Portfolio

Hey! I'm Gal, but I go by Shade. I am a 15 y/o builder focused on software development, design, and open source.

I love turning random ideas I have into real tools in my free time. Whenever I have a random thought, whether it could be the stupidest idea ever or something extremely complicated and hard to make, I don't care. I write it down, and if I really like it, I'll just start building it. From then on, who knows?

This has led me to make wonderful projects that I feel are really useful to me, and maybe to other people eventually.

Projects I am building

Flash - a fast thread manager for your installed harnesses main project
Openchat - a sleek and minimal chat website for OpenCode models publically hosted convex
Liquid Cut - a native macOS video editor built for simplicity and speed, heavily optimized for M1
Glassery - an Electron hub and media player for movies and TV shows, with cloud storage and subtitle features daily-self-used
gx - a coding agent TUI written in Go, with a tiny static binary, fast performance, and polished UX side project
Pointy - a menu bar app that lets you use Linux cursor themes on macOS daily-self-used

How I work

I have one rule for myself, and that is to never generate using AI. And no, it's not what you think... Let me explain:

What I mean by that is whenever you have an idea for something, whether it's a product, a game, or some dumb tool, you have to go with what you have in your brain. You have to not let go until the result is exactly how you imagined it. That's how you make good software.

Of course, I heavily use AI for coding. In fact, I don't write code at all. But I direct the agent to exactly how I want the result to be, and I don't give up on anything.

If you don't do this, you're not really making anything. You're just paying for an automation that makes slop.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying automations for stuff like PRs and code reviews are bad. There's a difference between automating the work that takes time and automating the time that takes work.

This generally comes naturally to me. My brain just automatically goes from task to task, idea to idea, never really stopping until I need to eat or something :D Whenever I really enter that "focus mode," it's just the best feeling ever. I find myself writing like 142 prompts in under 3 hours, making something that would take weeks, if not months.

OS

When I built my first PC in 2024, it was originally for gaming and, obviously, Windows. Back then, I didn't know jack shit about software development or AI. But my chad of an SSD refused to install Windows, forcing me to try and see if Linux worked. I slowly learned more and more shit, and boy, I loved it. It was so fun until it wasn't. There's a canon event every Linux user goes through that we call "distro-hopping." Most don't make it out... but I somehow did. It's when you endlessly try to find the perfect distro with the perfect desktop environment or window manager, and the perfect setup and shortcuts and looks and tools, and... you never stop.

You keep thinking reinstalling will make it better, but it won't. It's a quick dopamine hit every time, and then boredom. I realized this was taking all my energy away from focusing on my projects, so I stopped.

I just said, screw it, I bought the PC to game, so let's keep it for gaming only (SteamOS). I'll then do my work on my Mac, which gets out of my way. I've been familiar with my Mac since 2020, which I'm very grateful for. Now I can just work without thinking about it.

It wasn't all for nothing, though. Linux taught me many things about privacy, control, and consumerism.

I know macOS has way less control than Linux, but I find that, realistically, it's just the best. Of course, it has bugs, but it just feels more polished in day-to-day use in every way compared to Linux. Way more support, easier to use, and, frankly, it looks nice out of the box. It's really hard to explain what I mean... but hey, at least it's not Windows.