New site, same idea: Copy Josh
Why I built a personal site that reads like a field notebook — and what "Copy Josh" actually means.
I’ve been meaning to build this site for years. Classic engineer move: I’ll ship a dozen apps for other people and leave my own corner of the internet a parking lot. So here it is — a real home for the work, the write-ups, and the running list of things I’m tinkering with.
I wanted it to feel like what it actually is: a working notebook. Not a portfolio that’s trying to sell you, not a wall of badges. Just a generous text column on paper-colored canvas, one warm Cincinnati-brick accent, and a monospace voice handling all the dates and tags like an engineer set the whole thing by hand. Because one did.
What “Copy Josh” means
The name is a bit of a joke and also completely sincere.
Here’s the sincere part. I think the best way to get good at building is to build in the open — to show the messy middle, not just the launch tweet. When you do that, two things happen. You learn faster, because writing it down forces you to actually understand it. And other people get to skip the part where they bang their head against the same wall you already cleared.
So “Copy Josh” is the invitation. If a project here is useful, take it. If a write-up saves you an afternoon, that’s the win — you don’t owe me anything for it. I’d genuinely rather you copy the thing that works than admire it from a distance. That’s the loop I’m trying to run: invest in yourself, ship the work, share what you learned, repeat. The world gets a little better every time someone does that, and I’d like to be one of the people doing it out loud.
What’s actually here
The projects section is the real list, and most of them are live right now. A quick tour:
- MidRally turns the far-flung crews you met online into a real plan to meet up in person — one place, one day.
- StreamLevels lets co-streamers compare mic levels in a shared lobby before going live — no audio leaves your machine, just the numbers.
- Drive Smart Academy is AI-powered driver’s ed with a parent dashboard, in early access for Ohio.
- Vibebox is a tiny kit of scripts and prompts that stands up a hardened, AI-ready VPS in minutes, for ten bucks.
A couple are quieter — an invite-only club, a consulting site, one experiment that’s parked while I figure out what it wants to be. I’m leaving the parked one on the list on purpose. Building in public means showing the ones that didn’t take off too.
What the blog will be
Short, honest field notes. How I built something, where I got stuck, what I’d do differently, the occasional sharp opinion. I spend my days at Cloverleaf working on AI coaching, so expect some of that to leak in — what’s actually working with these tools, what’s hype, and the boring infrastructure stuff nobody writes down.
No newsletter funnel, no growth hacks. Just the log.
If you build something, come tell me on X — especially if you copied something from here. That’s the highest compliment this site can get.
Now copy Josh.