About

My name is Sam and I have lots of opinions. Also, zero ability to write code from scratch. That last part would have been a blocker in the past. With artificial intelligence, the game changed.

I work with Claude — Anthropic's AI — to plan, build, and ship everything under The Scarlet Coder name. Not as a shortcut, but as a genuine collaboration. I bring the ideas, the values, the product instincts, and the stubbornness. Claude brings the technical execution and, occasionally, the kind of honest feedback that changes the direction of a project (for the better). I can read code well enough to follow along and catch problems, but I couldn't build any of this without it. That's just the truth, not fluff.

It started with a real problem: family and friends were job hunting into a wall — AI-generated job descriptions, AI-screened applications, and the expectation that every résumé be custom-tailored to every listing. I sat down with Claude and started planning a solution. JobHunt was the result: a local-first desktop app with native AI built in, designed to help individuals track applications, tailor résumés, and cut through the noise.

I cared a lot about building it ethically. The AI-powered résumé tailoring worked from a synonym list the user built themselves — Claude could rearrange and reframe, but it couldn't assert anything that wasn't already true about your experience. The same thinking went into every feature. No data left the device that wasn't user-prompted. No claims were made on your behalf that you hadn't explicitly authored.

Eventually I archived it. That decision also came out of a conversation with Claude. As I was thinking about formalizing The Scarlet Coder, Claude — not a lawyer, as it is very fond of reminding me — walked through some real concerns: the liability of processing people's personal information, and the risk that the automated application features could lead users to unknowingly violate the Terms of Service of job platforms. The concerns were legitimate. I archived JobHunt rather than ship something that could create problems for the people it was supposed to help. The source is still on GitHub if you want to see it — I think it's genuinely good work.

After that, I moved to games. Smaller surface area, lower stakes, and honestly more fun. The first project is personal: I wanted a clean, ad-free Sudoku app with the settings I actually needed, without handing over my data to someone who has absolutely no reason to need it. (Why would a puzzle game need my location?) So I built one with Claude. That's Just Sudoku.

The plan is to keep going — fun mobile puzzle games with nothing inside trying to extract value from the person playing. No ads, no tracking, no locked features, no manipulation, no hidden traps. At this point I have more fun building with Claude than I do playing the games, but I think that shows in the product.

The name is a nod to Nathaniel Hawthorne. The Scarlet Letter is one of my favorite books, and the defiance in it felt right. Hester Prynne takes the mark meant to shame her and eventually makes it her own. That's the energy here: refusing to play by the standard rules and wearing it openly.

The raven awaits...
Sam
The Scarlet Coder