Jason Shen

In trading infrastructure, a request, a record and what actually happened can be three different things. An order can fill before the internal books learn about it. Keeping those distinctions clear is part of the work: what does the system know, what evidence supports it, and what happens when the records disagree?

I like to get the question clear before building around it. Before adding an abstraction or another check, I want to know what problem it resolves and how the result can be examined. I prefer starting with a small, usable piece of the real problem and letting that encounter shape the next step.

That interest also runs through Battuta, the command-line MIDI editor I am building for working on music with an AI agent. The agent reads and changes the file; I listen and decide whether to keep the change. A precise account of what changed is useful, but the musical decision still needs a listener.

Withmere brings another question into that work: how can an AI environment stay useful across everyday conversations, projects and time away? I am building and using it privately, connecting agents to project workspaces, memory and scheduled work through Discord and Telegram. Its development gives me concrete cases in which to examine what the system should retain, what it may do and what remains mine to decide.

In one recent Note, I had called MIDI’s default time signature a guess. The format already supplied a valid answer; my editor required it to be written explicitly. Revisiting the specification meant explaining what that extra requirement bought and what it made harder. The stricter rule needed a reason of its own.

Writing gives me room to examine a decision that way, including the assumptions I brought to it. I want the steps to be clear enough that another person can point to the one they disagree with. Over time, the entries also keep a record of which questions I return to and where my answers have changed.

I read literature and history, especially stories about individual lives caught up in political ideas and larger events. Japanese literature, war narratives and political philosophy are recurring interests.

I am drawn to the kind of city where mountains, water and dense streets sit close together. Hong Kong has that combination of high-rises and open landscape that I like.

I follow Arsenal, occasionally at the expense of a sensible bedtime.

Eigenstate is the physicist’s word for a state that, when measured, returns itself. Eigen is German for one’s own. One word does both jobs here: this place is my own, and what you find in it should not depend on who is looking.