visionwork

Currently

Applied Systems

Senior Software Engineer, since April 2024

visionwork.dev

This site: guides on working with frontier models, in progress.

Working with frontier models

01

CLAUDE.md, skills and hooks: setting up a codebase for agents

The workflows, skills and hooks other teams can copy, from the talk to about 50 developers.

Soon

02

Context engineering for long-running agents

Structured note-taking and compaction: keeping an agent useful in a multi-decade codebase.

Soon

03

Orchestrating subagents to audit an application

A reusable workflow for finding defects nobody reported: how it runs, what it costs, where it breaks.

Soon

04

Hooks beat guidelines

Enforcing agent behavior with hooks instead of asking nicely.

Soon

Latest

Work

  1. April 2024 – Present

    Applied Systems

    Senior Software Engineer

    • Build the workflows, skills and tools that keep Claude Code reliable in a multi-decade codebase: CLAUDE.md rules, skills that package repeatable workflows, hooks that enforce standards, and notes that carry state across sessions, managed with superpowers, glab and beads.
    • Orchestrate parallel subagents in an orchestrator-workers workflow to audit a migrated React application screen by screen against its VB.NET original and QA's test cases, with no human time in the runs; the audit surfaced defects nobody had reported, including a class only visible when screens are compared as a set.
    • Packaged the audit as a reusable workflow: costed it per screen (about $21), modeled a run across all 2,394 screens (about $50K in agent cost against about $1.4M of manual review), and identified the QA test-case exports needed to run it at full scale.
    • Pointed the same workflow at server security: agents narrowed roughly 20,000 endpoints to a few dozen for human review, and the sample confirmed missing security checks.
    • Use agents as an investigation tool as well as a coding tool: traced a two-year network failure that teams were misreading as product bugs, using RUM data, session replays and HAR captures, and gave it a named owning layer so teams stopped chasing it as screen defects.
    • Presented "Working With AI in Our Codebases" to about 50 developers, shared company-wide, and wrote the onboarding guide that lets other teams adopt the same workflows, skills and hooks; building a starter kit that installs them.
    • Shipped a Claude Code plugin to the company's Claude marketplace whose opt-in Stop hook enforces concise agent replies, replacing a guideline nobody measured with a check; approved by three reviewers.
    • Review teammates' changes against the same standards; one review caught a Severity 2 security regression that had exposed customer addresses and contact names across agency boundaries, and I shipped the fix.
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    • Core contributor on a 100+ engineer team tasked with modernizing a multi-decade insurance platform; migrate mission-critical VB.NET screens to React with a C# backend under strict enterprise standards.
    • Refactor broken, auto-transcoded React files, initially unstructured and non-functional, into clean, testable components that follow strict internal UI conventions and align with backend expectations.
    • Design and implement highly specific Cypress component tests, using exact mock response intercepts and batch-command mapping for complex business logic flows.
    • Build and maintain REST API test suites in C# for deeply integrated policy management screens, using precise SQL-seeded values, dynamic JSON fixtures, and fluent assertion chaining.
    • Reverse-engineer live network activity to map undocumented batch command behavior, ensuring test coverage reflects actual screen usage rather than theoretical endpoints.
    • Resolve complex front-end and back-end sync issues involving field casing, fixed-width padding, and state persistence, often without documentation or contracts.
    • Collaborate cross-functionally to debug full-stack workflows, including shared memory stubbing, API-layer data integrity, and front-end component reactivity.
    • Contribute to the definition and enforcement of project-wide coding patterns, test automation standards, and CI-ready workflows across both React and .NET layers.

  2. January 2023 – April 2024

    Driven Brands

    Senior Frontend Developer

    • Optimized application, reducing bundle size by 75%, resulting in a 20% increase in Lighthouse performance scores and a significantly faster initial load time for 3.5M+ quarterly users.
    • Engineered a UI ecosystem via React Hook Form and Contentful, with a standout form achieving over 500 daily submissions, pivotal in elevating user engagement and conversion on a high-traffic platform potentially bringing 250k a day in revenue.
    • Refined GraphQL data integration, utilizing TypeScript and TypeGen for precise typecasting of all incoming data, with the goal of moving from a 30% typed code base to securing application-wide data consistency with 100% coverage.
    • Enhanced platform consistency and code reusability by strategically revamping a multi-website component library introducing clear prop-based customization for consumers.
    • Lead the frontend team's push to refactor a high-traffic JavaScript site to TypeScript improving null data handling and structure.
    • Mentored a team of 4 engineers in establishing best practices through code standards, code reviews, discussion of best practices TypeScript standards, and by requiring thorough documentation and descriptions on PRs.
    • Empowered non-technical teams and staff content creators with a modular Contentful architecture, enabling flexible and efficient page building and web content creation.

  3. July 2021 – January 2023

    Insight Global

    Frontend Developer

    • Took ownership of debugging legacy Shopify GraphQL queries that were the root of price data type errors in the store, state machine and mappers for a 26,000 page flagship Gatsby site.
    • Took a conscious approach to user experience with a mobile-first, performance-driven Shopify store built using Remix, Tailwind CSS, and Storybook, reducing time-to-interactive by 80%.
    • Collaborated to write precise and effective queries making use of React-Query, to combine Shopify data and detailed Contentful product data to prevent unnecessary queries.
    • Migrated 40+ components from Emotion to Tailwind CSS for a Shopify library, aligning with the Gatsby/SCSS framework and boosting performance by reducing bundle size.
    • Finalized components in a React-Native app targeting underserved users and providing content to capitalize on the 48.2% of app revenue generated by in app purchases.
    • Built better documentation for new hires' initial navigation of complex codebases and created comprehensive documentation to enhance understanding of codebase functionality.

  4. June 2020 – July 2021

    JanusQL

    Software Engineer

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    • Leveraged Electron and Node's V8 engine for a cross-platform desktop application, speeding development by separating the main process and development process.

  5. October 2017 – June 2020

    Lucas Mobley Photography Inc

    Web Developer and Photographer

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    • Crafted a WordPress UI/UX focused on streamlining the product journey, enhancing navigation, and storytelling through visuals and text.
    • Launched SEO enhancements with systematic image compression and strategic keyword integration, boosting site traffic, user engagement, and SERP rankings for key demographics.

Skills

Ohio University | Bachelor of Science, Visual Communication

Mountain biking, wet plate photography, Southwest van life, cooking everything from scratch (particularly Thai food!), Zen poetry, exploring the world with the family, backyard fire pits