action_man
Open ↗Browser-based action prototyping playground.
BUILD 0001 / 2026.05 40.71N · 74.00W
est. 2005 Lab notebook for AI, attribution, and machine intelligence.
Writing, experiments, and field notes from Joel Citron — building enterprise AI systems by day, prototyping at the edge of the model after hours.
About
Started in 2005. Still building.
Began as a creative director in 2005, pivoted to development in 2008, and have spent the last decade-plus marrying the two — building enterprise attribution systems at AI Media Group, where I'm now CTIO.
The thesis hasn't changed: a design-trained engineer makes better technical decisions because they think about the human standing in front of the system, and a engineering-trained designer ships things the design-only crowd never finishes. acidlemon is where I write about both sides.
2022 — NOW
Chief Technology & Information Officer
AI Media Group
2018 — 2022
VP, Advertising Technologies
AI Media Group
2013 — 2018
Director of Advertising Technologies
AI Media Group
2008 — 2013
Web Developer
Transition · design → engineering
2005 — 2008
Creative Director
acidlemon (freelance)
DATA
Databricks · DBT · Fivetran · MySQL · Snowflake
PLATFORM
Azure · Node.js · Next.js · Astro · Matomo
LANG
Python · TypeScript · PHP · Laravel · SQL
AI / ML
Anthropic Claude · OpenAI · Ollama · LangChain · MCP
Generative AI Machine Learning Robotics Data Engineering Attribution Analytics Enterprise Architecture
Experiments
github.com/jjcitron →
// Playable 6 games
Sumi — Ink and Steel
Play ▸2D samurai brawler in a late-Edo bloody-woodblock style. Every sprite generated through a local ComfyUI + Flux art pipeline. Proof of concept.
CANVAS COMFYUI ART PLAYABLE
3D Harrier
Play ▸Head-tracked rail shooter, a Space Harrier homage. The webcam re-projects the scene with off-axis projection, turning your monitor into a window. Original geometry and audio.
THREE.JS HEAD-TRACKED PLAYABLE
Maze Game
Play ▸Three.js maze runner with post-processing shaders, outline pass, and effect composer.
THREE.JS WASD PLAYABLE
3D Maze Game
Play ▸First-person maze, simpler engine. Find the exit.
THREE.JS WASD PLAYABLE
Enhanced FPS
Play ▸Three.js first-person shooter prototype. Mouse + keyboard.
THREE.JS FPS PLAYABLE
Platformer
Play ▸Side-scrolling platformer, vanilla canvas. Arrow keys + space.
CANVAS ARROWS PLAYABLE
// Projects 4 repos
Writing
All entries →
JUN 13, 2026
Two games, built to learn
A woodblock samurai brawler and a head-tracked rail shooter, both built as proof of concepts. The point wasn't the games. It was being a beginner again, where the agent can't fake it.
#games#ai#building#experiments
JUN 12, 2026
Your agent's bill isn't the model. It's the query path.
The 2026 AI cost reckoning trains your attention on the token meter. When I traced where an agent's spend actually went, the model was the easy part. The leak was the warehouse the agent queries.
#agents#ai#infrastructure#building
MAY 24, 2026
The agent control plane is the actual fight
Karpathy joined Anthropic to run autoresearch at frontier scale. The same closed loop is the operator-tier curriculum now, one tier down.
#agents#ai#patterns#building
MAY 15, 2026
Notes on how observer-agents fail
Three failure modes in agents that synthesize work you own, and why the third one breaks the whole review chain.
#agents#ai#patterns#building