EricValens
Ten years of shipping software, from fault-tolerant MPI at Sandia to the AI scheduling copilot at GoodTime.io. On the side I run Chimpipi, where a few coding agents and I rebuild local businesses' websites from their own content and send the live link before asking for anything.
Los Angelesericvalens@chimpipi.com
Work, year by year
Tools I reach for
Agents I build with
- Claude Codeclaude.com
The polish pass. A proof of concept goes in and a finished site comes out.
- Codexopenai.com/codex
Reads every plan before I build it, and reviews the diff after.
- Grokgrok.com
Built the very first site in the system. Still the third opinion.
- Grok Botx.ai
Always-on agents for the work around a build: research, archive, QA, drafts. I keep the send button.
The stack under it
- Next.jsnextjs.org
Where a site lives once the client says yes.
- Vitevite.dev
The proof of concept: built in an afternoon, disposable if they pass.
- Vercelvercel.com
Every preview is a real URL that opens on their phone.
- Firecrawlfirecrawl.dev
Their current site and reviews, as clean markdown.
- ScrapingBeescrapingbee.com
The other scraper, for the comedy venues that fight back.
- LangGraphlangchain.com
The scheduling copilot at GoodTime: resumable workflows with a human in the loop.
- Pineconepinecone.io
Retrieval over an org's websites, PDFs, and DOCX.
- Mapboxmapbox.com
65K comedy shows and 200 venues, on a map.
- three.jsthreejs.org
The dust behind this page.
- Tailwind CSStailwindcss.com
One house style across every Chimpipi site.
How I ship a site
Proof before the ask. A site starts as a live rebuild of the client's own site, on a real URL, before anyone pays or fills out a brief. The agents do the recurring work. I keep every irreversible step: send, price, publish.
Research
Deep research on the niche and the competitors, then Firecrawl pulls their current site and reviews. No source, no fact: hours, prices, and awards are never invented.
Plan on paper
A markdown plan in the repo. Claude Code drafts it, Codex reviews it, and the review goes back into the plan before a line of code exists.
Prove it
A Vite rebuild from their real content, deployed to Vercel. It looks like their business on first open, and it is cheap to throw away if they pass.
Show, don't pitch
The live link goes in the email, the call, or the walk-in. The ask is a conversation, not a contract.
Harden
When they say yes, the build moves to Next.js and Claude Code makes the polish pass: type, spacing, mobile, copy hierarchy. Finished, not demoed.
Loop overnight
For the long tail, an autonomous loop runs a writer, the checks, and an independent reviewer, and commits only on a pass. I read one report in the morning.
Ship
Commit to main, push, Vercel deploys. Then the next one.
Mentors I listen to
On in the car, on a run, and between builds. None of them know it.
- Brian Tracybriantracy.com
Goals in writing, and the frog eaten first thing in the morning.
- Tony Robbinstonyrobbins.com
State before strategy. Raise the standard and the results follow.
- Vanessa Van Edwardsscienceofpeople.com
Cues, charisma, and the science of reading a room.