Woodblock · indigo and vermillion, gouged black line, paper grain
Action-adventure 2D samurai brawler, late-Edo woodblock.
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 →
// Titles 8 · All titles →
Arcade window · depth, horizon, one eye closed and a lean
3D head-tracked rail shooter. Monitor as a window.
Fighter cabinet · steel on sun-warmed sandstone, khanda against battle-axe
2.5D weapon fighter, twelve researched cultures, one blade each.
Cyber-industrial · cyan and magenta panel light over Doom brick
Fully rendered first-person shooter. Classic Doom WADs convert straight into it.
Hellfront dust · silhouette command readability
Hybrid small-unit tactics and FPS possession. Command outdoors, clear indoors, Human and Cyber-Demon campaigns.
Neon rail · grounded graybox catcher
Cyberpunk kart racer with stunts, a track editor, and a first campaign. Build a course, Test Race, then race it.
Three.js · side-on stages · woodblock meets neon
3D side-scrolling beat 'em up. Sumi's samurai against enemies from Cyberhell, Clash and Space Runner 3D. Fully playable on a phone.
Neon back-street · 3D stage up top, DOM cards underneath
Card-tower roguelite deckbuilder. Three acts — Neon Underbelly, Chrome Spire, The Wound — end on the Cyber Kuro final boss. Endless Climb is unlimited seeded towers, each harder, with a replayable seed and your best tower saved on the device. Fully playable on a phone.
// Lab 4 experiments
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
action_man
Open ↗Browser-based action prototyping playground.
home_hunter
Personal real-estate tracking + analysis tool for the NJ market.
joelcitron.com
Open ↗Operator-persona executive site — Astro + Tailwind, Metric Stage design system.
acidlemon.com
Open ↗This site — Calibrated Gantry design system, bento grid, dark mode.
Writing
All entries →
NOV 2, 2026
Check both meters before the job runs
Lab note: a usage gate that routes agent jobs between model providers before a cap hits. Check the weekly and the 5-hour session usage, run only if both are at or under 90%, otherwise fall to the next provider, and fall to the next provider too when the check itself errors.
#ai agents#cost#rate limits#model routing#fallback#infrastructure#lab note
NOV 2, 2026
Diff the live ad every night
Lab note: the design for a nightly job that snapshots what an ad platform is actually serving, compares it with what was approved, and flags any change nobody on the team made. Written as the job I'd want, with the open problems.
#ai advertising#ad creative#monitoring#diff#audit log#meta#lab note
OCT 29, 2026
Five pins before an agentic measurement tool writes
Agentic measurement and ads agents (Lifesight, Snowflake AI Gateway for Advertising, Contentsquare's agent-traffic split) are arriving fast. Five pins before one gets to recommend or write a budget change: split humans from agents, own the events, check causality, human approval plus audit row, and no self-grading.
#ai agents#measurement#attribution#incrementality#agent governance#mcp#audit#lab note
OCT 22, 2026
Autoloop is not a control plane
Post-deploy self-tuning for AI agents (Kore.ai Autoloop, Google's agentic Gemini, RSA Agent ID) is real progress. A loop that rewrites a live agent still needs pinned contracts, identity and authority, revoke, shadow-before-write, and audit.
#ai agents#agent governance#control plane#agent identity#mcp#audit#lab note