// python dev & professional over-engineer
Hi, I'm Faen — a full-stack Python developer with a talent for solving problems nobody else noticed were problems yet, and an unhealthy relationship with terminal applications.
// the lore
I'm Faen, a mid-level full-stack developer who specialises in Python, has strong opinions about package managers, and will absolutely write a CLI tool to solve a problem that could have been a shell alias. I have no regrets.
I'm dyslexic and have auditory processing difficulties, which means I've inadvertently become very good at written communication and very bad at remembering what was said in a meeting. In a shocking plot twist, this has made me a better developer — I document things properly and think carefully about how software communicates with the people using it.
I care a lot about accessibility — probably because I need it myself. If software doesn't work for everyone, it doesn't really work, does it? That said I'll admit my Discord bots are primarily for my own convenience. We contain multitudes.
Python, CLIs, APIs, and tools that do exactly one thing extremely well. Or five things moderately well. Depends on the day.
Turning "I wish this existed" into "okay it exists now but I need to refactor it." The circle of developer life.
Finishing projects. Meetings where the outcome could have been an email. JavaScript. (Kidding. Mostly.)
Shipping the Applaud suite — ten apps deep, Patchwork's finally out of migration hell, and I have opinions about all of them.
// things i built instead of sleeping
Mostly unfinished, entirely earnest, occasionally useful.
// the applaud suite
Everything personal I build lives under one roof: Applaud — ten privacy-first, neurodivergent-focused apps that all share a violet-and-gold "Starfield" splash screen and the tagline "Because all effort deserves applause." Here's the full line-up and how baked each one is right now. Patchwork, SpellBreak, and PanTry get the full deep-dive treatment further down — the rest get the elevator pitch.
The one that started it all. Full migration to self-hosted infra (Pi 5, Postgres, the works) wrapped up mid-2026. Actually gets used by actual people. Full write-up below.
Sticker-pack opening app with a leather-journal vibe and a rabbit mascot called Bobbin. Pack opening, tear animation, rarity reveals, onboarding, and dark mode are all built — the core loop just works.
Shares Unsticker's palette with an orange twist. Still early days — more once Unsticker fully settles.
One-step recipe app with a proper kitchen aesthetic. Has its own self-contained TypeScript pipeline that pulls structured recipe data straight out of a page's JSON-LD, so no more scrolling past someone's life story for the ingredients.
A calm sage-and-slate communication access card — a fast way to tell people what kind of communication actually works for you right now.
Burnout prediction with a hearth-and-fire metaphor, built native on Expo. Nine weighted dials — pollen, UV, moon phase, air quality, and more — feed a lag-aware model that flags burnout before you're already in it.
Soft-blue journaling and venting space built around genuinely serious privacy architecture — your Discord identity gets decoupled via HMAC-keyed lookups so even moderators can't tell who wrote what. Being built in three phases.
Screen-break nagging that actually works, via Android's Accessibility Service. Full write-up below.
A chore-and-reward game built on a relationship graph, with an append-only ledger and support for more than one currency. Very early, very fun concept.
Encrypted grocery and medication expiry tracker with barcode and OCR scanning. Full write-up below.
// deep dives
My biggest and most important project. Patchwork is a PWA for plural systems — groups of people who share a single body. It's private, local-first, and built with genuine care for the community it serves. The server literally cannot read your data. That's not a marketing claim, that's the architecture. Fully migrated to self-hosted infrastructure on a Raspberry Pi 5, because apparently I enjoy doing things the hard way.
An Android app that reminds you to take breaks from your screen — and actually means it. Built using Android's Accessibility Service API and a WindowManager overlay, SpellBreak interrupts whatever you're doing with a gentle but unavoidable reminder that your eyes exist and deserve rest. It's the app I built because I kept ignoring every other break reminder app.
A local-first PWA for tracking grocery and medication expiry dates, because I am an adult who has definitely never found expired medication at the back of a drawer. PanTry keeps everything client-side with AES-256-GCM encryption, so the server never sees your data. It's cosy, it's practical, and it will tell you when your paracetamol has turned on you.
// side projects & infra
Three Discord bots, each with a distinct personality and purpose. Started as "I'll just write a quick script." They have names now. They have lore.
/resetpassphrase and support ticket creation via /ticket, with log parsing to help diagnose issues. The one bot with actual responsibilities.// things i actually know
// don't be shy
I'm open to interesting projects, collaborations, and people who want to talk about Python tooling at length. Writing works better for me than calls — I promise I'm much more coherent in text.