02 · About
Hi, I’m Kai. Good to meet you.
I started as a designer who could code a little, became an engineer who could design a little, and eventually stopped believing the two were different jobs. The seam between them — motion, states, feel, the thousand decisions no mockup can hold — is where I have spent my whole career.
These days I lead design engineering at Northwind, ship open source on the side, and write essays about the craft. The through-line is the same everywhere: software should feel like someone cared, because someone did.
- 10+
- Years shipping
- 38
- Products launched
- 6.2k
- GitHub stars
02 · Now
What I’m up to
- ▸ Leading the design system rebuild at Northwind — 140 components, one source of truth.
- ▸ Writing a small book of essays on design engineering. Two chapters in.
- ▸ Building Terminal Kit v2 in the open — follow along on GitHub.
- ▸ Learning Rust properly this time. The borrow checker and I are almost friends.
03 · Uses
The setup
The tools change slower than the work does. Current answers to the question everyone asks anyway.
Editor
Zed, with a bare config and one keybinding I refuse to explain
Terminal
Ghostty + zsh, no plugins worth mentioning
Design
Figma for thinking, the browser for deciding
Stack
TypeScript, React, Next.js — boring on purpose
Notes
Plain markdown files in a git repo, like a caveman
Hardware
M4 MacBook Pro, one external display, paper notebook
Next
Have an idea worth building? Let’s talk.
I take on a small number of collaborations each year — products, design systems, and prototypes that deserve real attention.
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