Side project · Running log
Building Bluecliff
Bluecliff is a side project, an app to assess the security of the suppliers and partners a company depends on. This page is about how I build it, more than about the app.
I have three reasons for it: a problem I met in my audit work, technology I want to learn, and a way of working I want to test. The engineering team is made of AI agents, and I'm the only human on it. There's no funding and little spare time, so it has to stay cheap in money and in attention.
This is the log, newest first. Numbers come from GitHub and Linear. The failures stay in.
Product
A problem I met in my audit work, and an app to try a better way of handling it.
Now: Proof of concept. The first screen works on a private preview.
Technology
Recent technology, such as decision models, used for real. Building with it is the fastest way I know to understand it.
Now: Lessons will be shared here. Bluecliff's own design stays private.
Agent team
An engineering team made of AI agents on frontier models, run in Claude Code, with me as the only human.
Now: Three feature owners, plus QA, DevOps and an Orchestrator.
Timeline
October 2026
- Day 4
· Day 4
Product · Chapter
Thirty merges and nothing on the screen
A night of green merges, and no new screen in the app. Why six specialised agents shipped less than two, and what replaced them.
Read the chapter - Day 4
· Day 4
Product · Reflection
The cost of a mistake moved
With agents, changing code got cheap. What users see, their data and my attention did not, and that changes what I decide first.
Read the reflection Show 3 log entriesHide 3 log entries11 Oct to 13 Oct
- Day 4
· Day 4
Product
Proof of concept first
The priority is a working proof of concept, not a production app. Progress is now counted in screens that work on the preview, not in merges.
Product
No new screen overnight
30 pull requests merged during the night. Three were features and none was a screen. The four screens the proof of concept needs had been open for more than a day.
- Day 2
· Day 2
Product
Thirteen app features in one day
With one development session working beside the Orchestrator, the foundations of the app merged in a single day: 13 features, from the scaffold to the first working list.
- Day 1
· Day 1
Product · Chapter
Why I'm building Bluecliff
A side project with three goals: a problem I met in audit work, technology I want to learn, and an engineering team made of AI agents.
Read the chapter Show 1 log entryHide 1 log entry9 Oct
- Day 0
· Day 0
Product
Product and design before code
The product idea, a design system, a brand and a clickable prototype came first, the evening before the repository existed. The tech stack came last.