Engineering lab
Lab
Smaller tools, working methods and the systems I intend to build next. Each entry states its status and the evidence behind it.
Things I built to make the main systems work: infrastructure control, how I work with AI agents, and this site.
Status: PrototypeObserve-first autoscaling for Zone 32-19
Railway Environment Controller
A small TypeScript service that reads Railway metrics every minute and decides whether services should scale, but by default only records what it would do.
- Reads CPU, memory, replica count and deployment status through the Railway GraphQL API.
- Scales on hysteresis with sustained windows, per-service and global cooldowns, min and max replicas and a budget cap.
- Refuses to replica-scale stateful services such as databases, Redis, volumes and singleton workers.
- Writes one JSON audit line per service per run, including decisions it blocked or skipped.
- Applying a change needs an explicit mode, dry-run off and, for production, an approval file. 61 tests cover policy, config, locks and scaling.
Status: Active developmentHow I build with AI coding agents
Agent-governed engineering
Most of my recent work is written together with AI coding agents. What makes that work is governance: written repository rules, decision logs, review agents and tests that hold the boundaries.
- Every major repository carries its own operating rules for agents, and architecture decisions are recorded as ADRs or decision logs.
- Zone 32-19 has custom review agents for routes, databases, migrations and security, plus checklists for schema changes.
- J.A.R.V.I.S. is developed by several agents on parallel branches that I integrate, and it exposes project context to agents over MCP, read-only except for five tools that record derived state.
- I keep authorship and integration: architecture, boundaries, review and merges are mine.
Status: Active developmentNIKOLAY.RUNTIME, version three
This portfolio
A static Astro and TypeScript site. Content is typed data, architecture diagrams are generated from that data, and nothing ships a client framework.
- Content collections with schemas for every case study, and a technology registry based on evidence rather than self-rating.
- A diagram engine that renders typed nodes and edges to SVG, with an accessible list version for phones and screen readers.
- A strict Content Security Policy with hashed scripts, self-hosted fonts, no trackers and no cookies.
Next systems
Planned work, deliberately outside my current stack. Nothing here is built yet, and nothing here is presented as if it were.
Status: PlannedBanking and ledger platform in Java, Spring Boot and Angular (working name)
LedgerForge
My next major system, and a deliberate step outside TypeScript: a financial platform where correctness is the product.
- Accounts, balances and a double-entry ledger with an immutable transaction history.
- Transfers and payment flows with idempotency, clear transaction boundaries and reconciliation.
- Audit logging, roles and permissions, risk signals, reporting and an administration console in Angular.
- A modular monolith first, with strong test coverage and observability, rather than microservices for their own sake.
Status: ConceptBlock-based fantasy sandbox
Untitled voxel world
A 3D open world built from blocks: survival and building in a medieval-fantasy setting with cities, creatures and dragons, designed from the start to be extended by mods.
- Engineering topics to solve: chunked world streaming, procedural terrain, persistence, an entity-component system, networking and a plugin API.
- Inspired by the block-building sandbox genre, aiming for a more polished and extensible world.
Paused
Long-term ideas on hold.
Status: PausedRealistic large-scale fantasy game
Velnethyrn
A long-term idea for a realistic, large-scale 3D fantasy world. It is paused, and the repository holds only a placeholder.