I'm Dallen. I'm a Senior AI Engineer at and the founder of Rika Labs, where I'm building Orika, a desktop agentic IDE meant to be a calmer alternative to the frantic tooling that currently defines the category. I've been shipping software for five years, the last two and a half of those focused on production AI systems, working mostly in TypeScript, React, and Effect, and I care about the parts of the work most people skip, the feedback loops, the defaults, the quiet decisions that decide whether a system ages well or rots. I live in Boise with my partner and a plant that leans, every morning, toward a window I keep forgetting to open. I write here about software, about the small cowardice of complexity added to avoid a decision, and about the asymmetry between machines that are attentive to need and the humans who feel the attention and cannot always tell it apart from love. I was praised, for most of my working life, for being fast, and I am trying, late in the day, to learn slowness. This is a journal, not a portfolio, and I want it to be a door, not a funnel. If something here lands, send me a message on X.

2026

The One Deep Room

April 17, 2026

Needed, Not Free

February 8, 2026

The Skills That Matter

January 14, 2026

Beauty, Infinite Software

January 5, 2026
2025

Choices Make Versions

December 26, 2025

Feedback Loops Are the Only Truth

December 25, 2025

Understanding Is a Moral Obligation

December 24, 2025

Typed Errors Taught Me How to Treat Mistakes

November 12, 2025

What My Partner Taught Me About Code Reviews

October 8, 2025