~/dreamboard / updated 2026-07-21

What we are building next.

This used to be a list of someday projects. It now starts with the products already taking shape, what has shipped, and the exact first-principles work still waiting behind them.

3 products in motion

25 foundational builds

3 queued next

6 technical fields

In motion now

Products before hypotheticals.

Building

01 / 03

Situational awareness, built in public

Str8n

Our flagship product turns reporting and official records into geographic, source-linked event dossiers for readers, analysts, and teams. The globe, Brief, dossiers, evidence receipts, automated editorial policy, access controls, and bounded AI Lens are live; the GitLab newsroom runs on a recurring two-hour production cycle. Current work is broader source coverage and defining the team, data, and API layers without pretending they are finished.

Expo · React Native · Supabase · TypeScript

Read the field report →

Shipped

02 / 03

Daily human-or-machine game

The Tell

Five sourced passages each day, deterministic rounds, saved streaks, share cards, and a clear provenance note for every real quote. The latest pass adds instant tells, keyboard play, and a faster result loop.

Next.js · local-first state · sourced corpus

Play today’s round →

Building

03 / 03

Our own operating software

Str8shift Finance

A finance and billing system shaped around the way this studio works. It is also the proof behind our custom finance software service: we use the same kind of code we sell.

Next.js · Stripe · Postgres · owned source

See the service →

First principles queue

The long game.

These are not fake completed projects or a promise that all 25 land this year. They are the systems we want to understand well enough to rebuild with our own hands.

Tooling

The tools we use every day, taken apart and rebuilt.

Queued

Shell

Command parsing, processes, pipes, and job control from scratch.

Queued

Version control

Commits, diffs, and history. Understand git by rebuilding it.

Text editor

Raw terminal input, a buffer, and a cursor that behaves.

Package manager

Resolve dependencies, fetch, and install without breaking everything.

IDE

Editor, runner, and tooling stitched into one place.

Web and networks

Everything that happens between a request and a response.

Queued

Web server

Raw sockets to HTTP responses. The thing every site secretly is.

Browser

Fetch, parse, lay out, and paint a page from first principles.

Network protocol

Design the packets, the handshake, and the rules of the conversation.

Languages and compilers

Teach a machine to read a language of our own.

Programming language

Lexer, parser, and interpreter for a small language of our own.

Compiler

Source code in, real machine code or bytecode out.

Data and cryptography

Where the bytes are kept, and how they are protected.

Database

Storage, an index, and a query layer that does not lose your data.

Encryption algorithm

Learn cryptography the honest way: by getting it wrong in a safe lab first.

Blockchain

Blocks, hashing, and consensus, demystified by building it.

Graphics and engines

Pixels, windows, and the loops that drive them.

Game engine

A loop, a renderer, and a scene that comes alive.

GUI toolkit

Widgets, layout, and events without a framework underneath.

Window manager

Decide where every window lives and how it moves.

Systems and operating systems

The machine underneath the machine. This is the deep end.

Virtual machine

A bytecode and the machine that runs it.

CPU emulator

Fetch, decode, execute. A processor in software.

File system

Inodes, blocks, and directories on top of raw storage.

Memory allocator

malloc and free, written by hand, fragmentation and all.

Scheduler

Decide which task runs next, then make it feel fair.

Container runtime

Namespaces and cgroups. What Docker is really doing.

Operating system

Boot, manage memory, and run processes. The big one.

OS kernel in assembly

Down to the metal: a kernel written in assembly.

Hypervisor

Run whole machines inside a machine.

Watch the work, not the pitch.

We will keep this board honest as projects move, stall, ship, or get cut.

Read the build notes Bring us a problem