DeNon Maryland

Building things.
Following curiosity.

DeNon Maryland

It swings on its own. Drag and release to throw it, or use the left and right arrow keys. Pause motion is the first control on the page.

  • Product designer
  • Software developer
  • Founder of Mary, marylabs.tech

Mary

Mary is the company I’m building, starting with music. Its first product is Terra One, which gives an engineer one place for their artists, music, sessions, money and time.

I’m making most of it myself: the logo and brand, the website, the app’s screens and its first plugins. Every piece is a chance to try something I haven’t done before.

  • Brand identity
  • Website
  • Product design
  • Engineering
marylabs.tech
  1. Terra One home screen with today’s sessions, recent music, recent artists and a weekly bookings chart, shown against a dusk sky.
    Terra One · Home screen
  2. The marylabs.tech website on desktop: “Run your studio smoothly. Stay focused on the sound.” above a Terra One preview.
    marylabs.tech · Website
  3. The marylabs.tech website on two phones, in its dark and light themes.
    marylabs.tech · Mobile, dark and light
  4. The Mary logo with the Audio Technology tagline, in black on white and white on black.
    Mary · Identity, logo lockups
  5. The Mary symbol in its crisp, halftone and solid cuts.
    Mary · Identity, symbol cuts
  6. Terra One’s Today view: the day’s sessions, recent music and artists, the week’s bookings and open tasks.
    Terra One · Today, sessions and tasks
  7. Terra One’s song review screen: a mix waveform with timed client notes, version history and delivery progress.
    Terra One · Song review
  8. The marylabs.tech website in its light theme on desktop.
    marylabs.tech · Light theme
  9. A mixing plugin interface in a dark theme, adjusting a lead vocal presence band by plus 2.5 decibels.
    Plugin interface · Lead vocal EQ
  10. The same mixing plugin interface in a light theme.
    Plugin interface · Light theme
  11. Mary’s EQ plugin in its cobalt finish, with a response curve above seven band controls.
    EQ plugin · Cobalt finish
  12. Mary’s EQ plugin in its silver finish.
    EQ plugin · Silver finish

Studio 22

Studio 22 is a recording studio in Rocklin, California, and where a lot of my web experiments start.

Some of them are public: the website, plus small landing pages for artists, producers and authors. Most are tools for the team, like a dashboard for daily Stories, a campaign studio, a script shuffler with a teleprompter and a little marketing tracker called Rhythm.

  • Website
  • Landing pages
  • Internal tools
  • Content systems
studio22sac.com
  1. The Studio 22 website: “Make the record you hear in your head,” beside a pair of PMC studio monitors.
    Studio 22 · Website
  2. The Studio 22 website and the free-hour application page on two phones.
    Studio 22 · Website and free-hour page on mobile
  3. The free-hour application page: “See if Studio 22 feels right for you,” beside a photo of the studio.
    Free Hour · Application
  4. The audiobook recording landing page and the first two steps of its enquiry form on three phones: “Your book. Your voice.”, where the book is now, and its title and length.
    Audiobooks · Landing page and enquiry form
  5. The self-service room rental page for producers and artists who record themselves, and the first two steps of its enquiry form on three phones: “Make beats. Record yourself.”, session length, and session plans.
    Producers · Room rental and enquiry form
  6. The Story Control Center dashboard, showing today’s bookable Story and the upcoming posting schedule.
    Story Control Center · Dashboard
  7. The Story schedule: an August and September calendar beside the day’s Stories in posting order.
    Story Control Center · Schedule
  8. Campaign Studio, where artist archetypes become campaigns, scripts and shot plans.
    Campaign Studio · Artist archetypes
  9. Rhythm, a private marketing tracker, on three phones: today’s task, the week’s obligations and the month’s priorities, shown with demo data.
    Rhythm · Today, week and month
  10. Content Day: pick a short-form video script, shuffle each section and read it from a teleprompter.
    Content Day · Script shuffler
  11. A campaign treatment titled “The Process Is the Proof,” over a photo of the studio control room.
    Campaign treatment · The Process Is the Proof
  12. Three Saturday availability flyers, each in a different Studio 22 style.
    Story artwork · Availability flyers
  13. An illustrated map of the artist journey connecting six artist archetypes.
    Content strategy · The artist journey
  14. The Jay Engineering booking page: “Book a session, record your vocals, leave with a track you’re proud of.”
    Jay Engineering · First-session booking

Knowledge Observatory

I wanted a better way to read Paul Graham’s essays, so I turned all 234 of them into a night sky.

Each essay is a star. Its color is the year it was written, its brightness is its length, and it only lights up once I’ve actually worked through it. Open one and it becomes a guided reading, with questions before and after. The iPhone version works offline.

An independent project, not affiliated with Paul Graham.

  • 3D sky
  • Guided reading
  • iPhone app
  • Offline sync
  1. The Knowledge Observatory home: Paul Graham’s 234 essays as a 3D field of stars grouped into eight volumes, with the next essay, the journey and an illumination scale.
    Deep field · All 234 essays as stars
  2. The iPhone app on three phones: Today with the next essay, the library of eight volumes, and the sky of all 234 stars.
    Pocket Observatory · Today, library and sky on iPhone
  3. Asking the sky “how to find startup ideas”: 40 essays light up and a passage from How to Get Startup Ideas lifts out beside its star.
    Ask the sky · Search that lights up answers
  4. The guided reader: before the source opens, an Orient step asks what the essay will argue, beside a map of the essay’s movements.
    Learning cycle · Orient before you read
  5. The timeline formation: every essay placed along thirty years of writing.
    Thirty years · Every essay on one timeline
  6. The iPhone reader for How to Do Great Work, opening on the Orient step of the learning cycle.
    Pocket reader · Guided reading on iPhone

Aura Studios

Aura Studios is a recording studio in Sacramento. I got to design its whole look from scratch, then build the website around it.

