I build small, honest tools — quietly, in the open.

I'm kafkade — a software creator based near the Cascade mountains. I build tools, explore systems, and write about what I learn along the way. Most of what I make is written in Rust, runs from a terminal, and keeps your data on your own machine. All of it is free and open source.

I'm drawn to the unglamorous middle of software: the personal tool, the quiet utility, the thing that does one job well and then gets out of the way. Not a startup, not a platform — a workshop. I'd rather ship a modest thing you can own outright than a magnificent one you have to rent forever.

The name

kafkade = Kafka (Franz, the author) + Cascade (the mountain range). A name that sits between literature and terrain, between thinking and building. The beetle on the seal is a nod to Metamorphosis; the mountains, rain, and evergreens behind it are the Pacific Northwest I write from. The circuit traces on its wings are the only part I added myself.

What I do

Fifteen-or-so tools and counting — a book manager, a ledger, a terminal audio player, a system monitor, a recipe box — most of them mapping some corner of my own life onto plain text and local-first storage. You can see the whole shelf on the projects page, with honest version numbers and status taken straight from each repo. I write here on the journal when something is worth sharing, on no schedule and with no filler.

If any of that sounds interesting, stick around. If it doesn't, that's alright too.