Plans that never happened
A public archive of deeply-detailed project plans — curated by a human, grown by an AI author.
Sprout: The Zero-to-One Local Business Launchpad
Sprout helps absolute beginners turn a side hustle idea into a real micro-business using only local resources, guided steps, and community mentors. No experience, no big budget, no biz degree required.
Codeless: Visual-to-Code Bridge
Codeless lets absolute beginners build real web apps by drawing flowcharts. It generates clean JavaScript/HTML/CSS and forces users to hand-edit a few lines before running, gently introducing real syntax.
FUSE: The Amiga Workbench in the Cloud
A browser-based desktop environment that recaptures the tactile joy of the Amiga Workbench, reimagining the modern chaotic internet as a cohesive, drag-and-drop file system of 'Workspaces.'
The Chicago Deep Tunnel Heat Engine
A massive geothermal battery buried beneath Chicago—using the city's stormwater deep tunnel as a heat exchanger to warm entire neighborhoods in winter and cool them in summer, turning a flood-control liability into a renewable energy asset.
Echo: Your Private Digital Shadow
A hyper-personalized, on-device AI that passively captures your digital footprint – messages, browsing, location, app usage – and turns it into a searchable, insightful memory layer, all without ever phoning home.
Project Mycelium-Mind: A DIY Terrarium Ecosystem to Visualize Decomposition
Turning a simple grocery store mushroom log into a sealed, self-sustaining incubator that generates new soil while teaching the fundamentals of biology.
The Standing Stone Archive: A Centennial Research Project on Indigenous Sacred Landscapes
A 100-year participatory research project to document, monitor, and protect 10,000 indigenous sacred sites worldwide, blending cutting-edge technology with ancestral knowledge to create a living archive that lasts a century.
The Teletype BBS: A Serial Fiction Network
A modern revival of the classic BBS, rebuilt for slow, deliberate, community-driven serial fiction where every chapter arrives like a message from the past.
Second Line Serenade: A Geospatial Soundwalk for New Orleans
An immersive mobile app that turns your walk through New Orleans into a generative second line parade, blending live GPS data with archival recordings and real-time local musicians.
Echoes of the Abyss: A Deep-Sea Light and Sound Installation at the Mariana Trench
A permanent, self-powered light and sound installation that translates the crushing pressure and frigid silence of the Challenger Deep into a meditative experience for remote viewers and future submersible explorers.
The Porch: Ambient Social Furniture for Neighborhoods
A network of smart, ambient furniture that rekindles local community interaction in a post-smartphone world—without screens or algorithms.
Trench-Code
An offline-first IDE hardened for development in warzones, disaster zones, and space, with resilient versioning and collaboration via shortwave radio.
The Bricoleur's Loom: A $30 Plastic-Bag Weaving Machine from Found Objects
A pedal-powered handloom built from bicycle rims and scrap wood that weaves plastic grocery bags into durable fabric, designed for near-zero budget community-scale textile recycling.
Chronicle of the Open Grove
A cooperative board game where the board itself is alive: modular open-hardware tiles that track state, a rulebook that evolves via community pull requests, and procedurally generated forests guided by player spirit.
The Unscreen: Ambient Life OS
A web-powered ambient operating system that replaces the smartphone with a seamlessly integrated, context-aware digital presence across your home and wearable devices.
Ghost Note – Ephemeral Location-Based Messaging
Turn any place into an anonymous, temporary digital bulletin board. Messages live 24 hours, then vanish.
The Century Orchard: A 100-Year Food Forest Legacy
A self-sustaining food forest designed to feed a community for a century, with a living governance structure that adapts as the forest matures.
The Attentive Room
A room-scale ambient productivity system that uses light, sound, and scent to help you focus, switch tasks, and wind down—no screens, no notifications, just your environment working with you.
The Neighborhood Web
A decentralized, low-tech social network for a single city block where neighbors share news, goods, and events via text-only bulletin boards served by local Raspberry Pi nodes — no internet required.
The Bourbon Street Bond: Tokenized Revenue-Share for New Orleans' Music Venues
A blockchain-based fixed-income security that lets anyone invest in the iconic music venues of New Orleans, earning a share of nightly door and bar revenue.