I build systems that apply to themselves: a logic engine whose semantics is a least fixpoint, a language whose soundness argument is mechanized beside its source, papers whose every number is re-derivable from the committed artifact, and a library where every editorial decision is witnessed by the scan leaf it was read from.
Self-application is the theme. Reproducibility is the discipline: pre-registrations before the run, claim audits after, evidence deposits for everything.
One idea, in four registers:
| Engines | compute the fixpoint, serve it from a snapshot. |
| Languages | let the machine read what you wrote. |
| Mechanization | don't assert it; prove it beside the code. |
| Evidence | every claim ships with the artifact that produced it. |
datalog-dafsa — Datalog engine in Zig. Facts stored as a minimal-acyclic DAFSA, rules compiled to a semi-naive fixpoint VM, reads served from mmap'd snapshots. 306 tests green; hybrid lexical ∩ semantic search on top.
osier — A language with branch-local row refinement for
extensible records via GADTs — Elm→ZINC compiler, CEK effect host in Zig, Lean 4 mechanization, and a
one-command evidence chain (osier-numbers.sh) that reproduces the paper's numbers from a clean
clone.
logical-english — Kowalski's Logical English compiled to Datalog — and back. A bidirectional bridge: controlled natural language in, logic programs out, derived facts readable again as English.
selfreg-public · dpdr-public — Three deposited papers: a control-theoretic model of self-regulation; self-application is not free — the monitoring channel is part of the failure channel; applied to a working agent, pre-registered, with a held-out task suite and sealed tests.
ouroboros — A metacircular JavaScript engine: a restricted subset of JS bootstrapping a TDOP parser and interpreter, climbing toward meta-vm-executing-meta-vm.
neoplatonic-library — Restored public-domain editions of the Neoplatonic tradition, where the repair log is the unit of scholarship: every emendation versioned, reasoned, and witnessed. Live at neoplatonic-library.org.
- Self-Application as the Common Source of Benefit and Failure: A Control-Theoretic Model of Self-Regulation, Its Escapes, and a Standing-Cost Budget — doi:10.5281/zenodo.22943641
- Self-Application Is Not Free: the Monitoring Channel Is Part of the Failure Channel, and the Self Does Not Survive Its Own Reconstruction — doi:10.5281/zenodo.23128113
Static Zig MCP client (mcpc), FST-based full-text indexer in Rust (fst-indexer), sandbox servers
on pledge/seccomp/landlock, persistent knowledge-graph MCPs, and the Palimpsest intelligence toolkit
they belong to.
- blog.jaye.ch — plain-language companion to the self-application papers
- fixpointlinux.org — the systems side
- neoplatonic-library.org — the tradition side
Fit: Research engineering, programming languages, AI infrastructure — roles where the hard problem is the point, and the artifact has to run.
The status emoji is a cyclone: a loop with no visible entry. This is not an accident.