slabgorb.com
the home page of keith avery :: engineer & artist
Keith Avery
Senior Engineer
Engineering Manager
AI Systems Architect
Hi, I'm Keith. I build software, and I build the teams that build software.
For twenty-five years I've shipped products, led engineering orgs, and built the systems other people rely on. These days I architect multi-agent AI — orchestration frameworks that let engineers move at a pace that used to be impossible. Before that I rebuilt broken engineering orgs, ran remote teams before it was cool, and carried products through acquisition.
I'm known for three things: rebuilding teams that were written off, shipping under pressure, and building systems that earn trust. I'm looking for my next hard problem — staff / principal engineering, engineering leadership, or applied-AI architecture.
Senior Engineer, SSI People
Critical-infrastructure consultancy — power, water, oil & gas, government.
- Built the firm's agentic coding infrastructure on Claude Code and MCP for engineering teams.
- Created Pennyfarthing (v13+): 11 agents, 11 BikeLane workflows, 38 slash commands, per-agent sidecar memory.
- Dogfooded it to deliver 4,468 commits in 12 weeks — roughly 20× typical velocity.
- Engineered the Prime Context System for consistent agent behavior across display modes.
- Built the Frame dashboard (FastAPI / uvicorn): 15 real-time panels, browser GUI + terminal TUI.
Engineering Manager
Tax-compliance startup, acquired by a global mobility platform.
- Rebuilt a gutted engineering team and recreated product & engineering processes from scratch.
- Ran fully-remote teams from 2017 — became the company's COVID-era remote-work model.
- Upskilled the team in Golang; guided them through acquisition and the strategic pivot.
Engineering Manager · NYC
Real-estate technology startup.
- Launched a Swift iOS app to the App Store; real-time charting with D3 & Elasticsearch.
- Wrote a custom RETS server in Go and stood up the AWS infrastructure.
Director of Technology · Washington DC
Low-cost higher-education publishing pioneer.
- Promoted from lead developer to Director; led a Drupal-to-Rails migration and the full dev team.
- Built an HTML5 WYSIWYG textbook editor; launched an adaptive-learning platform with IBM Watson.
·· Previously ··
// an AI dungeon master
A Claude-powered narrator engine that runs tabletop RPGs in any genre — with real-time image generation, adaptive music, and multiplayer. My after-hours obsession, built across a five-repo architecture.
// agent orchestration framework
A Claude Code framework that turns a team of specialized AI agents into a coordinated engineering crew. I built it, then used it to build everything else — at roughly 20× typical velocity.
// a self-hosted game plugin host
A plugin host for two-player turn-based games, running on a private Tailscale network for a curated roster of friends and family. Adding a new game is one folder and one registry line — seven ship today, several playable against AI opponents: Words, Rummikub, Cribbage, Backgammon, Buraco, Sorry, and Risk.
// also in the kit
RubyPHPMySQLElasticsearchAWSMCPFastAPID3SwiftRails
Building multi-agent AI orchestration. Painting the DC Metro, one station at a time.
// looking forStaff / principal eng · eng leadership · applied-AI architecture.
I program for a living — but I've always painted. Under the name Slabgorb I make digital paintings: the dogs of my life, every station on the DC Metro, a small museum of shoes, and homages to the music videos I grew up on. Click any piece to open it.