Client build · Live
mostly mellow
A private matcha and espresso café in New York. Brand site, story and experience pages, an inquiry flow, and a members-only page. Hand-built, no template.
AstroGSAPTypeScript
I design and buildwebsites and software.
You describe the business, I build the real thing — hand-built, end to end, live from the first week. The rest of my week goes to teaching how I actually use Claude, free on YouTube. Not just for engineers.
Everything I’ve shipped,
in one place.
Client sites, a macOS app, and the projects I built to learn the stack. Every link goes to the real running thing, and to the source wherever the repo is public.
Count Tongula's Eye Break
A Dracula-themed 20-20-20 app for macOS. Every 20 minutes the Count reminds you to look 20 feet away for 20 seconds. Lives in the menu bar. Free.
SwiftAppKitmacOS
count tongula's castle
The original cut of this site: gothic, moonlit, a cursor-parallax starfield and a moon that arcs as you scroll. Still running behind a door on the current one.
Next.jsCanvasSVG Filters
alextong.me
This site. Next.js and Tailwind, rebuilt in the open more times than I would like to admit. Count Tongula still runs the night wing.
ReactNext.jsTailwind CSSTypeScript
Three ways to hire me.
Build it for me
A website or an app, built for you.
Design and engineering, one person, end to end. Free scoping call, flat quote before any work starts.
More →Teach meCoaching, one on one.
Claude coaching for engineers and non-engineers, interview prep, and resume review. Priced per session.
More →For engineering teamsFixed-scope engagements.
For orgs of roughly 20 to 500 engineers: find where the AI-coding spend leaks and prove the fix.
More →Clients, teams, and
the engineers I coached.
Three different kinds of work, kept separate on purpose. Someone paying me to build a site is not the same as a company I was on staff at, and neither is the same as an hour a week with one engineer.
Clients
Hired me to design and build it.
- Mostly Mellow 2026
A private matcha and espresso café in New York. Brand site, story and experience pages, an inquiry flow, and a members-only page.
In-house
On staff, not on contract. Colleagues, not clients.
- The New York Times2023–26
Paywalls and registration walls: deciding when to stop a reader and what they see when we do. Later, the Claude Code rollout — workshops, a talk at the internal engineering conference, and shipped plugins.
- Amazon2021–23
Two years of scale, and what production actually costs.
Coached 1:1
The two who put their names to it:
- McLean CozineInterSystems
Data structures and algorithms, one-to-one, through an interview loop.
- Victoria DelgadoAccenture
Data structures and algorithms, one-to-one, through an interview loop.
“One of the key technical drivers behind our organization's adoption of AI-assisted engineering practices.”
The record
Honest numbers, not vendor numbers.
These are the numbers I can point at, from work I actually did. Small numbers I can prove beat big numbers I can’t.
track recordverified
$ receipts --verified
engineers taught500+
code reviews given479
marketplace PRs shipped61
netall verifiable →
// small numbers I can prove
Taught in the open · YouTube + The AI KitchenI show the parts
I show the parts
that break.
Most people film the demo that worked on the third try, which is the least useful version of it. So on YouTube you get the run that failed and the reason it failed — and the finished artifact from each video lands in The AI Kitchen, my community: the demo repo, the template, the config you’d otherwise pause the video and retype.
Two shorts are up: making Claude vote against itself with three independent agents, and why you can’t be scared of production. That’s the whole catalogue. I’d rather say that than dress up two videos as a library. Long-form starts now, with a CLAUDE.md that actually works.
It’s new and it’s small. That’s the honest pitch, you’re early.
In the classroom today
- A skill that audits your CLAUDE.md, scores it, and tells you which lines to cut.
- A script that puts cost and context in your status line.
Not an engineers-only room. If you use Claude for writing, research, or planning a business, the same thinking applies.
Tell me what you need built.
A site for your business, an application, an automation — describe it in plain words and I’ll come back with how I’d build it and what it would cost. The scoping call is free, and the quote is flat: you know the number before any work starts.
Not here to hire? Join The AI Kitchen and tell me the one thing about Claude that keeps annoying you — that genuinely decides what I film next.
alextongme@gmail.com→I reply within one business day