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Jackson in a cap and sunglasses beside prayer flags on Nangkartshang Peak in the Khumbu, Nepal, snow peaks behind

Student x builder x
IRB crew x mountains

Khumbu, Nepal · 5,083 m

Build x surf x hike

I'm Jackson. High-school student in Newcastle, NSW. Most of my time goes into projects, the water, or walking somewhere.

I run a small homelab and spend a lot of time on AI, networking and self-hosting. Most of what I build is on GitHub, usually rough, sometimes useful.

Home

  • Newcastle, NSW
  • Wherever school's out
  • 9 countries so far

On weekends through summer I'm on IRB crew and patrol at Merewether SLSC, and the homelab keeps running in the background.

When school's out I'm normally out hiking or travelling. Most recently that was the Khumbu in Nepal, up to Kala Patthar at 5,650 m. The photo up top is from that trip.

AI &
homelab

  • Running Proxmox at home
  • Self-hosting a few services with Docker
  • Tinkering with LLMs, networking and AI
github.com/JacksonYowe

Newcastle / at home

Homelab

Surf
lifesaving

  • Patrolling member, weekends through summer
  • IRB crew, Inflatable Rescue Boat operations
  • IRB racing

Merewether SLSC / each summer

Patrol · IRB

Altitude

When school's out I'm usually walking uphill somewhere. These are the high points so far. The top of the line is Kala Patthar, 5,650 m, above Everest Base Camp.

  1. Yosemite1,622 mCalifornia, USA
  2. Mt Kosciuszko2,228 mAustralia's highest peak
  3. Cerro Chirripó3,820 mCosta Rica's highest peak
  4. Everest Base Camp5,364 mKhumbu, Nepal
  5. Kala Patthar5,650 mKhumbu, Nepal · highest so far

Things I've Built

  1. OSX Paint A simple drawing app for quick sketches on the Mac, with the tools of MS Paint in an Apple-style interface and updates that install themselves. No AI. Free and open source. Not affiliated with Microsoft or Apple. macOS / Swift / GPLv3
  2. Tower Designer Mac app that designs lightweight balsa towers for load-test challenges. It predicts strength with a finite-element model and an optimiser, then exports 3D-printable assembly jigs, an Onshape model and a step-by-step build guide. macOS / Python / FEA
  3. Aura Visualiser Real-time music visualiser for macOS. Eight visual modes built from each Spotify song's album cover, timed lyrics in six styles, and pulses locked to the beat. macOS / Swift + Metal / Spotify
  4. Timbre System-wide 31-band EQ for macOS that switches presets to match what's playing on Spotify, with custom IEM correction. Built on SystemEQ for Mac. macOS / Swift / Audio
  5. PrivateGram Privacy-first Instagram client for iPhone and Mac: tracker blocking, sealed storage and an app-style interface. Not affiliated with Meta. iOS / macOS / Privacy
  6. Facial Anthropomorphic Assessor Webcam-based tool that measures facial anthropomorphics and exports the results as a PDF report. Webcam / PDF / Web
  7. Compound Period Mass Calculator Compound period mass calculator, shipped as a macOS app and a Raycast extension. macOS / Raycast / Utility
  8. Minimalist Wallpaper Generator Web tool for generating clean, minimal wallpapers from a small set of inputs. Web / Generative / Design

Everything else lives on GitHub. Usually rough, sometimes useful.

AI stack

I work as the director. I describe what I want in plain English, Claude writes and tests the code, and I steer: what it should do, how it should look, what to cut. Everything on my GitHub was made this way, including this website.

  1. Me

    Ideas, taste, decisions

    I decide what gets built and when it's good enough. Claude works on its own and only stops to ask before anything permanent or anything involving money.

  2. Claude

    Claude Code, in the Claude desktop app and the terminal

    My main builder since February 2026, mostly on Claude Opus 5 and 5.5, with Sonnet and Haiku for lighter jobs. Since June that's 57 sessions over 38 days.

  3. Hands

    Terminal, a built-in browser, Playwright, the iOS Simulator, computer control

    Claude runs what it writes, opens it in a real browser or simulator, clicks through it and fixes what breaks before I see it.

  4. Connectors

    MCP servers for my Obsidian vault, Chrome, files, AppleScript, PDFs, Affinity and ReactBits

    They let Claude work in the apps I actually use. I made the Obsidian one myself.

  5. Skills

    65 skills, 34 commands, 4 custom agents

    Packaged know-how that Claude loads when a job needs it: design and animation (Impeccable, GSAP, Apple's design guidelines), careful coding (safe refactors, verify before stopping), and research and second-brain routines.

  6. Memory

    Memory notes, plus Skynet, my Obsidian vault

    Skynet is my private second brain. Raw sources like PDFs, articles and notes go into raw/ and stay untouched. Claude writes linked notes from them into wiki/, with an index to find things and lint checks for missing summaries, broken links, stale pages and unprocessed sources. I use it for HSC study and my technical projects, and it syncs across my machines. Every session starts by loading the vault's briefing.

  7. Capri

    OpenClaw, running on my i9lab homelab machine

    Capri is my personal AI assistant, with a personality inspired by Capri from Cyberpunk: Edgerunners 2. It connects Skynet, my homelab and my day-to-day admin, and can research, monitor, plan and draft. It never sends messages, submits applications, spends money or makes important system changes without my approval.

  8. Local models

    Ollama and LM Studio: Llama 3.1 8B, Qwen3 Coder 30B, Gemma 4, DeepSeek R1

    They run on my MacBook Pro (M4, 24 GB) for anything private or offline. My private notes never go to a cloud model.

Also on the Mac: ChatGPT, Codex, Gemini CLI and Google Antigravity. A menu-bar widget and cctop keep track of how much I use Claude.

How a build goes

  1. Describe

    I explain the idea in plain English, often with a reference site or a photo.

  2. Build

    Claude plans it, writes the code, and asks me only what it can't work out.

  3. Test

    It runs the result in a real browser, simulator or terminal and fixes what breaks.

  4. Steer

    I look at it and decide what to keep, change or cut.

  5. Ship

    It pushes to GitHub, the app or site updates, and the notes go into my vault.

Where I've been

Nine countries so far. Pick one to see where I went.

Australia28 places

  • Newcastle
  • Sydney
  • Coffs Harbour
  • Nelson Bay
  • Mt Kosciuszko
  • Orange
  • Bathurst
  • Parkes
  • Dubbo
  • Holbrook
  • Ballarat
  • Bendigo
  • Melbourne
  • Adelaide
  • Barossa Valley
  • Port Augusta
  • Coober Pedy
  • Cook (ghost town)
  • Alice Springs
  • Katherine
  • Darwin
  • Cairns
  • Perth
  • Kalgoorlie
  • Leonora
  • Hobart
  • Launceston
  • Devonport

New Zealand4 places

  • Auckland
  • Taupō Bay
  • Rotorua
  • Taupō

Fiji1 place

  • Viti Levu

Indonesia1 place

  • Bali

India5 places

  • Delhi
  • Agra
  • Fatehpur Sikri
  • Jaipur
  • Lotwara

Nepal4 places

  • Pangboche
  • Nangkartshang Peak
  • Everest Base Camp (5,364 m)
  • Kala Patthar (5,650 m)

USA5 places

  • San Francisco
  • Yosemite
  • Los Angeles
  • New York
  • Boston

Costa Rica4 places

  • San José
  • Cerro Chirripó
  • Drake's Bay
  • Corcovado

Peru3 places

  • Lima
  • Cusco
  • Machu Picchu
jackson@yowe.me
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