Dav Yaginuma

About

Unfettered software engineer based in San Francisco. Ghost riding the agents.

Main interests/hobbies are Rugby Sevens, Live Music and enjoying / working on my boat in the Sac River Delta.

I build products using code, teams, vision, and now, agents. Generally Web, iOS and macOS apps. Also sometimes VisionOS, Unity. I want to make a roller derby Roblox game some day.

Currently focused on software visualization and developer tooling built for the agentic age.

𝕏 (née Twitter) @dav @DavYaginuma @dav_yaginuma g Goodreads Apple Music Bandcamp

Essays

Software Engineering in the Agentic Age
How will my best practices of the last ~20 years map to a world where AI agents write the code.
The Pivotal Way
The rigorously optimized approach to building software I learned at Pivotal Labs and became the foundation of my approach to software engineering.
My Way: How I Practice(d) Software Engineering
My three-phase model and velocitymaxxing take on how software engineering teams should evolve.
My Engineering Maxims
Clarity > Consistency > Concision, and other heuristics for engineering decisions. If you've worked with me, you've heard all this.
Blog
My old blog in archival mode since TypePad shut down.

Projects

The Overseer
Agent skill for 3D spatial visualization in MacOS or VisionOS. I created this to explore software project analysis, but it is good for visualizing pretty much anything. Gives your agent the skill to render anything it can come up with in 3D right in front of you. Models from Smithsonian archive. Famous chess matches with commentary. Ad hoc educational models with guided tour of components....
Dav's Celestial Firmament
An iPhone augmented-reality app that lets you watch the Earth move through the solar system. It hangs an enormous lattice of markers in space — fixed to the distant stars, centered on the Sun — and draws the nodes currently above your horizon over your camera's live view of the sky. Earth spins and races along its orbit at 30 km/s, so the grid sweeps past you all day long.
LogRoller
Empower agents to check logs from test runs on remote devices. If you are running a test on a real iOS or VisionOS device, your agent can't easily see the logs. This gives them a way to see for themselves what went wrong. Not just for native apps, also works for web apps running on other devices.
Archivista
An Apple TV tvOS app that streams live concert recordings from the Internet Archive's Live Music Archive and audiobooks from LibriVox, with an curated visual montage (which can optionally be AI-driven) of copyright-honored images that matches what you're listening to.
Sarco+
Agent-driven MacOS, iOS and WatchOS app system that acts as a body weight training coach. Tracks every trainable muscle through progression ladders with exercise-time support features.
dBPlugged
An iPhone and Apple Watch sound level meter for people who wear earplugs. It estimates the noise level actually reaching your eardrum — after your earplugs' attenuation — and warns you when a sustained average crosses a threshold you set yourself.
Enabler
An iOS app for filtering a corpus of English words. I created this way back in summer of 2010 when the big feature was a fast word search written in C that ran super fast on the iPhone 4 or whatever it was back then. Updated now as a companion for playing Wordle or other word games.
CritterStack
A classic smart phone cat stacking app, except you can load any custom StackPack to stack whatever you want. Your pets, your friends, your friends' pets!
Stars and Moon Art Park
I maintain the members site for Stars and Moon Art Park, an oasis for the San Francisco Bay Area art scene in the Sacramento / San Joaquin River Delta.

Memberships

Long Now Foundation
Fostering long-term thinking in the framework of the next 10,000 years. Charter member.
Mechanics' Institute
Library, chess club, and cultural event space in San Francisco since 1854.
Stars and Moon Art Park
Delta river marina and art park with camping, maker space, and community arts events.
Gray Area
Antidisciplinary art-and-technology incubator, school, and venue in the Mission. Creative coding, electronic music, algorithmic art, experimental performances.
The Lab
Experimental art and performance space in San Francisco's Mission District.
The Observation Deck Arcade
A long lost arcade discovered in Secret Alley.
Raining Chainsaws
Perhaps the last remaining active underground warehouse arts space in San Francisco?
Dorkbot SF
People doing strange things with electricity. Meetups on creative electronics, sound art, and invented instruments since 2002.
Roxie Cinema
Nonprofit independent movie theater in the Mission, screening films since 1909.
Alamo Season Pass
Alamo Drafthouse membership. Repertory screenings, weird programming, and no talking during the movie.
⌂