Every project eventually needs a checklist.
Not a ceremonial checklist. A practical one.
For AI-assisted builds, mine keeps getting longer:
Regression is sneaky. A checklist makes it less sneaky.
For a long time, Git felt like something software developers used because they had to. Then I started building enough projects that the need became obvious. When AI is helping write code, the pace changes. Files move quickly. Features appear quickly. Mistakes also appear quickly. Version control turns that chaos into a history. It gives…
RecoveryCue did not begin as an abstract app idea. It began with the practical reality of recovery: reminders, notes, medication timing, vitals, exercises, and the mental load that falls on both the patient and the caregiver. That made the project feel different from the beginning. It was not about building an app category. It was…
AI is extremely good at producing plausible code. That is both its strength and its danger. A generated solution can look polished while quietly breaking an earlier feature. It can solve the current prompt while forgetting why a previous workaround existed. It can make a project feel like it is moving fast while introducing subtle…
Operators do not use tools the way designers imagine users use tools. Operators are often busy, interrupted, watching multiple systems, and trying to prevent a small issue from becoming a large one. That changes the design priorities. Status must be obvious. Errors must be plain. Controls must be predictable. Dangerous actions should be hard to…
"Scarl" came before Scarlco. In production environments, names get shortened quickly. There may be multiple Steves on headset, multiple people with similar names on a schedule, and not much patience for ambiguity when a cue is coming up. My name often appeared as S. Carl. Over time, that became Scarl. Later, when I wanted a…
Scarlco Events is a generalized event information and schedule display concept. The interesting challenge is not simply putting events on a screen. The challenge is making the display reliable, readable, and appropriate for the environment where it runs. A browser on a desktop computer is forgiving. A signage endpoint may not be. That difference changes…