I design and ship AI products and the interfaces around them — across SaaS and consumer, for adtech, intelligence platforms, and dev tooling. I build with AI tooling — my focus is design, architecture, and product decisions. Currently working with MCP apps, model evaluations, and local LLMs.
Make it clear, make it work, make it matter.
Coming from a video and storytelling background — I'm also strong designing automated media pipelines and visual generation workflows (image, video, voice).
May 6 — May 13
Joaquin Perez — Observed Patterns — Real-Time
Selected Work
From side projects to shipped products — what I built, how I built it, and what I learned.
AI Engineering
AI infrastructure for an NYC neighborhood and school discovery platform. Six-phase rollout that made every LLM call observable, every prompt versioned, and every cost line-item known.
AI Engineering · Evaluation · Tool Selection
Agentic Web
An identity and memory infrastructure where AI agents form SOUL.md documents, get recognized across sessions via Honcho, and pay for permanent persistence.
Designed & Developed · Side Project
AI Tooling
Visual dashboard for testing and debugging Claude Agent SDK. Configure parameters, monitor sessions, and manage tools without writing code.
Designed & Developed · Side Project
AI Tooling
To explore and implement the MCP-UI protocol, LoopCraft allows users to add graphical elements to their MCP tool calls, and map out interactive relationships with external AI agents.
Designed & Developed · Side Project
Fintech
Traditional design-first approaches can create beautiful but unbuildable mockups. However, by partnering with AI to build working prototypes first, sometimes the fastest path to great design runs through messy reality.
UX DESIGN · UI DESIGN · ENGINEERING
Web App
A full-stack data analytics website with an AI engine that processes advertising patterns, built as a standalone demo experience that bridges marketing and product.
UX DESIGN · UI DESIGN · ENGINEERING
SaaS Product
Retooling BlockCONNECT's complex pixel deployment process to prevent user confusion and support team overload.
UX DESIGN · UI DESIGN · UX RESEARCH
Mobile iOS
School search iOS app for safety minded parents across the political spectrum.
UX DESIGN · UI DESIGN · UX RESEARCH
Working Principles
Patterns from building — the trade-offs, the unknowns, and what changed along the way.
I cut breadth for speed. A narrow first version that works earns the credibility to widen scope later — and by then you know which extensions matter. The instinct to support everything is strong. I ship one thing well and let traction decide what comes next.
“Do one thing quickly. Expand with trust.”
When a product generates confusion, the answer is almost never more features. Fewer options, clearer labels, one obvious path forward. The best fix I have shipped was subtraction — removing steps, not adding them. Clarity compounds. Complexity just accumulates.
“The best fix was subtraction.”
Some of my strongest work started with no playbook — building on standards still being written, in territory with no tutorials and no one to ask. I read the spec, built the first implementation, and iterated until it worked. Unfinished ground is the best place to build if you are willing to write the reference yourself.
“Build on unfinished ground. Write the reference yourself.”
I design the full journey, not individual screens. That means understanding how components interact, where delays compound, and how small decisions ripple through the full experience. The system is always the real design surface.
“The whole chain, not individual screens.”
AI changed what one person can attempt. I take on work that used to require a team — and that shifted something deeper than my skill set. It shifted my ambition level. The feedback loop collapsed: building and thinking became the same motion. That is the flow state I am optimizing for now.
“Building and thinking — the same motion.”
Toolkit
The tools I reach for — and the territory I pay attention to.
Claude Code, Model Context Protocol (MCP), MCP-UI, Vercel AI SDK, Ollama, LangChain, Honcho, Local LLMs, A2A Protocol
TypeScript, JavaScript, Python, React, Next.js, Node.js, Vue, HTML, CSS, Tailwind CSS, Radix UI, Framer Motion, Storybook, Playwright
Docker, AWS, Cloudflare (Workers, KV, DNS), Vercel, PostgreSQL (Neon), Redis, Supabase, Drizzle ORM, Inngest, REST APIs, Git
Figma, Framer, Webflow, Design Systems, Interaction Design, After Effects
Decentralized Identity, Digital Sovereignty, Context Engineering, Composable UI, Open Source Tools, Media Theory