“Why is this still annoying?”
The group chat can’t settle on a destination. The freezer has food but no plan. A good project starts with a specific problem.
ABOUT / DEANA ALI
Curiosity has
root access.
I’m a CPA in Washington, DC. I also build multiplayer games, turn recipe collections into networks, and make bots argue over board-game strategy.
The connection? I like figuring out how the pieces fit—and making something work well enough to use.
Try thinking through a build with meHOW MY BRAIN GETS HERE
The little problem
is usually the good one.
Picking a trip. Finding dinner. Keeping a game moving. I start with something I want to use, then follow it down to the data, rules, and moving parts.
The interface is only the beginning.
A button might touch a room server, a recipe pipeline, an API, or saved account state. I want to understand what happens after the click.
Now try the thing that breaks it.
Who gets to see a secret role? What if a proposal expires? Does the reminder still arrive after the page is closed? Those decisions make the build interesting.
Interactive / systems sandbox
A small test of your systems brain.
Pick a project, inspect its moving parts, then introduce a failure. Can you find the fix? This is a guided simulation of the architecture—not a connection to the live apps.
One room. Everyone’s phones. A lot of secret roles.Ready to play
Inside this piece
JavaScript · Everyone’s phone
The browser shows each player the controls and information they should see. The room does not need everyone to install an app.
Something went sideways
YES, I BUILD WITH AI
A fast collaborator.
A lot of my decisions.
Claude Code and Codex help me write, debug, and revise code. I choose what to build, decide how it should behave, and test whether it actually does. The build notes show the architecture and the tradeoffs; the toolchain shows where the tools fit.
Got a problem that keeps turning into
“someone should make a thing for this”?