👋 Hi, I’m Aaron Norling — an experienced Ruby on Rails developer, technical team leader, husband, dad, and amateur farmer living in North Idaho.
I love building well-structured software and leading teams that ship things that matter. Over the years I’ve worked across startups and enterprises, and these days I’m especially focused on maintainable architecture, thoughtful interfaces, and making life a little easier for the next developer.
Thanks for stopping by.
Recent Essays
All essays →- The Twelve-Factor Utility
A CLI designed around twelve properties earns the right to be served — no rewrite required.
- Simple GitHub Workflow For Spiker
Adding a minimal GitHub Actions workflow to a Spiker spike to prove the tests pass at a glance.
- Patterns in Reach
A case for reflexive, lightweight abstractions in Ruby and Rails development.
- Teaching (and Assessing) With Spiker
Turning the Spiker scaffolding gem into a lightweight engine for teaching and technical assessment.
- A First Step in a Testing Journey
A letter to my past, testing-skeptical self — the essay I wish I had read at the beginning of my Ruby career.
Projects
All projects →- Trellis
Go
Contract specs for codebases and the AI agents working in them
- Spiker
Ruby
Instant red/green Ruby spike environment, no boilerplate
- contextq
Go
Local job queue for coordinating multiple AI agents
- contextq-server
Go
Exposes contextq queues over HTTPS for remote agents
- loupe
Go
Filesystem observer that emits structured JSON for agent workflows
- Mason
Go
CLI for deploying static sites and sharing files via a personal VPS
- Corder
Go
Keyboard-driven terminal audio recorder with plugin support
- Viaqr
Ruby on Rails
QR code hosting for small organizations, metered on usage not count