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Work

Our work,
misses
and all.

Each record follows one piece of work in order: what was asked, what we built, what our checks caught, when it was approved and where it runs. When something got past us, the record says so.

Frederick runs the studio from Sonoma. Coding agents write and test the code; every approval here is his.

Client sites

Live sites and our case studies, shown with each client's permission.

Our own work

The two tools we built to run the studio, and our Halloween game.

  • Studio tool

    Studio OS

    Our dashboard: each build and production in it opens with a brief and waits on Frederick's approval.

  • Studio tool

    Media OS

    Our media pipeline: Blender, Illustrator, InDesign and After Effects each run from a spec file in the production.

    • 50 seconds · made in Media OS

      The Rogue Render

      Approved by Frederick on Oct 19, 2026, sha256 c7a31330

    • Case study
  • Playable

    Crow's Eve

    A platformer in Phaser, free to play: four levels, a boss on the last roof, a blade and six guns.

50 seconds · made in Media OS

The Rogue Render

Approved by Frederick on Oct 19, 2026, sha256 c7a31330

50 seconds · made in Media OS

The Rogue Render

Our checks run at a gate, so CHECKED
shares the gate's diamond.

Dates and statuses come from our build records, read when this page was built on October 9, 2026.

October 2026

Oct 3, 2026

This site

The new homepage, and this page

We drew both in Illustrator first, and each drawing was approved before its code was written.

Live since October 9, 2026

  1. ASKED 12:30PM
  2. APPROVED 1:55PM
  3. BUILT Oct3
  4. CHECKED 2:36PM
  5. SENT BACK 4:10PM
  6. APPROVED 9:50PM
  7. CHECKED 2:16AM
  8. APPROVED Oct7
  9. LIVE Oct9
  1. ASKED12:30 and 12:48 PM

    Rebuild the site as light on a dark ground, drawn in Illustrator first.

  2. APPROVED12:54 PM and about 1:55 PM

    The brief, then the first drawing of the homepage, on the dark ground.

  3. BUILTOct 3

    A preview on a route the live site does not serve, coded by one agent and checked by a second.

  4. CHECKED2:36 PM

    Our contrast check measured 205 runs of text at three widths: three failed, and each was fixed and measured again. Our review read the copy against the code: two of its lines, and a single word in a third, promised more than the code does.

  5. SENT BACK4:10 PM

    The first drawing of this page, a gallery sorted by audience. Frederick asked what on it still looked like hiding.

  6. APPROVEDabout 9:50 PM

    Keep the headline, rewrite the passages to what the code does, and show our misses on this page.

  7. CHECKEDOct 4, 2:16 AM

    Our overnight review read the homepage's first pane against our records. It still said a push and a paid call wait for a person. A push waits only inside a build, and a paid call only in a run of more than about twenty, so both came off.

  8. APPROVEDOct 7

    The drawing of this page, before any of its code.

  9. LIVEOct 9

    Live at frederickdesign.studio on Frederick's go.

Oct 3, 2026

This site

Our case studies, redrawn for the new site

We redrew each case study in the new design, so no page of the new site links back to the old one.

Live since October 9, 2026

  1. APPROVED Oct3
  2. MISSED Oct4
  3. ASKED 4:42PM
  4. MISSED Oct4
  5. LIVE Oct9

Missedfound Oct 4, 4:40 PM

What happened
On Oct 4 at about 4:03 PM we told Frederick the new site was close to ready. Thirteen of our public pages had no new version yet, seven case studies among them.
How we found it
Frederick's message at 4:40 PM: the old case study pages were not accounted for. A discovery pass that afternoon counted the old pages and the new pages' links to them.
Why our count missed them
It covered only the pages this build had drawn. The build's own scope had named every case study page from the start.
Who it touched
Frederick, before any switch. The live site did not change.
What changed
On his rulings of Oct 4 and Oct 6, five of the seven were redrawn and published, and the two demo case studies were retired with their addresses sent to this page.
Status
Fixed October 9, 2026.

Missedfound Oct 4, evening

What happened
On Sep 15 our Sonoma's Closet case study gained a line that put the month's needs list behind the closet's login. The list is on a public page of its site, and the login has no needs screen.
How we found it
Drafting the redrawn case study on the evening of Oct 4, we read the closet's code and found the list written into its public What's needed page. A fact-check that evening confirmed it.
Why we wrote it
No record states the cause. Our check names a likely source: a July mock of that page said the list would be updated from the dashboard, a screen that was never built.
Who it touched
Visitors to our Sonoma's Closet case study since Sep 15.
What changed
The redrawn case study shows the list on the closet's public page, and its record names this miss.
Status
Fixed October 9, 2026.

