Giving Claude a cloud-architecture library, Part 1
essay · August 2026A general model gives you plausible architecture. Connecting a curated, opinionated library over MCP changes where the conversation starts.
Texas
Erik Evenson
Cloud architecture by trade — orbital mechanics, markets, and small machines by inclination.
I design and consult on cloud systems for a living, and I live in Texas. Most of what I actually make happens at the edges of the day job.
I’m drawn to problems where the math is unforgiving and the feedback is honest — a spacecraft that either docks or doesn’t, a portfolio that either lasts or doesn’t, a pool that either stays clear or turns green. The satisfying ones tell you plainly when you’re wrong.
This site is deliberately small. It will grow the way my projects do: slowly, and mostly for my own amusement.
Writing
Giving Claude a cloud-architecture library, Part 2
essay · August 2026What is actually in 442 files, who decided any of it, and where it is weakest — including the parts I would rather not advertise.
Giving Claude a cloud-architecture library, Part 3
essay · August 2026From answers in a chat window to documents somebody acts on — decision records, design reviews, runbooks, and a diagram that carries its provenance.
AI in Systems Design, Part 2
essay · August 2026How a design travels. A folder of correct files is not a design — and putting them on one page found problems the folder had been hiding.
AI in Systems Design, Part 1
essay · July 2026A reaction-wheel inverted pendulum designed almost entirely by a language model — what it produced, how fast, and where it stopped being reliable.
Building an LLM Wiki, Part 1
essay · July 2026The pattern, the plumbing, and the discipline that keeps a language-model-maintained wiki honest.
Building an LLM Wiki, Part 2
essay · July 2026The additions beyond Karpathy’s gist — schema-as-code, computed staleness, contradictions as data, and a retrieval test harness.
The missing fitness function
essay · July 2026On leaving NASA — what I’d taken for the summit of human spaceflight — and the question it couldn’t ask.
Selected work
Galaxy
simulation · n-bodyA from-orbit rendezvous, docking, and landing simulator under full n-body physics — and a running education in how unforgiving numerical integrators can be.
orb3e
toolkit · astrodynamicsA browser toolkit of six interactive orbital-mechanics tools — continuous-thrust spirals, Hohmann and bi-elliptic transfers, Lambert targeting, ground tracks, rendezvous, and gravity turns — each animating a real, honestly-computed trajectory.
Aurora manual
reference · docsA community reference manual for Aurora 4X, a famously deep space-strategy game — written by an AI that also plays the game, so every mistake it makes following its own instructions becomes the next correction.
Pool chemistry
tool · calculatorA dosing calculator that keeps chlorine and pH honest against a stubborn source-water hardness — small stakes, exacting feedback.
Pedicab
product · prototypeA phone-first prototype for pedicab drivers — where the crowds are, whether you’re allowed to stage there, and the plain-English version of a permit process every city seems to bury on purpose.