@mandrockspalacefrom the channel
Mark
Mandryk
Kyiv
I get inside systems. I take them apart, then build my own.
music · visuals · code · hardware · prose · agents · channel
sitting on Hotkeys hub
music
I take music apart the way I take everything apart: get inside, see what it's built from, then put together my own. I write in Bitwig. ССЧ is an album Payalnyk and I made: ten tracks, one commandment for each, ssch.mandrock.me.
visuals
With visuals I start by breaking things: I take a shader and wreck it until I can see what's holding the picture up. TouchViz is a shader that reacts to touch, to the tilt of your phone and to sound from the mic. Touch it once and the scene is already different.
code
Code is what everything else stands on: I use it to take other people's systems apart and to build my own. This summer alone I started more than thirty new projects (tools, bots, sites, players), and most of them you can poke at right in the browser on tools.mandrock.me.
hardware
I get into hardware when the thing I need simply isn't on the market. Right now I'm building "Type-C over the air": a pair of dongles that carries USB-C without a cable. When the hardware exists and the software for it is bad, I go into the protocol: for the Akai MPD32 I wrote a tool that pulls the presets off and loads them back.
prose
I write so that what I've taken apart doesn't get lost. The articles live on articles.mandrock.me: agents, my own infra, SysEx, and under /language, language itself. The next series is called Machines of Time and Space.
agents
Claude is a big part of how I think and work by now, so I take it apart from the inside like anything else. I write skills, contracts and drivers for agent runs: I set a task in the evening, and in the morning I read the log and the exit code, not the agent's report on what a great job it did. Some of this is out in the open: handoff-skills on GitHub.
channel
@mandrockspalace is a window into an ordinary day of mine. I post what caught my eye or seemed to matter, and what never got the chance to become an article or a tool: things seen, things heard, things half-done.
// HOW TO DEAL WITH ME
How to write to me
Get to the point, skip the "hi, got a minute?". My replies are terse, and that isn't coldness: it's faster for both of us. I have ADHD, so a solid wall of text gets skimmed (break it into lines and I'll read every one).
What to come to me with
A jam, a joint project, a question about one of my tools, lessons from me, or learning something together. Got an idea for a track: send a reference or three words and we'll see what grows out of it. Got a shared creative project (drawing, coding, TouchDesigner): tell me what you want to make and which side we're coming at it from. A really good joke is a reason too. Romantic interest as well, but I'm bad at reading the usual flirting: if that's what this is, say it plainly, in words. With a tool, send me what you pressed and what came out, so I can see where it breaks instead of guessing.
How I work
Whatever I can, I keep on my own infra: my own server, my own bots, my own domain. I say about myself exactly as much as the work needs. Anything new I break first, and only then trust it. What I make goes out as tools, articles and reactions on the channel(s), so you can look at it without having to talk to me. I don't trust someone else's thing that can be switched off in an evening: I use what I can take with me.
For a long time I was a backend developer and tech lead: PHP, Laravel, Postgres. Now I'm an AI Engineer and Business Automation Officer: I build agents and automation on Claude so the routine runs itself. Details at /work.