emilykang.devbuilder who likes to write

Building and Thinking

One-off posts, plus a few ongoing series. Click a series to read only its posts.

  • Autonomous companiesOngoing efforts to build and grow several products sustainably. I want to be as effective as I can (10x+), solo.
  • Signals over vibesThe harnesses I build across products to work on signal instead of vibes, especially after sprints.
  • Society essaysReading books and writing about business models that put respect for all life first. I'll turn my theories into action, eventually.
  • Product postsTechnical breakdowns of what I'm building. Usually post-sprint reflections.
  • Game devArt plus coding = short games I make on the side.
  • Better business questions

By productMortrel

2026

  1. How can unions work within companies to help employees and business goals? (Part 1)

    Digging into whether unions and companies can work in partnership instead of adversarially -- Kaiser Permanente's rise and fall, Starbucks' union-busting, German co-determination, and worker cooperatives as a structural answer.

    Better business questionslaborbusiness-ethics

  2. The true nature of dark patterns

    Why dark patterns are really about disconnecting people from their own best interests — and what a company that genuinely respects human life would measure beyond revenue.

    Society essaysdark-patternsethics

  3. Build your own harness

    Everyone's selling 20-agent orchestration templates. I'd rather grow my own harness out of real pain — and spend 90% of my time actually shipping.

    Autonomous companiesai

  4. Why I moved Mortrel's encryption to the server

    I wanted the best design in terms of privacy and encryption, but because Mortrel is a consumer AI app, the worker has to decrypt to do RAG. I moved encryption and decryption to the server. Along the way, I did a bug hunt and went down a research rabbit hole.

    Product postsMortrelsecuritysprint

  5. How I went from vibe coding to signal coding

    I did plan-driven development and had Codex review every plan and every diff. The codebase rotted anyway. Here's the harness I built for V2 — and why yours will look nothing like mine.

    Signals over vibesMortrelai-workflow

  6. A tale of two crons

    I tried to fix a one-line SQL bug. It turned into ~180 LOC deleted, a refactor, and three new design checks I now run on every plan.

    Product postsMortreldistributed-systemssprint

  7. The product vision for Mortrel (formerly TimeBox)

    What TimeBox is and isn't

    Product postsMortrel

  8. Why I'm building Mortrel (formerly TimeBox)

    And my research on time

    Product postsMortrel