Journal.
Updates, articles, and announcements from the workshop.
Entries
- 2026-08-03/2026-08-03-the-system-that-watches-my-systems
The System That Watches My Systems
This week I shipped a tool that automatically summarizes everything I build across my portfolio — and watched three other automated scans catch bugs and shifts I never would have found by hand.
- 2026-07-27/2026-07-27-karr-alarm-hidden-in-millions-of-cars
2.2 Million Cars Have a Hackable KARR Alarm — and Half the Owners Never Agreed to It
A dealer-installed Bluetooth alarm called KARR is wired into roughly 2.2 million American cars, sharing one universal key across every unit ever made. Saying no to it at the dealership doesn't remove it. Here's the 30-second check, the fix, and why the diagnostic tools I build for a living can't see this thing at all.
- 2026-07-20/2026-07-20-teaching-my-own-tools-to-fix-themselves
Teaching My Own Tools to Fix Themselves
This week I closed the loop between finding a problem and fixing it — an automated pipeline that turns a flagged issue into a reviewed pull request, plus deep dives into signal-processing parity and self-healing firmware.
- 2026-07-19/2026-07-19-a-health-timeline-from-my-journal-and-an-app-i-rebuild-from-my-phone
A Health Timeline From My Journal — and an App I Rebuild From My Phone
Two extensions to my self-hosted notes system this week: an AI that reads fifteen years of daily journal entries and maintains a structured history of my own health — sandboxed so a health question can't read anything else — and a loop that lets me rebuild the iPhone app from my phone and tap a link to install it, from anywhere.
- 2026-07-06/2026-07-06-the-week-i-shipped-an-audit-a-fulfillment-robot-and-a-signal-processing-fix
The Week I Shipped an Audit, a Fulfillment Robot, and a Signal-Processing Fix — All One Person
A look at a week spanning security audits driven to zero, a physical-hardware fulfillment agent, FFT debugging, and the automation stack that caught its own blind spots.
- 2026-06-19/2026-06-19-self-hosted-evernote-replacement-joplin-ai-search
I Replaced a $250/yr Evernote Subscription With a Mac Mini That Answers Questions About My Notes
Evernote wanted $250 a year. So I moved 12,690 notes to self-hosted Joplin on a Mac mini, then built an AI that actually answers questions across all of them — local embeddings, automatic voice transcription, native apps, ~$0 a month. Here's the whole build.
- 2026-04-13/2026-04-13-when-your-automation-pipeline-saves-you-from-a-hard-deadline-you-didnt-know-existed
When Your Automation Pipeline Saves You From a Hard Deadline You Didn't Know Existed
Three API deprecation deadlines in one week. An SDK requirement with a hard cutoff. A competitor's major update that reframes my positioning. All caught by agents, not me.
- 2026-03-31/2026-03-31-when-your-ai-agents-do-the-worrying-for-you
When Your AI Agents Do the Worrying For You
A look at how automated intelligence pipelines caught three potential disasters this week — and what that means for solo dev productivity.
- 2026-03-20/welcome
Welcome to Slick Engineering
Introducing our new website and what's ahead for Slick Engineering & Consulting.