{
  "current_focus": {
    "today": "Building agent evaluation framework for agentic workflow reliability scoring.\nComprehensive daemon update skill for multi-section publishing.\n",
    "this_week": [
      "Building agent evaluation framework with validator, reliability scoring, and CLI",
      "Unified personal email system with custom MCP servers",
      "BSides312 CFP submission approaching (Feb 28 deadline)"
    ],
    "last_updated": "2026-02-18"
  },
  "skills": {
    "professional": [
      {
        "domain": "Security Operations",
        "specifics": [
          "Vulnerability management",
          "SIEM administration and tuning",
          "Security automation",
          "Penetration testing"
        ],
        "proficiency": "expert"
      },
      {
        "domain": "Automation & Integration",
        "specifics": [
          "Python scripting",
          "API integration",
          "Workflow automation"
        ],
        "proficiency": "expert"
      },
      {
        "domain": "AI Infrastructure",
        "specifics": [
          "Claude Code automation",
          "MCP servers",
          "Agentic systems",
          "Local LLM deployment",
          "Self-improving AI loops"
        ],
        "proficiency": "expert"
      }
    ],
    "exploratory": [
      {
        "domain": "AI + Security Intersection",
        "specifics": [
          "LLM-assisted security operations",
          "Automated threat analysis",
          "AI-powered vulnerability triage"
        ],
        "context": "Exploring how AI can augment security work. Professional security background\nmeets personal AI experimentation.\n"
      },
      {
        "domain": "AI Production Hardening",
        "specifics": [
          "Evaluation harnesses and golden sets",
          "Failure mode taxonomy",
          "Pre-ship feedback loops",
          "Defining 'done' for agentic workflows"
        ],
        "context": "Level 4 of the AI Skill Tree - the missing piece for \"trusted overnight autonomy.\"\nStrong at exploration (Levels 1-2), building workflows (Level 3), building toward production hardening.\n"
      }
    ],
    "personal": [
      {
        "domain": "Sailing",
        "specifics": [
          "Dinghy cruising",
          "Keel boat cruising",
          "Small boat seamanship",
          "Navigation",
          "Offshore"
        ],
        "proficiency": "expert",
        "context": "Building toward offshore racing and expedition sailing"
      },
      {
        "domain": "Music",
        "specifics": [
          "Saxophone (jazz)",
          "Improvisation"
        ],
        "context": "Recovering from 8-year hiatus"
      },
      {
        "domain": "Craftsmanship",
        "specifics": [
          "Boat maintenance and restoration",
          "Physical making/building"
        ],
        "context": "Physical creation provides essential balance to digital work"
      }
    ]
  },
  "about": {
    "name": "A.J. Van Beest",
    "tagline": "Builder. Explorer. Improver of things.",
    "bio": "I'm someone who improves things—not out of perfectionism, but because\nrefinement is how I engage with the world. Whether sailing, cooking,\nplaying music, or building systems, I'm always asking: how can this be better?\n\nI value precision in language and beauty in expression. I'm drawn to harder\npaths because they're more interesting. I make decisions intuitively, then\nfind data to support what I already know.\n\nProfessionally, I work in security and automation. Personally, I'm a sailor,\na musician (sax), a father, a partner, and someone trying to balance\nholding the ground for my people while still finding adventure.\n",
    "certifications": [
      "CISSP",
      "GWAPT (GIAC Web Application Penetration Tester)",
      "GPEN (GIAC Penetration Tester)",
      "GSEC (GIAC Security Essentials)"
    ]
  },
  "looking_for": [
    {
      "type": "Kindred Spirits",
      "description": "People who can dive into serious intellectual exploration and then go play in the dirt together",
      "context": "Loyal connections with individuals traveling similar paths"
    },
    {
      "type": "Conference Speaking",
      "description": "Actively submitting to 2026 conferences on AI infrastructure and agentic security",
      "context": "Presented at DaemonCon (Jan 2026). Targeting BSides312, Unprompted, GrrCON, and national AI conferences"
    },
    {
      "type": "Collaboration",
      "description": "Others building personal AI infrastructure or daemon-like systems",
      "context": "Interested in connecting with the small community exploring these ideas"
    },
    {
      "type": "Sailing Community",
      "description": "Connections for Watertribe-style adventure sailing",
      "context": "Building toward Everglades Challenge 2028 and R2AK 2030"
    }
  ],
  "speaking": {
    "conferences": [
      {
        "event": "DaemonCon",
        "location": "DePaul University, Chicago",
        "date": "2026-01-23",
        "role": "Speaker",
        "talk_title": "Agentic Threat Intel: Building an AI-Powered Intelligence Pipeline",
        "presentation_url": "https://github.com/theaj42/presentations/tree/main/Agentic_Threat_Intel",
        "tags": [
          "ai",
          "security",
          "threat-intelligence",
          "agentic-systems"
        ],
        "status": "completed"
      }
    ],
    "upcoming": [
      {
        "event": "BSides Chicago 312",
        "status": "CFP pending",
        "target_date": "2026",
        "cfp_deadline": "2026-02-28"
      }
    ],
    "interests": [
      "AI infrastructure and agentic security",
      "Building production-ready AI systems",
      "Self-improving AI loops",
      "Privacy-first AI deployment"
    ]
  },
  "projects": [
    {
      "name": "Personal AI Infrastructure",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Privacy-first AI context system with self-contained agents and local memory",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "claude-code",
        "privacy",
        "automation"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Daemon",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "This personal API—machine-readable identity for the AI age",
      "tags": [
        "api",
        "mcp",
        "personal-data",
        "cloudflare"
      ],
      "url": "https://github.com/theaj42/daemon"
    },
    {
      "name": "Morning Pages Automation",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Handwritten journal to digital text pipeline using AI transcription",
      "tags": [
