PAYMENTS / PUBLISHINGLIVE · PUBLIC
Paywritr
Self-hosted publishing that unlocks writing with instant Bitcoin Lightning micropayments.
SELF-HOSTED · LIGHTNINGPUBLIC · WEB
BUILT WITH AGENTIC AI / OPERATED BY ONE PERSON
I use AI
to make real things.
Products. Private systems. Music. Tools. Weird little utilities that solve real problems. This is the running record.
About Branden- 06
- live projects
- 05
- active dev
- 06
- archived
- ideas in queue
CURRENT BODY OF WORK
The work log
Not case studies. Not startup theater. A growing collection of things I have made, run, tested, or am pushing toward the world.
FOOD / UTILITYLIVE · PRIVATE
Recipe.md
Turns recipe URLs into clean, durable Markdown using AI extraction and web search.
PYTHON · OPENAI · MARKDOWNPUBLIC · GITHUB
MUSIC / PLAYBACKARCHIVE
Soundwell
A LAN-first Android music player for a Navidrome library, built around the hard parts: state, caching, casting.
ANDROID · NAVIDROME · CASTPUBLIC · GITHUB
MUSIC / DISTRIBUTIONLIVE · PUBLIC
The Drytiders
A commercially released music project made through repeatable generative AI production workflows.
GEN AI · DISTRIBUTION · WEBPUBLIC · WEB
COMMUNITY / MOBILITYACTIVE DEV
Kooks
A real-time surf-crew PWA: check-ins, ETAs, push notifications, and scheduled conditions intelligence.
PWA · REAL-TIME · PUSHPUBLIC · GITHUB
KNOWLEDGE / RESEARCHACTIVE DEV
Atlas
An AI-native Zettelkasten that turns raw source material into structured networks of atomic insight.
LLM · SUPABASE · POSTGRESPUBLIC · GITHUB
MEDIA / SEARCHARCHIVE
MemeVault
A sovereign media archive that searches a screenshot collection by text, context, vibe, and meaning.
VISION · VECTOR SEARCH · LOCALARCHIVE · LOCAL
HEALTH / TRAININGLIVE · PRIVATE
StrongLifts Tracker
A passkey-first, mobile workout system with progression rules, charts, timers, and local ownership of the data.
NODE · WEBAUTHN · SQLITEPRIVATE · SELF-HOSTED
MEDIA / LIBRARYARCHIVE
Bookworm
A personal EPUB library with AI metadata enrichment, thoughtful organization, and OPDS reader support.
PYTHON · OPDS · SQLITEARCHIVE · LOCAL
HEALTH / TRACKINGACTIVE DEV
Rebase 21
A strict, personal tracking console that turns a 21-week protocol into useful daily reporting and trends.
DJANGO · SQLITE · ANALYTICSPRIVATE · LOCAL
MUSIC / DISCOVERYLIVE · PUBLIC
DropWatch
A local-first CLI that compares a Navidrome library against new releases and identifies what is missing.
PYTHON · NAVIDROME · DEEZERPUBLIC · GITHUB
MAKER / WORKFLOWACTIVE DEV
Project:
Chron
A self-hosted story engine for makers: structured updates, highlights, and scrubbable project timelines.
NEXT.JS · PRISMA · POSTGRESPRIVATE · LOCAL
FAMILY / OPERATIONSARCHIVE
Zapadoo
A full-stack family operations system for recurring chores, approvals, rewards, and offline use.
NODE · PWA · NEDBARCHIVE · LOCAL
DELIVERY / PLANNINGARCHIVE
PERT Tool
A mobile project-planning tool that models task dependencies, expected duration, and execution paths.
REACT NATIVE · EXPO · STORAGEARCHIVE · LOCAL
INFRASTRUCTURE / OPERATIONSLIVE · PRIVATE
Homelab Ops
A self-hosted operations stack for services, deployments, storage, observability, and private systems.
LINUX · DOCKER · TAILSCALEPRIVATE · WEB
FAMILY / OPERATIONSACTIVE DEV
Prickle
A passwordless family dashboard that keeps shared plans, routines, and household information private and easy to use.
NEXT.JS · WEBAUTHN · SQLITEPRIVATE · LOCAL
MEDIA / CREATOR TOOLSARCHIVE
FoundryTV
A creator workspace for organizing projects, updates, and media into a focused publishing workflow.
NEXT.JS · PRISMA · PWAARCHIVE · LOCAL
DRYTIDE LABS
FOUNDED BY BRANDEN ESPINOZA
THE LAB
AI is a systems problem, not a chatbot rollout.
Drytide Labs is a one-person agency helping companies and product teams apply AI where it improves the work: better decisions, stronger operations, and more capable teams.
The agency combines product strategy, automation, and hands-on building at the intersection of agentic AI, modern infrastructure, and product operations. The goal is to make critical systems more reliable, teams more effective, and complex work easier to understand.
Led by Branden Espinoza, Drytide Labs brings experience across cryptography, digital assets, foreign exchange, and regulated financial services to new technology. No AI theater. Systems that survive contact with reality.
Agents & automation
Practical workflows that reduce manual work and help teams move with more leverage.
Observability & ops
Systems that make infrastructure, workflows, and decisions easier to see and operate.
Operating models
Clear controls, ownership, and adoption patterns that make useful AI durable at scale.
THE POINT
AI does not replace taste, accountability, or the willingness to finish.
It makes a one-person lab capable of trying more ideas, carrying them farther, and learning from the ones that survive contact with the real world.