Web 1.0–3.0 survivor · hands-on AI + Rust 🦀 · building AgenticFlowX
I’m a software engineer and lifelong tinkerer based in Auckland, New Zealand.
I write about side projects, Rust, AI-assisted coding, and things I learn along the way on Software Notes.
After more than 20 years across startups, full-stack systems, cloud platforms, and connected products, I’m increasingly focused on Rust, native applications, developer tooling, programming languages, and software that interacts with real hardware.
Everything I build from here will be built with AgenticFlowX.
AgenticFlowX is my open-source workflow for building software with AI coding agents.
It begins with ordinary chat and adds structure when the work needs it: exploration, specifications, design, tasks, approvals, traceability, and persistent project context.
The goal is simple: make AI-assisted development easier to follow, review, resume, and trust—without moving the work into a separate project-management system.
Oxidal is an open-source guitar and bass processor I’m building for Raspberry Pi 5. It pairs a Rust backend with a browser interface and a custom Linux image with its own Wi-Fi hotspot, so I can control it from a phone or tablet at the rig.
It uses Neural Amp Modeler (NAM) captures for amp and cabinet tones, imports compatible TONE3000 presets, and hosts selected LV2 effects. It’s in active development.
Desktop Nano Cortex is an open-source, cross-platform desktop companion for the Neural DSP Nano Cortex.
It moves device communication into a native Rust backend behind a Tauri application, combining:
- Rust and Tauri
- React and TypeScript
- USB MIDI control
- Bluetooth device state
- Cross-platform desktop packaging
- Hardware diagnostics and testing
- Traceable specifications built with AgenticFlowX
TrafLang is a playful programming language built around driving metaphors.
Programs use keywords such as StartEngine, Drive, CheckMirror, Remember, and ParkCar, then transpile to JavaScript for immediate execution.
I built the language and its browser-based development environment, including:
- A lexer and tokenizer
- Parser and abstract syntax tree
- JavaScript code generator
- Monaco-based code editor
- Real-time transpilation and execution
- Syntax highlighting and examples
- More than 40 driving-themed keywords
- Automated language and transpiler tests
TrafLang was an experiment in making programming syntax approachable, visual, and fun—and in seeing how far AI-assisted development could take a complete language and IDE.
Rust isn’t entirely new territory for me.
In May 2015, I wrote rust-nodejs-ffi, my first Rust program, to explore interoperability between Rust and Node.js.
I later experimented with Rust through projects such as:
- Rust Daily Snippets
- flat1-network-node
- blockchain-from-scratch
- rust-rag-lancedb-indexer
- Desktop Nano Cortex
Now I’m returning to Rust with more ambitious native, systems-oriented, and connected-software projects.
- Rust for native, systems-oriented, and connected software
- AI coding agents with clear intent and traceability
- Programming languages and developer environments
- Native applications that communicate with real hardware
- Audio software, MIDI, and device control
- Cloud systems and infrastructure as code
- Open-source projects with honest documentation
I like understanding the whole system: product intent, architecture, application code, infrastructure, deployment, testing, and user experience.
AgenticFlowX grew out of that mindset. Every new project is an opportunity to improve both the thing being built and the workflow used to build it.
Still learning. Still building. Now doing more of it in Rust.