Thinking from first principles

[PENDING] placeholder post — real writing goes here. This file just exercises the MDX rendering so the layout and styles can be verified.

Deep-tech taught me to distrust the reference. When there's no competitor to copy and a wrong call has real consequences, you're forced back to the thing underneath: what is actually true here, and what am I assuming?

The cost of assumptions

Most design debt is assumption debt. We borrow a pattern because it looked right somewhere else, and inherit a problem we never understood. First principles is slower at the start and faster forever after.

• understand the system before touching the interface
• logic before aesthetics
• name the constraint, then design against it

What it actually feels like

It feels like being slightly behind in the meeting and a lot ahead by shipping. You ask the annoying question — "what breaks at 10x?" — and sit with the silence until there's a real answer.

Read more about how I work on the about page.