Mike Zupper

What I've been building, breaking, and thinking about.

I'm Mike Zupper: 24+ years in software, independent since 2023. I work on AI agents, decentralized compute, the web platform and Rust courses, and publish what worked and what it cost.

Cycle ofComplexityWhy AstroEffectDiv SoupMetaframework TaxOne Route TableFive AppsPOrg ChartAgent Memory8+ AgentsA2UIA2AAgent FrameworkBeadsMarkItDownACloud SPEBYOCNaaPAnalyticsOpenCodeAT ProtocolCWhat I'm BuildingJul 2025Jul 2026Aug 2026Sep 2026BDuckDB Engine 9Dashboard 11Testing 7 $5Rust + WASM Chess 14JPetStore Port 12Ship the Port 9 $5JPetStoreChessDuckDBShared Rust CoreR The Slow Burn June 2023
  1. Shared Rust CoreNative iOS and Android Apps With a Shared Rust Core. Oct 23, 2026. Courses & Rust.
  2. Sep 2026Monthly Roundup: Livepeer's Live Runner, a Builder Plan, and a Football Pool (September 2026). Oct 2, 2026. Build Logs.
  3. MarkItDownMarkItDown: Converting Documents to Markdown for LLMs. Sep 13, 2026. Agents.
  4. Aug 2026Monthly Roundup: Three Courses, a Software Factory, and a System of Record (August 2026). Sep 1, 2026. Build Logs.
  5. BeadsBeads: The Memory Layer Coding Agents Are Missing. Aug 19, 2026. Agents.
  6. DuckDBA Real SQL Engine in a Browser Tab: Two Free Courses Are Live. Aug 15, 2026. Branch: 27 lessons.
  7. ChessBuild a Chess Game with Rust and WebAssembly: Course #2 Is Live. Aug 13, 2026. Branch: 14 lessons.
  8. JPetStorePort a Classic Java App to Rust: My First Course Is Live. Aug 12, 2026. Branch: 21 lessons.
  9. Agent FrameworkMicrosoft Agent Framework: The Architecture Behind the AutoGen + Semantic Kernel Merger. Aug 6, 2026. Agents.
  10. A2AA2A: The Protocol That Treats Other Agents as Partners, Not Tools. Aug 5, 2026. Agents.
  11. A2UIA2UI: The Protocol That Lets Agents Speak UI Instead of Writing It. Aug 3, 2026. Agents.
  12. AT ProtocolThe Data Layer Under Bluesky Is Already Running Its Own Ecosystem. Aug 1, 2026. Compute.
  13. Jul 2026Monthly Roundup: Rebuilds, Roadmaps, and Raising an Entrepreneur (July 2026). Jul 30, 2026. Build Logs.
  14. Five AppsFive Apps, Zero Frameworks (Platform Is the Framework, Part 3). Jul 29, 2026. Platform.
  15. One Route TableSSR, SSG, and CSR from One Route Table (Platform Is the Framework, Part 2). Jul 28, 2026. Platform.
  16. Metaframework TaxWeb Components, Lit, and the Metaframework Tax (Platform Is the Framework, Part 1). Jul 27, 2026. Platform.
  17. Div SoupStop Letting Your Agent Write Div Soup: Two Skills for Clean HTML & CSS. Jul 23, 2026. Platform. Change for Agents.
  18. EffectStop Throwing Exceptions: Railway-Oriented TypeScript with Effect. Jul 21, 2026. Platform.
  19. OpenCodeOpenCode + BlueClaw: Escape the AI Credit Treadmill. May 13, 2026. Compute. Change for Agents.
  20. 8+ AgentsHow I Use 8+ AI Agents to Run My Daily Life. Apr 7, 2026. Agents.
  21. Agent MemoryMy Financial Agent Knew My Kid's Rocket League Rank: How I Fixed Cross-Agent Memory Contamination. Mar 14, 2026. Agents.
  22. Org ChartThe AI Org Chart: How Mike Zupper Built a Team of Agents That Actually Coordinate. Mar 11, 2026. Agents.
  23. AnalyticsYou Can't Optimize What You Can't Measure: Decentralized AI Analytics. Mar 11, 2026. Compute.
  24. NaaPBuilding the Foundation: Livepeer NaaP Analytics and Our Treasury Proposal. Feb 6, 2026. Compute.
  25. BYOCLivepeer BYOC + Ollama: LLM Freedom for AI Agents. Feb 6, 2026. Compute.
  26. Cloud SPEDeploying Livepeer's LLM Pipeline with an Ollama GPU Runner – A Cloud SPE Deep Dive. Nov 14, 2025. Compute.
  27. Jul 2025Monthly Roundup: Patching, Patterns, and Pivots (July 2025). Jul 20, 2025. Build Logs.
  28. What I'm BuildingWhat I'm Building: Projects Overview. Jul 4, 2025. Build Logs.
  29. Why AstroWhy I Chose Astro (and How It's Going). Jun 27, 2025. Platform.
  30. Cycle of ComplexityWeb Development in 2025: The Cycle of Complexity. Jan 12, 2025. Platform.
  31. The Slow BurnThe Slow Burn: Why I Left Corporate America to Build My Own Path. Jun 3, 2023. Origin.

Latest stops

All 31 posts

Agents8 min

MarkItDown: Converting Documents to Markdown for LLMs

Microsoft's MarkItDown unifies document extraction across 20+ formats into clean Markdown, specifically optimized for LLM consumption. Here's how it works, when it's worth using, and what the architecture teaches about building document pipelines.

Agents13 min

Beads: The Memory Layer Coding Agents Are Missing

Beads gives AI coding agents a persistent, dependency-aware work graph that survives context loss. Here is what it solves, how it changes agent workflows, and where the extra machinery is worth it.

Courses & Rust5 min

A Real SQL Engine in a Browser Tab: Two Free Courses Are Live

Twenty free lessons that put DuckDB in the browser and build an analytics dashboard on it — a worker-backed data layer with OPFS persistence and window functions, then twelve Lit components on a signals store. Every lesson ends at a tagged checkpoint.

Branch lines

6 text-first courses. Each tick is a lesson, and the commits are the curriculum.

From JPetStore, Aug 12, 2026

From Chess, Aug 13, 2026

From DuckDB, Aug 15, 2026