Notes on building dev tools, AI-assisted development, and lessons from the field.
Over winter break, I spent two and a half weeks studying JSTag—Lytics' production data collection SDK—then extracted the infrastructure patterns that let it survive scale and third-party integrations. The thesis: production systems teach composition in a way textbooks can't. SDK Kit validates those patterns through Auth HI! and Experience SDK.
Having spent many years in an organic chemistry lab taught me a workflow: research the literature, respect intermediates, verify before proceeding. When I applied that same pattern to building a Chrome extension, it felt natural — and worked surprisingly well with AI tools. Deciding first, then coding, kept the hard thinking cheap and made AI an accelerant instead of a source of thrashing.
The moment I knew it worked wasn't a benchmark — it was watching Claude debug. 62% faster, 42% cheaper. Here's how the search system works.
A hackathon project that became something useful. Notes on building fast with AI tools.
What my manager said in April, and what I learned testing it over the summer.