what to keep private is part of the discipline.
If you're building systems that must be correct by construction — in design, in language, or in how a thing is shipped — that is the work I'm moving toward.