Hey there, I’m Brooke, a composer-turned-programmer living in beautiful, rainy Vancouver. You can find me most places online as @expede. I’m currently a senior researcher at Ink & Switch where I work on securing and syncing CRDTs (e.g. Keyhive and Subduction). I’m also the editor of the UCAN core specs. Previously I ran Fission Codes, and before that several other startups. I give a fair number of talks and keynotes.
This is my digital garden — notes in various stages of completeness published in the spirit of working in the open. Some are polished essays, some are rough working notes, and some are mere stubs. That’s by design.
What I Work On
My research these days centres on maturing local-first software — the hard problems around sync, security, and access control that come up when you remove the central server.
| Project | What it is |
|---|---|
| Keyhive | Authorisation for local-first systems like Automerge |
| Subduction | Peer-to-peer sync protocol for CRDTs |
| UCAN | Decentralised auth specs (I’m the editor) |
Where to Start
Popular entry points
- Brooke’s Talks — 80+ notes pages about my talks spanning functional programming, decentralised systems, Wasm, and local-first
- Paper summaries — Notes on papers I’ve read, from Keep CALM and CRDT On to Chaum’s blind signatures
- Notes on Writing Wasm — A practical guide to Rust + Wasm patterns with wasm-bindgen
Topics You’ll Find Here
| Area | What’s in it |
|---|---|
| Local-first / CRDTs | Sync protocols, Automerge, conflict resolution, CALM |
| Cryptography & auth | Keyhive, UCAN, WNFS, capability security |
| Wasm | Practical patterns, wasm-bindgen, wasm_refgen |
| Programming languages | Haskell, Rust, Elixir, type theory, Witchcraft |
| Distributed systems | Consensus, cloud programming, replication |
| Conferences | Notes from many events I’ve attended or spoken at |
About This Site
Built with Quartz on top of markdown files in the style of an Obsidian vault (though I do everything in emacs instead of Obsidian). Everything is heavily cross-linked — the graph view and backlinks are your friends here. If you prefer to browse by topic, the explorer sidebar and search both work well.