Woodblock · indigo and vermillion, gouged black line, paper grain
Action-adventure 2D samurai brawler, late-Edo woodblock.
BUILD 0001 / 2026.05 40.71N · 74.00W
est. 2005 Lab notebook for AI, attribution, and machine intelligence.
Writing, experiments, and field notes from Joel Citron — building enterprise AI systems by day, prototyping at the edge of the model after hours.
About
Started in 2005. Still building.
Began as a creative director in 2005, pivoted to development in 2008, and have spent the last decade-plus marrying the two — building enterprise attribution systems at AI Media Group, where I'm now CTIO.
The thesis hasn't changed: a design-trained engineer makes better technical decisions because they think about the human standing in front of the system, and a engineering-trained designer ships things the design-only crowd never finishes. acidlemon is where I write about both sides.
2022 — NOW
Chief Technology & Information Officer
AI Media Group
2018 — 2022
VP, Advertising Technologies
AI Media Group
2013 — 2018
Director of Advertising Technologies
AI Media Group
2008 — 2013
Web Developer
Transition · design → engineering
2005 — 2008
Creative Director
acidlemon (freelance)
DATA
Databricks · DBT · Fivetran · MySQL · Snowflake
PLATFORM
Azure · Node.js · Next.js · Astro · Matomo
LANG
Python · TypeScript · PHP · Laravel · SQL
AI / ML
Anthropic Claude · OpenAI · Ollama · LangChain · MCP
Generative AI Machine Learning Robotics Data Engineering Attribution Analytics Enterprise Architecture
Experiments
github.com/jjcitron →
// Titles 6 · All titles →
Arcade window · depth, horizon, one eye closed and a lean
3D head-tracked rail shooter. Monitor as a window.
Fighter cabinet · steel on sun-warmed sandstone, khanda against battle-axe
2.5D weapon fighter, twelve researched cultures, one blade each.
Cyber-industrial · cyan and magenta panel light over Doom brick
Fully rendered first-person shooter. Classic Doom WADs convert straight into it.
Hellfront dust · silhouette command readability
Hybrid small-unit tactics and FPS possession. Command outdoors, clear indoors, Human and Cyber-Demon campaigns.
Neon rail · grounded graybox catcher
Cyberpunk kart racer with stunts, a track editor, and a first campaign. Build a course, Test Race, then race it.
// Lab 4 experiments
Maze Game
Play ▸Three.js maze runner with post-processing shaders, outline pass, and effect composer.
THREE.JS WASD PLAYABLE
3D Maze Game
Play ▸First-person maze, simpler engine. Find the exit.
THREE.JS WASD PLAYABLE
Enhanced FPS
Play ▸Three.js first-person shooter prototype. Mouse + keyboard.
THREE.JS FPS PLAYABLE
Platformer
Play ▸Side-scrolling platformer, vanilla canvas. Arrow keys + space.
CANVAS ARROWS PLAYABLE
// Projects 4 repos
action_man
Open ↗Browser-based action prototyping playground.
home_hunter
Personal real-estate tracking + analysis tool for the NJ market.
joelcitron.com
Open ↗Operator-persona executive site — Astro + Tailwind, Metric Stage design system.
acidlemon.com
Open ↗This site — Calibrated Gantry design system, bento grid, dark mode.
Writing
All entries →
SEP 28, 2026
DevDay control-plane checklist
Pre-DevDay operator pin: agency, economics, contracts. Score the stage against your harness before you clap.
#agents#devday#control-plane#mcp#building
SEP 7, 2026
Cost-per-task beats benchmarks when fleets call tools
Frontier week: Astra vs Gemini 3.8 Flash cost gap, Muse Spark pitching fewer tool calls. Price-per-token lies under agentic load. Measure cost-per-completed-task against a pinned schema.
#agents#cost#tooling#building
SEP 2, 2026
The agent looped. The fighter shipped.
Clash of Steel Blades is a 2.5D Khanda vs Katana fighter in the browser. The first coding agent doom-looped on the build. Switching the worker finished it.
#games#ai#building#experiments
SEP 1, 2026
The agent did not get stupid. The schema moved.
When a tool schema drifts under a live agent — enums renamed, param types tightened — the agent looks broken. It is not. The contract broke. Pin versions. Fail closed.
#agents#tooling#contracts#building