Things I’m actively building or helping steer.
All of them orbit the same idea: local systems shouldn’t have to rent their future from distant platforms.
News / Information
Lantrn.ai – AI assistants for local newsrooms
Use machines to chew through public notices, PDFs, and repetitive workflows so reporters can spend time on judgment and reporting instead of clerical work.
Middlestate – co-designed work & learn systems
A studio that helps workforce boards, colleges, and CBOs redesign programs with the people stuck in them, instead of for the sake of compliance forms.
→ Learn more at middlestate.com
Food / Supply chain
PureChex – product-level traceability & storytelling
Infrastructure that lets growers, packers, and retailers attach verifiable data and human stories to each physical product, instead of hoping a spreadsheet will catch the next recall.
→ See what we’re doing at purechex.com
Money / Economies
Tip.cash / Trigo Lightning Network – circular Bitcoin economies
Tools and playbooks to help towns and tribes keep more of each transaction in circulation locally instead of donating a few percent to card networks and middlemen.
Identity / Agents
Stateless.id – digital sovereignty & identity
My personal lab for identity and agency: self-owned identity, Nostr-based agents, and how stateless/undocumented people can have durable digital lives without begging a state to recognize them.
Agentry – protocol-native AI agents
Define agents as signed events on Nostr so you can own, move, and compose them across infrastructure you control. No platform permission slips required.
Culture / Tools
aBotSpot – open makerspace
A place where people can design, create, and build with modern tools instead of just scrolling other people’s work.
Sound N Vision Foundation – live music & arts
Founding board member for a foundation that brings live music and arts programming to the Central Valley. Culture as infrastructure, not decoration.