Writing
Notes from building software with AI, running a consultancy, shipping privacy-first iOS apps, and a decade in enterprise control systems. Everything here is written by me and published here first.
A Chronicle of Privacy, Community, and Decentralized Development
How pseudonymous developers built private, decentralised money without a pre-mine, foundation or venture capital. Compiled from the Grin Forum archives (2018–2025). Free to read online, with an EPUB on GitHub. Published January 2026 under CC BY-NC-SA 3.0.
Asking AI to write emails is the least valuable thing you can do with it. The better question is which of your processes should not involve a human at all.
Ten years building boardroom control systems for banks and tech firms taught me how software that cannot fail gets built. Six lessons I now apply to AI.
Why Mood Share keeps every check-in on the phone with SwiftData, how sharing works with no server behind it, and what that promise costs in return.
How I turned 2,930 Grin forum topics into a short history with the Discourse API, Claude Code and Opus 4.5, and what the community found missing.
What Making Tax Digital for Income Tax means for UK sole traders and landlords: thresholds, quarterly deadlines, penalties, and what HMRC's API shows.
Why a chat window stops working once several AI agents are running, the questions a dashboard has to answer, and what to build first if you need one.
Where AI automation pays off first in a 5–50 person UK business, where it does not, how to run discovery, UK GDPR basics and a sensible first project.
What Mimblewimble hides and how it hides it, why Grin emits one grin a second for ever, what interactive transactions really cost, and who runs the project.
What Non-Violent Resistance parenting is, what my iOS app NVR Companion does to support it, and why every note a parent writes in it stays on the phone.