patricktanna.com

Patrick Tanna

Building boutique AI systems for work, play, and discovery.

CNN → Sony Pictures → Nordstrom Rack | HauteLook → Central Group → Amazon → Honest Financial Technologies · and after dark, the lab

on the bench

01 [split keyboards · 3D configurator · 8 boards]

Split keyboard configurator

Eight split boards, part by part: cases in wood and metal, keycap sets, legends, per-key light.

02 [local AI companion · simulation]
[listening for “hey honey”]
brain

room › [silence]

honey ›

pipeline
  1. WAKE “hey honey” · own wake word 92% recall
  2. ENDPOINT VAD + semantic end-of-turn 0.60s
  3. HEAR streaming scout + verifier · EN · ไทย 0.18s
  4. ONLY YOU? voice match · optional 0.21s
  5. THINK · say conversation brain · on The Brain · + memory graph 1.31s first clause
  6. THINK · do 4B, grammar-locked · can’t invent a tool parallel
  7. GATE confirm · allowlist · audit · kill policy
  8. SPEAK local voice · a filler covers the wait 2.48s first audio
  9. FACE / ACT emotion + lip-sync · lights · TV v→v 5.29s

tail -f logs/actions.log[replayed evening · real medians · no mic, no model]

▍

[avatar · Bear Commander, a Live2D rig by @KenKenMo6 · from Fluffellow on Etsy ]

Honey

Wake word to voice to face, every action through a gate. On-device by default; cloud opt-in, PII scrubbed.

03 [thai swords · 3D configurator · client work]

A sword forge’s configurator

A real-time 3D configurator for a Thai sword forge: every blade, wrap and scabbard generated in code, the carry rope simulated, in English and ไทย.

04 [horology · 3-axis tourbillon · simulated]

A code-drawn study of the movement seen through the caseback: rose-gold plate with Côtes de Genève, a platinum seconds ring, a jewelled three-armed bridge, and three nested cages turning in eight steps a second around a balance beating at 4 Hz.

A watch that doesn't exist yet

42 mm · 4 Hz · eight days · constant force

05 [game · Ayutthaya, 1563 · EN / ไทย]
Wat Na Phra MenRoyal palaceWat Phra Si SanphetWat Phra RamMahathatRatchaburanaTrading waterfrontWat Phanan ChoengPortuguese settlementWichit's houseHantra · family homeNorthern river · Lopburi / Khlong MueangSouthern river toward the seaWestern river reachEastern channelscourse uncertainMakham Riang · candidate earlier edgeBueng Phra RamN

[Ayutthaya · 1563 · schematic, not to scale] ✦ wat · ◆ invented household · ··· chapter 1, by boat

Kirin of the Golden City

A story bible for a game: one family, one city, the first fall.

[sounding: 7 strata · − 72 m]

stratigraphic record

active layer Bangkok · 2024 – − 6 m

Still being deposited

Back in Bangkok, building credit products for Indonesia’s mass market — people holding their first card. I study spending habits the way I once studied shopping carts, except the win is different now: good credit habits taking root, limits earned rather than granted, and the quiet pride of watching your own financial health grow.

[archive: Honest Financial Technologies · 2024 –]

[archive: first-card credit products · Indonesian mass market]

[archive: this layer is still being deposited]

Some habits I coach. Some I keep.

stratum I Seattle · 2022 – 2023 − 12 m

Personalization at planetary scale

At Amazon I tuned personalization for hundreds of millions of people I would never meet. The machine learned tastes at a scale no single mind could hold — and some nights, walking home in the rain, I wondered what it would mean to point all of that at exactly one person.

[archive: Amazon · Senior PM · P3 ML personalization platform]

[archive: +18% Prime acquisition, Q3 2022 YoY]

The org chart said senior. The apartment said barely moved in.

stratum II Bangkok · 2019 – 2022 − 21 m

The city where both languages worked

Bangkok was a return, not an arrival — the language was already mine. I ran product for a retail empire in a city that never fully sleeps, and when the pandemic locked the doors, groceries went digital overnight and our systems carried four times the weight without breaking.

[archive: Central Group · Head of Product → VP of Product]

[archive: 4× online grocery surge, 2020 · held]

[archive: EN/TH bilingual]

A city that never fully sleeps will keep any vice you bring it company.

stratum III Los Angeles · 2011 – 2019 − 33 m

Teaching storefronts to read minds

In Los Angeles I learned that a storefront is a stage. Movie franchises first, then fashion — I taught search engines to guess what a stranger wanted before she finished typing it. One year they gave the company-wide customer-obsession award to exactly one person, and it was me.

[archive: Sony Pictures Interactive → Onestop → Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook]

[archive: Principal PM → Senior Manager, Search & Personalization]

[archive: Customer Obsessed Award, 2018 · sole company-wide recipient]

[archive: guest lecturer, UCLA Extension — agile product management]

I taught machines desire while practicing very little restraint of my own.

stratum IV Atlanta · 2003 – 2011 − 47 m

The basement of broadcast

Television was a river and we were the riverbed. Eight years at CNN — first keeping the machines alive, then explaining them to the business. I watched the world go from standard definition to high, one rack at a time, and learned that every pipeline is a promise someone has to keep at 3 a.m.

[archive: CNN · 2003–2011 · systems → business analysis]

[archive: SD → HD transition · render farms · media pipelines]

The machines were easier to keep alive than everything else I was supposed to.

stratum V Georgia Tech · 1999 – 2003 − 58 m

Machines first, then the business of machines

I learned the machines first and the business of machines second — computer engineering, then later an MBA to understand why good systems die in bad organizations. Both degrees from the same place. Some roots you keep.

[archive: B.S. Computer Engineering, Georgia Tech]

[archive: M.B.A., Scheller College of Business · marketing]

[archive: certified scrum master, 2013]

I learned systems fast. People took me twenty more years.

stratum VI Georgia · – 1999 − 72 m

Before the feed

In Georgia in the eighties, the feed was a food court. You showed up, you got seen, you learned what everyone was doing by walking a slow lap past the arcade. Presence was the only platform, and logging off meant going home for dinner. I have spent every year since trying to keep what mattered from that world while helping build the one that replaced it.

[archive: photographs in the vault begin 1998]

[archive: messages begin 2006]

[archive: everything earlier lives only in the first narrator]

Not everything from that world survived me. Some of it I let go dark on purpose.

the connective tissue

A map of disciplines and the projects that join them. Move between points with the arrow keys; press a point to hear what it touches, and press it again to let go.

[archive: 13 projects · 13 disciplines · traced on contact]

the civilization

Most of it never leaves the house.

The Tower

Twin-GPU generation rig — images, video, voices. Heavy work happens here, one heavy thing at a time.

The Brain

A laptop with the memory of a small datacenter. Hosts the large local minds.

The Keeper

Small, silent, always on. Serves the archive and keeps the promises.

The Vault

Twelve terabytes of everything — datasets, weights, twenty-eight years of photographs.

The Mesh

The invisible roads between them. Prompts and tokens travel; the weights stay home.

the underground sky

[archive: export 2026-07-28 · aggregates only · no one is named]

© 2026 Patrick Tanna · the room, the city and the cavern are drawn in code · served from my own hardware

stratum VII sealed − ? m

[archive: older layers detected · excavation pending]