# Michael Foster

> Software architecture, agent infrastructure, and deterministic systems. Nashville, TN. This site documents systems built and the problems they solved, written problem-first: what someone needed, what was decided, and what it cost or protected.

Every figure on this site traces to an audited record of the underlying work.
Where a project is co-authored or incomplete, the page says so.

## Pages

- [Home](https://visualfinesse.com/): hero, four headline figures, and the engineering decisions behind them.
- [About](https://visualfinesse.com/about): background, trajectory, and current work.
- [Work](https://visualfinesse.com/work): index of systems built.
- [Writing](https://visualfinesse.com/writing): posts.

## Systems

- [Cartoon Zoo](https://visualfinesse.com/work/cartoon-zoo) (In Demo): A daily caption contest needs two things that fight each other: fair play, and moderation that doesn't need a full-time moderator. Built a platform where one-caption-per-person is enforced by the database itself, and the community handles moderation in two tiers before anything reaches a human. [2024-06 onward · 330 commits · TypeScript, Next.js, tRPC, Postgres, Socket.IO]
- [IBA](https://visualfinesse.com/work/iba) (Shipped and live): An insurance brokerage in Franklin, Tennessee needed a site their team could update without a developer. Built and shipped it, then rebuilt it a second time when the CMS cost more than it returned. The interesting part was a deploy that reported success while serving nothing. [2025-01 onward · 64 commits · Qwik, Strapi, Cloudflare Pages, Vite, React, nginx]
- [CodeMap](https://visualfinesse.com/work/codemap) (Complete): Coding agents burn most of their budget just working out what a codebase contains: the same searches, every session, at full token price. CodeMap reads the repository with static analysis and writes a navigation atlas an agent can load once. It costs about 375 tokens and replaces thousands. [2026-02 onward · Python, static analysis, zero dependencies]
- [IDIIDO](https://visualfinesse.com/work/idiido) (Complete): Agent harnesses waste money by re-prompting a model whenever anything fails. IDIIDO works a task list overnight and routes each failure to the cheapest thing that can fix it. A stale file regenerates with no model call at all. It defines done, then proves it. [2026-01 onward · Python, Claude CLI, Codex CLI, OpenRouter]
- [EMBER](https://visualfinesse.com/work/ember) (In progress): An AI orchestration system modelled on how a real company actually works: CEO down through CTO, product, architecture, team lead, developer, QA. Work flows down the hierarchy and problems escalate back up it, because that structure exists in real organisations for reasons that apply to agents too. [2026-01 onward · 70 commits · Python, multi-agent orchestration, git checkpointing]
- [Foster Design System](https://visualfinesse.com/work/design-system) (In progress): Generative brand art is worthless if it changes when you didn't change anything. Built a system where the same seed and config always produce byte-identical output, then applied it to a blog where every post generates its own visual treatment from its slug and date. [2026-01 onward · 22 commits · TypeScript, SVG, Astro, property-based testing]
- [Ace Pool & Spa](https://visualfinesse.com/work/ace-pool) (Shipped): Ace Pool & Spa was performing manual data entry every month for sales reporting. A quick Python script pulling their platform's data through an API, PoolBrain, allowed us to automate this manual process for the owner to run at will. [2025-12 onward · 14 commits · Python, openpyxl, PoolBrain API]

## Writing

- [Rebuilding this site](https://visualfinesse.com/writing/hello) (2026-08-02): Notes on recovering six years of assets from a Webflow staging URL before it lapsed.

## Contact

- Email: foster@visualfinesse.com
- https://github.com/VisualFinesse
- https://www.linkedin.com/in/-foster