cybersecurity → full-stack→ AI engineering
Lindsay Edwards
I learned how systems break and decay. Now I reanimate them into things that live, full-stack web apps and AI features, and write down what I learn on the way.
// the throughline
Defender’s eye, builder’s hands.
I spent my early career in cybersecurity, taking systems apart to understand how they fail. That instinct never left. Now I point it the other way: building full-stack and AI-powered products that hold up, and writing the lessons down as I go.
then
Breaking things to understand them.
DFIR, threat modelling, blue and red team notes. The decay, learned firsthand.
the archive →now
Building things that last.
Full-stack apps, AI features, real ventures. The reanimation, shipped.
the work →// selected writing
Lessons, as I learn them
- What row-level security won't protect you fromPostgres RLS is a lovely way to enforce tenant isolation in the database, and it has a few quiet ways of being completely bypassed. The ones that caught me.
- Multi-tenant isolation is a series of footgunsEvery tenant-scoped system I've worked on had the same class of bug: isolation that looks centralised and airtight, with a handful of quiet ways for one tenant's data to reach another.
- Make the rule a failing test: ratchets, tripwires, and a refactor that stayed boringYou can't fix every latent problem at once. But you can freeze how bad it is and forbid it from getting worse. On turning architecture rules and scary refactors into tests that fail loudly.
- Green tests, broken software: when the suite is lying to youA full green test run is not the same as working software. Two cases where every test passed and the feature was dead in production, and what the tests were actually failing to check.
Selected work
Things I’ve built
- active/TypeScript
This site (lindsayedwardsit.com)
My portfolio and writing home, rebuilt from scratch as a fast, static Astro site on Cloudflare.
- active/C#
ContentForge
A multi-tenant AI content platform covering the whole lifecycle, from first draft to publishing across 17 platforms, with the costs kept honest.
- active/C#
LifeOrchestrator
One platform for the whole mess of a life, money, health, meals, calendar and habits, with a creature companion keeping score.
- active/TypeScript
HermesHelm
A financial operating system for solo founders, the layer between your accounting software and your next capital decision.
The short version
I’m learning in public, come along.
This site is my open notebook: the projects I ship, the things that break, and the lessons I’d have loved to read when I started. No gatekeeping, no jargon for its own sake, just the honest path from breaking things to building them.