Why I'm keeping an engineering notebook in public

I’ve shipped a lot of systems I never wrote a word about. The CSAT pipeline, the OCR invoice validator, the Make-to-n8n migration — each one taught me something I promptly forgot the shape of six months later. This blog is the fix: a working notebook, in public.

What goes here

Mostly engineering. Write-ups of things I’ve actually built, with the trade-offs left in rather than sanded off. When I reach for a tool, I’ll say why — and when I picked wrong, I’ll say that too.

Occasionally something else. I study biblical Hebrew and Greek, and now and then that intersects with how I think about systems, precision, and language. Those detours will be clearly labelled so you can skip them.

Why in public

Three reasons, in order of honesty:

1. Writing forces clarity. If I can’t explain why the queue is where it is, I don’t understand my own design.
2. It compounds. A year of notes is a searchable second brain and, incidentally, a portfolio.
3. Someone will correct me. That’s the point. If something here is wrong, tell me.

// The whole philosophy, roughly:
function document(system: Built): Understanding {
  return writeItDown(system.tradeoffs);
}

That’s it. First entry logged.