Projects

Things I build, and things I’m still figuring out

Code is one of the materials. What I actually enjoy is deciding what should exist and then making it exist — then keeping it running, which is the part that lasts longer.

The business

Salt Marsh Digital

I build websites and software for businesses, churches, and people who need the internet to actually do something for them.

Salt Marsh Digital is where the building instinct became a business. Sites, branding, software, hosting, and the digital systems underneath — usually for organizations too small to have anyone whose job this is.

I’m interested in the whole machine: idea, brand, interface, code, server, deployment, users, data, and then whatever the data tells you to change. I’d rather own that whole path than write code from a spec somebody else guessed at.

Websites and web applications
Design, branding, and the words on the page
Servers, deploys, and the maintenance nobody volunteers for

saltmarshdigital.com →

Product

ekkle.app

A church platform built by a pastor who kept paying for software that didn’t understand churches.

ekkle handles membership, groups, attendance, giving, and communication — the records a church actually has to keep, shaped around how a congregation really works rather than how enterprise software wishes it worked.

The advantage isn’t technical. It’s that I have to use it on Monday.

Membership, groups, and attendance
Giving and communication
Built around congregational polity, not against it

ekkle.app →

AI / Lab

Things I’m trying to figure out

The lab is where I try things. Some of it turns into a project. Most of it turns into a note about what didn’t work.

I’m fascinated by what happens when computers stop behaving exclusively like tools and start behaving more like collaborators. I don’t know exactly where this is going. That’s what makes it interesting.

AI coding agents are either the future of software development or an extremely elaborate way to introduce new bugs. Probably both.

Software in progress

Local models

Running models on hardware I own, mostly to find out where the ceiling actually is instead of taking somebody’s word for it.

Coding agents

Handing real work to agents and watching what they do with it. Sometimes impressive. Sometimes an elaborate new way to introduce bugs.

Self-hosted everything

Servers, deploys, and monitoring I run myself, because understanding the machinery beats trusting an abstraction I can’t open.

Interfaces

What personal computing looks like when the interface can hold a conversation. I suspect we’re still holding it wrong.

From the lab notebook

What I’ve written down so far

All AI notes →

September 9, 2026Note

Notes on coding agents, so far

What I've actually observed handing real work to coding agents, as opposed to what I expected before I tried it.

June 6, 2023Essay

A Conversation with John Owen

I asked GPT-4 to walk me through building a chatbot that answers as John Owen. Six hours later, it existed.

How it fits together

One desk, several trades

Pastoring taught me what a church actually has to track and how little of it fits the software sold to churches. Building taught me how much friction a volunteer will absorb before a good idea quietly dies. Each one keeps the other honest.

I run most of my own servers because apparently I don’t have enough things that can break. The real reason is that I’d rather be able to open the machinery than trust an abstraction I can’t inspect.

Get in touch if you need something built or tended.

Commentaries and a code editor, same desk