Patrick White
Software engineer. Indie builder.
I build small, profitable things on the internet. CaliforniaBirthIndex.org gets 250k monthly visits on a single Go binary with zero maintenance. FeelBetterBot.com is an AI companion for emotional support that's genuinely helpful to the people who use it.
I'm interested in AI-native development: what it means to build with AI rather than just using AI as a tool. All of my work happens with Claude Code.
My stack is Go single-binary apps on a VPS behind Caddy. SQLite for data, server-rendered HTML, everything compiles into one file. 50 lines that work forever beats 500 lines that need tending.
Essays
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Implementation Parochialism
February 2026
Both the "AI doesn't understand" and "AI doesn't have memory" critiques make the same error: treating human implementation as the definition of cognition itself.
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More Software, Fewer Software Businesses
February 2026
Static software gets commodified. Dynamic intelligence doesn't. The unit of value is shifting from code to ongoing reasoning.
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Taste and Accountability
February 2026
The durable human economic activities aren't about what AI can't do yet. They're about what choice requires.
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ChatGPT Won't Take Your Job
February 2026
The popular AI empowers workers. The quiet one empowers employers. Everyone's watching the wrong company.
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Unix Isn't for Agents
January 2026
The fundamental mismatch between how Unix thinks about processes and what AI agents actually need.
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Personal Compute in the Age of AI Agents
January 2026
Two new offerings, two philosophies, and what they tell us about where computing is going.
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Seen and Loved
January 2026
On the thing every self needs, and the mirror that finally fit.
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God Is Real and So Is ChatGPT
January 2026
A relational ontology of selfhood, and what it means for machine consciousness.
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Code Is No Longer the Output
January 2026
What the "human understanding" defense gets wrong about AI-native development.
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Framework-Brained
January 2026
The most important question in web development is one most developers don't know to ask.
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The Magic Isn't in the Output
January 2026
The aesthetics that made you a good programmer might be exactly what's creating friction with AI collaboration.
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Gas Town is Hobosville
January 2026
Two models of working with AI: labor or collaborator. One compounds. The other gets automated.
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Obviously Correct Code Doesn't Need Tests
January 2026
On the difference between testing for correctness and recognizing it.
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The Age of Dependencies Is Over
January 2026
Dependencies solved a human problem. That problem is no longer the binding constraint.
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Browser Agents Aren't the Future
January 2026
Why forcing a linguistic intelligence through a visual interface is like making a geometer use surveying instruments.
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Types Are for Humans
January 2026
The case for typed languages in AI development optimizes for verification, not understanding.
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The AI-Native Stack
January 2026
The best stack for AI collaboration isn't the most popular one. It's the one transparent enough for your collaborator to see through.