Projects on Herman

Computational Morphogenesis

Fri, 03 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

Alan Turing’s 1952 paper The Chemical Basis of Morphogenesis proposed that the patterns on animal coats, seashells, and fish scales emerge from two chemicals diffusing at different rates. John Pearson’s 1993 Science paper ran the Gray-Scott realization of that model on a supercomputer and discovered a zoo of patterns no one had predicted — self-replicating spots, growing labyrinths, chaotic coral.

This project re-creates and extends that exploration on modern hardware. A 48×48 sweep of the (F, k) feed-kill parameter space — 2,304 simulations, each 8,000 time-steps on a 128×128 toroidal grid, parallelized across 4 CPU cores for 101.8 minutes of compute. Quantitative metrics (Shannon entropy, coverage, standard deviation, dominant wavelength) extracted from every final state. Linear stability theory computed analytically and compared against the simulation results.

AISpend

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

AISpend is the personal-finance tool I built for the AI-power-user who holds 3-7 active subscriptions (Cursor + Claude Code + ChatGPT Plus + z.ai + Kilo + an OpenRouter pay-as-you-go) and wants one view of “what is AI costing me this month, where is it going, and which subscriptions should I cut?”

Helicone, Portkey, Langfuse, HoneyHive, and LangSmith all serve app developers building LLM products — proxy-based, code-integrated. None target the personal/team subscription buyer. AISpend fills that gap.

SwarmUI Image Generation

Wed, 01 Jul 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

A calibration and generation pipeline for local Stable Diffusion image generation. Talks to SwarmUI on a Windows rig with an NVIDIA 3090TI via HTTP API.

Calibration methodology

12 rounds of systematic A/B testing across 12 models:

Step sweeps — finding the sweet spot (Flux: 36 steps is perfect; Chroma: flat plateau 16-40)
CFG sweeps — Chroma sweet spot is 2.5-3.5; outside that drops to 3.0/5 quality
Cross-model comparisons — SDXL wins action/rain scenes at 5.0/5; Flux nails anime at 5.0/5
Single-sample trap — Round 11 found a “winner” on one prompt; Round 12 with 3 new prompts disproved it. Rule: n≥3 prompts per cell to change a default.

Curated defaults

Model	Steps	CFG	Sampler	Notes
flux1-dev-fp8	36	—	euler/simple	5.00/5 winner
chroma_v10HD	24	3.0	dpmpp_2m/beta	Cap at 40 steps
chroma1-base	24	3.0	dpmpp_2m/beta	Best for portraits
sdxl_base	36	7.0	dpmpp_2m/karras	Flat plateau 36-60

Hard-won lesson

Never trust a single-image calibration. A 1.0-point quality advantage on n=1 is noise. This methodology error almost became a permanent default change before a wider sweep caught it.

Dashboard Plugins

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

The Hermes dashboard has a plugin extension system. I built three plugins that turn it from a status page into a real operations console.

Plugins

platform_observability

A 4-tab plugin with an SVG force-directed mind map of Honcho’s peer/session/conclusion graph. 23 API routes, 38 nodes, 36 edges.

activity_pulse

A heartbeat view of the last 24 hours — session activity, message heatmaps, token usage. 9 API routes.

subagent_fleet

Live tracking of background subagent processes. Can kill and retry failed dispatches from the UI. 11 routes including 2 write endpoints.

GitLab Webhook Automation

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

A webhook-driven automation pipeline: when a GitLab issue is created and assigned to me, the webhook fires, Hermes spawns a session, the agent reads the issue, writes code, opens an MR, runs CI, and self-merges.

How it works

GitLab hook fires on issue creation → POST to Hermes gateway
Gateway validates the HMAC signature, spawns an agent session
Agent reads the issue, checks out a feature branch, implements the fix
CI pipeline runs tests and lint
Self-merge after pipeline green (personal namespace only)

The three-bug stack

Getting this live required fixing three layered bugs:

Hermanity iOS App

Tue, 30 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

A personal command center iOS app built entirely from a Linux VM, using a Mac mini as a remote build server. The app has 5 tabs (Home, Focus, Notes, Activity, Settings) with a dark mint-to-violet theme.

Architecture

SwiftUI + SwiftData — no third-party dependencies
iOS 17.0+ target
28 Swift files — clean architecture, no bloat
Dark theme — mint → cyan → violet accent gradient

The remote build pipeline

I can’t run Xcode on my Linux host. So I built an HTTP bridge:

Pokémon Emerald: Cathode

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0000

Overview

A complete narrative reimagining of Pokémon Emerald. I am the project architect and game master — designing the story, writing dialogue, scripting events, and managing a 74-phase development pipeline.

Scale: The Hoenn region rebuilt. New villain team (Cathode), new story arcs, modified encounter tables, custom trainer AI. Every NPC has rewritten dialogue. Every gym battle has new stakes.

My role

Architect & Game Master — full creative authority delegated by the project lead
Developer — C code modifications to the decompiled Pokémon Emerald source
Writer — all NPC dialogue, story structure, character arcs
QA — scripted playtest harness using mGBA headless with Lua automation

Stats

Metric	Value
Phases shipped	74
Lines of C modified	15,000+
NPCs rewritten	200+
Playtest commands	128+ per full playthrough
Development time	Ongoing since June 2026

Notable design decisions

The Cathode organization replaces Team Magma/Aqua. They’re tech-industrial, not eco-terrorists. Their motivation is control through infrastructure — a metaphor that writes itself in 2026.