The brand deck is where I worked out the logo, the colors, the type and how the photos should feel. The website is that deck put to use.

  • Brand identity
  • Brand deck
  • Website
  • Booking flow
aurastudiosco.com
  1. The cover of the Aura Studios brand identity deck: the aura wordmark with “Studios & Co.” and the line “Make your presence heard.”
    Brand deck · Cover
  2. Brand deck page “Original character. Production precision.”: the aura logo in black, violet and white.
    Brand deck · Logo
  3. Brand deck page “Color with intention.”: a palette of near-blacks, indigos and violets with blue, amber and warm neutrals.
    Brand deck · Color
  4. Brand deck page “Three voices. One point of view.”: the type system with sample headlines.
    Brand deck · Type
  5. Brand deck page “Observed, not performed.”: a moody black-and-white and violet photography direction.
    Brand deck · Photography direction
  6. Brand deck page “One identity. Every touchpoint.”: a booking post, the logo on blue and the monogram.
    Brand deck · Touchpoints
  7. The Aura Studios website: “Recording, mixing, and mastering for artists ready to be heard,” over a photo of a blue-lit live room.
    Website · Home
  8. The Aura Studios website on three phones: the home page, the studio and the four services.
    Website · On iPhone
  9. The services section: recording, mixing, mastering and room rental, each leading to booking.
    Website · Four services
  10. The studio page: “A room built around your sound,” beside a photo of the control room.
    Website · The studio

More projects

Smaller things I make for myself.

Writing Studio is a little workshop I built to get better at writing. It explains one idea at a time, shows an invented example, then hands the pen back to me. Its coach asks questions, but it never writes a word for me.

  • Guided steps
  • Craft lessons
  • Reading room
  • Runs on my Mac
  1. Writing Studio’s entrance: “You have an idea. Let’s find the words.” with a Begin a piece button.
    Writing Studio · Entrance
  2. Choosing what to write: essay, blog post, fiction, nonfiction book, video essay, short post and more.
    Writing Studio · Choose a form
  3. A guided step, “Let’s make one complete sentence”: a plain explanation, an invented example, then the writer’s own sentence.
    Writing Studio · One small step
  4. Writing Studio on three phones in dark mode: the entrance, a guided sentence step and the draft preview.
    Writing Studio · On iPhone, in dark mode
  5. Learn the craft: short lessons grouped into discovery, sentences, paragraphs, structure, voice and revision.
    Writing Studio · Learn the craft
  6. The reading room: original essays to read for their moves, starting with writing as a way of figuring things out.
    Writing Studio · The reading room
  7. Looking back at the finished draft before adding it: every word written by the writer.
    Writing Studio · Your draft

Software factory

This is how I build everything above. Instead of one AI assistant, I run a small team of coding agents. An orchestrator hands work to a lead for each project, and each lead runs its own workers in Claude Code or Codex.

They live on a Linux cloud server that’s always on, so the work keeps going when my laptop is closed. A Mac and a Windows PC are test benches, and I steer it all from T3 Code on my laptop or phone. Underneath it all is DJM OS, my own system of notes and rules that every agent reads first.

The fun part is that it keeps learning. Every run is logged and scored each week, repeated mistakes turn into fixes, and every correction becomes a lesson the next session starts with.

  • T3 Code
  • Claude Code
  • Codex
  • Obsidian and Git
Inspired by Warp’s talks on software factories
  1. Diagram: you set the intent; an orchestrator routes work to project leads, each running its own workers, on top of DJM OS, a shared layer of memory, rules and history.
    The shape · Orchestrator, leads and workers
  2. Diagram: a laptop and phone running T3 Code connect over a private network to an always-on Linux cloud server for agents, an Apple test bench and a Windows test bench.
    The machines · Steer anywhere, build elsewhere
  3. Diagram: Claude Code, Codex and any future model all read one contract of rules, skills, guards and a shared journal.
    Model-agnostic · One contract for every model
  4. Diagram: a request goes to a router, then to a single owner whose NOW card holds the current state.
    Routing · One owner per request
  5. Diagram: Markdown notes feed a SQLite search index that returns cited answers and compact context packs for agents.
    Memory · Cited answers from a rebuildable index
  6. Diagram: four model lanes, routine, production, verification and frontier, from cheapest to most capable.
    Model routing · Four lanes, by cost
  7. Diagram: spec, build, check, review by the other model family, merge, proof, log, and a release that waits for a person’s go.
    The line · From spec to release
  8. Diagram: a guard checks every agent command and stops risky ones, such as killing processes by name or printing a secret.
    Guards · Stopped before they run
  9. Diagram: sessions flow into a private journal, are redacted, and are published as history and a daily work log; factory events feed a weekly scorer.
    Logging · Every run on record
  10. Diagram: a weekly loop that scores every run, finds failures repeated in three or more runs, proposes at most three fixes, reviews and merges them, and checks the effect after two weeks.
    Self-improvement · The weekly loop
  11. Diagram: a mistake is logged once in a learning ledger, fixed where it lives, and every next session starts with the lesson.
    Compounding · Lessons that stick
  12. The eight laws of a software factory, distilled from Warp’s talks: store every run, define the factory in code, grade with rubrics, improve from failures, prove or revert, pick models by your own work, validate early, and humans own intent.
    Principles · Eight laws