Derek Herman

01 Projects

Featured // Open Source

Walter

Engineering discipline for AI coding agents. Walter provides 1 skill, 9 commands, 6 specialized agents, and the thinking patterns that separate principal engineers from code generators. No half measures.

Challenges vague requirements — no formula, no cook
Right-sizes rigor to the problem scale
Systematic root cause analysis, not symptom patching
Session continuity with context handoff across LLM restarts
6 specialized agents for research, security, debugging, strategy, architecture, product

Works with

Open SourceAI ToolingMulti-ProviderApache 2.0

// Slash Commands

Nine commands. One discipline. The thinking patterns that separate principal engineers from autocomplete.

/formulaScope the problem, challenge assumptions, define success
/prepBreak down the formula into executable work items
/cookBuild with discipline — TDD, atomic commits, 99.1% pure
/purityVerify the work matches the intent, not just the tests
/stashSeal session context for the next agent
/probeBounded research before committing to a direction
/traceSystematic root cause analysis — find where and why
/ventContain damage, recover, postmortem, prevent recurrence
/adaptHandle scope changes without blowing up the lab

11 reference files4 providerswalter.cooking GitHub

02 Career

Started as a founder, grew into senior engineering, then scaled to CTO twice. 20 years of building teams, shipping products, and solving problems across every stage of company growth.

Currently // Independent

Principal Agentic Engineer

Dec 2024 – Present · Portland, OR

Building production AI infrastructure and open-source developer tooling. MCP servers, GPU compute platforms, real-time multimodal pipelines, and Walter — an engineering discipline framework for AI coding agents like Claude which support skills and slash commands.

’23 – ’25

Principal Eng · 10up

ETL pipelines + Power BI for Microsoft via Lens Scholarly API. Real-time RSS ingestion for publishing networks.

’22 – ’23

CTO · Yoast

Generative AI strategy for SEO platform. Restructured R&D for delivery velocity.

’18 – ’22

CTO · XWP

20→130+ engineers · 650% revenue · 500% delivery capacity · WordPress VIP

’15 – ’18

Architect · XWP

Platform architecture, CI/CD, infrastructure modernization

’08 – ’15

Sr. Engineer · Envato

Tuts+ network, OptionTree OSS, performance optimization

’06 – ’15

Founder · Valen Designs

Boutique web agency · FreshBooks, BuySellAds clients

03 Stack

Not just familiar — production-proven across every layer. I’ve shipped databases, GPU pipelines, real-time systems, component libraries, and everything in between for 20 years. From enterprise publishers to bootstrapped founders, the craft stays the same.

Languages

TypeScriptPythonGoJavaScriptPHPSQLCypherBash

AI / ML

MCPAgent OrchestrationRAGLangChainLangGraphEmbeddingsVector SearchLiveKitClaude APIn8n

Backend & Realtime

Node.jsGraphQLREST APIsWebSocketsWebRTCPub/SubETL PipelinesOAuth2 / JWT

Infrastructure

GCPAWSTerraformDockerCUDAGitHub ActionsLinuxNginxObservability

Data

PostgreSQLMySQLRedisSQLiteClickHouseNeo4jFirestore

Frontend

ReactNext.jsWordPressGutenbergTailwindDesign Systemsa11yFigmaPWAs

Flexibility

Stacks change, every few years the right answer is different. What stays constant is knowing how to evaluate trade-offs and pick the tool that fits the problem.

GCP Cloud Architect (certified)

Co-authored web.dev/media (Google)

Scaled teams 20 → 130+ (CTO)

40+ countries led across

04 Consulting

I work with founders and engineering teams who need senior technical depth — whether that’s building production AI systems, setting technical direction, or making sure the next big investment is the right one.

~/consulting

$ derek engage --mode=project

↳ define the problem, not the solution

↳ architect system design, tech choices, tradeoffs

↳ build ship incrementally, demo weekly

↳ deploy production-ready, monitored, documented

✓ your system, your team owns it

$

05 Writing

AI Infrastructure

Demystifying Claude Code: Beyond the Chat Interface

CLAUDE.md, skills, MCP servers, subagents, hooks, and agent teams — how the pieces actually work, when to use each one, and the patterns that emerge when they compose.

Claude CodeAIDeveloper ToolsMCP

Feb 202612 min read

Abstract visualization of team growth and organizational scaling

Engineering Leadership

What I Learned Scaling a Team from 20 to 130 Engineers

From negative $50K a month to 130 engineers across 40 countries during a pandemic. The strategy that worked, the breaking points, and what happened after I left.

LeadershipEngineering ManagementScaling

Jan 202612 min read

View all posts

Let’s Build.

Hard problems. Zero to production. No half measures.

Trusted by:GoogleMicrosoftTwitchRolling StoneNews CorpUnsplashGoDaddy

01 Projects

Walter

02 Career

Principal Agentic Engineer

03 Stack

04 Consulting

AI Systems

Fractional CTO

Technical Discovery

05 Writing

Demystifying Claude Code: Beyond the Chat Interface

What I Learned Scaling a Team from 20 to 130 Engineers

Get in touch

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