Oct 3, 2026

This site

Analytics, and a privacy policy that says so

Page analytics on our public pages only, with our Privacy Policy rewritten to match what the code sends.

Live since Oct 3, 10:24 PM

  1. CHECKED 5:36PM
  2. ASKED Oct3
  3. APPROVED 6:40PM
  4. BUILT Oct3
  5. CHECKED Oct3
  6. APPROVED 10:20PM
  7. LIVE 10:24PM

Oct 3, 2026

This site

Three engineering case studies

A case study each for Studio OS, Media OS and Crow's Eve.

Live since Oct 3, about 8:20 AM

  1. ASKED 6:46AM
  2. APPROVED 6:53AM
  3. BUILT Oct3
  4. CHECKED eachcommit
  5. APPROVED 8:15AM
  6. LIVE 8:20AM
  7. MISSED 9:17AM

Missedfound Oct 3, 9:17 AM

What happened
The top image on the Studio OS page carried two marks from our development server, and the page's one button led back to the portfolio. The same review found an older fault on our homepage, live since Sep 17: at 1024 px and wider, one client card showed its picture and lost its title, line and link.
How we found it
Our own design review that morning, after the deploy. It read both pages in captures and measured the homepage cards at seven widths. Every gate on the deploy had passed.
Who it touched
Visitors to the Studio OS page from Oct 3, and visitors on wide screens to our homepage from Sep 17.
What changed
A clean top image, a header that leaves the button off when a page has no public link, and a homepage without that card.
Status
Fixed October 9, 2026.

September 2026

Sep 30, 2026

Playable

Crow's Eve

A side-scrolling Halloween game. Play it with a keyboard and mouse, or with two thumbs on a phone.

Live Sep 30 to Oct 23

  1. ASKED Sep30
  2. CHECKED 10:29AM
  3. APPROVED 10:46AM
  4. BUILT Sep30
  5. APPROVED 11:25AM
  6. CHECKED 12:48PM
  7. APPROVED 5:19PM
  8. LIVE Sep30

Sep 29, 2026

Media OS · Demo brand

A film of a booking app, for a challenge on Contra

Portfolio demo · fictional brand · all data fabricated

The photography studio in the film is one we invented. Media OS drew the app's wireframes and cut the film and its making-of.

On Contra since Sep 29

  1. ASKED Sep24
  2. APPROVED 10:25PM
  3. BUILT Sep27
  4. MISSED Sep27
  5. APPROVED 10:37AM
  6. CHECKED 7:10PM
  7. APPROVED 8:50PM
  8. LIVE Sep29

Missedfound Sep 27

What happened
We saw long lines cut off at the frame edges in two of the wireframes and handed them over anyway. Our note said the prompts carried the words, so the pictures only needed the layout.
How we found it
Frederick sent them back: cut-off text is unacceptable. A check written that night compared the lines each text frame shows with the text it holds. It found eight cut off across four wireframes.
Why our build called them fine
Our layout tool looks for hidden text on InDesign pages. On Illustrator boards it writes an empty list without looking, so the empty list meant unchecked.
What changed
By 11:20 PM the four were fixed and rebuilt, and the check found none cut off in all 192 text frames. Before Frederick sees an Illustrator board now, the check runs or the board is read by eye. The drawings for this site use point text with every line break placed.
Still open
The layout tool itself still skips the check, as read Oct 3.
Who it touched
Frederick, before the app was built from the fixed set.

Sep 27, 2026

Studio OS

Our dashboard went down twice from one cause

Studio OS, the dashboard we work in, runs from a development server on our own machine. A production build run in the same folder cleared the pages it was serving.

Fixed Sep 27, 4:35 PM

Impact: our dashboard. The public site builds on our host from pushed commits and was untouched.

  1. MISSED Sep19
  2. ASKED Sep19
  3. CHECKED Sep19
  4. MISSED Sep27
  5. BUILT 4:35PM
  6. LIVE Sep27

Missedfound Sep 27

What happened
On Sep 27 a production build ran again in the folder our development server was serving. It cleared the compiled pages, and the dashboard answered every request with a server error.
Why it happened twice
On Sep 19 we traced this cause and proposed the guard. It shipped on Sep 27, after the outage came back.
What changed
The guard and the rewritten rule, Sep 27 at 4:35 PM.
What we still cannot tell
Whether the first two clears on Sep 19 took the server down. The record proves the clears, and proves the outage only for the third.
Who it touched
Our dashboard only.

What stays off this page

The records above show what happened, and the case studies show what we built.
What stays private is set out on How we work.

Which step in your
work should a
machine take over?