I'm Mark — a software engineer and Pacific Northwest transplant living in the Bay Area. I traded the evergreens and grey skies for fog that rolls in from a different direction.
By day I build software. Increasingly, I build it alongside AI. The shift from writing every line by hand to steering loops, evaluating outputs, and thinking in systems has been the most interesting change in my career. This blog is where I work through that transition out loud — the prompts, the patterns, and the occasional philosophical tangent about where all of this is headed.
I'm drawn to new ideas the way some people are drawn to open tabs — compulsively and with no intention of closing any of them. Generative AI is the biggest open tab right now, but the curiosity extends to anything that changes how we think about building things.
When I'm not at a keyboard, I'm probably on a trail somewhere, trying to remember that the world exists in more than two dimensions. Or in the kitchen with my wife, where the feedback loops are shorter and the results are more delicious. Cooking is just engineering with better smells and higher stakes — nobody's production server ever made someone cry tears of joy over a perfectly braised short rib.
This site is part field notes, part mission log. If anything here resonates, I'd love to hear from you.