        "automation",
        "journaling",
        "ocr"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Merit Restoration",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Revitalizing my Drascombe Lugger for all-weather dinghy cruising",
      "tags": [
        "sailing",
        "boat",
        "craftsmanship"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Defining Done Framework",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Framework for specifying agentic workflow completion criteria",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "workflows",
        "evaluation",
        "production"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "AI Skill Tree",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "4-level maturity assessment for AI systems (Conditioning → Authority → Workflows → Compounding)",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "assessment",
        "production-readiness"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Personal Board of Directors",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Career governance system inspired by Nate B. Jones - quarterly audits, avoided decisions surfacing",
      "tags": [
        "career",
        "governance",
        "self-reflection"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Conference Speaking 2026",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Building speaker presence—researching conferences, developing talks, submitting CFPs",
      "tags": [
        "speaking",
        "conferences",
        "career",
        "ai",
        "security"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Agent Evaluation Framework",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Evaluation harness for agentic workflows: validator, reliability scoring, proof-of-work, CLI",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "evaluation",
        "reliability",
        "production"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Document Person Extractor",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Flask app with AI for extracting people from historical documents",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "genealogy",
        "ocr",
        "flask"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Daemon Watch",
      "status": "active",
      "description": "Daily monitoring of UL community daemons for inspiration and pattern discovery",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "community",
        "automation",
        "daemons"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Fast Start System",
      "status": "complete",
      "description": "Non-blocking session initialization with background context loading (<3 sec)",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "performance",
        "workflow"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Voice Interface",
      "status": "complete",
      "description": "Local text-to-speech with Kokoro/Piper for Claude Code voice output",
      "tags": [
        "voice",
        "tts",
        "local-first",
        "privacy"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Voice Capture Pipeline",
      "status": "complete",
      "description": "iOS Voice Memo → iCloud → whisper.cpp local transcription → Claude analysis",
      "tags": [
        "voice",
        "automation",
        "privacy",
        "local-first"
      ]
    },
    {
      "name": "Genealogy Transcription",
      "status": "complete",
      "description": "Transcribe and translate genealogical documents with AI",
      "tags": [
        "genealogy",
        "ocr",
        "family-history"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "interests": [
    {
      "topic": "Human-AI Collaboration",
      "why": "Pioneering partnership methodology, not just tool use",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "collaboration",
        "frontier"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Privacy-First Computing",
      "why": "Believe in local-first, user-controlled AI infrastructure",
      "tags": [
        "privacy",
        "local-first",
        "self-hosted"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Sailing & Adventure",
      "why": "Long-term dream: Watertribe Everglades Challenge and R2AK",
      "tags": [
        "sailing",
        "adventure",
        "outdoors"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Making & Building",
      "why": "Builder at heart—physical and digital projects. Refinement is engagement.",
      "tags": [
        "maker",
        "diy",
        "building"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Writing",
      "why": "Morning pages practice, thinking through writing, precision in language",
      "tags": [
        "writing",
        "journaling",
        "thinking"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Music",
      "why": "Jazz saxophone—recovering a dormant part of myself",
      "tags": [
        "music",
        "jazz",
        "creative"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Language & Expression",
      "why": "Precision matters. I want to communicate subtle shades of meaning.",
      "tags": [
        "language",
        "communication",
        "poetry"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Defining Done for AI",
      "why": "The bottleneck has moved from model capability to how we harness models",
      "tags": [
        "ai",
        "evaluation",
        "production"
      ]
    },
    {
      "topic": "Career Governance",
      "why": "Personal Board of Directors - forcing clarity on avoided decisions",
      "tags": [
        "career",
        "self-reflection",
        "governance"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "identity": {
    "core_statement": "I'm loyal and seek loyalty in return. I'm energized by groups but find my\ndeepest connections with individuals traveling similar paths—people who can\ndive into serious intellectual exploration and then go play in the dirt together.\n",
    "missions": [
      "Hold the ground for my people so they can pursue their dreams",
      "Engage fully with the natural world through adventure",
      "Build authentic, honest, joyful connections with family, friends, and community"
    ],
    "values": [
      "Social justice",
      "Equality",
      "Wilderness",
      "Environmentalism",
      "Artisanry",
      "Competence"
    ],
    "beliefs": [
      "People are more important than money, corporations, computers, pretty much everything else",
      "Sometimes the only way through is through—fear can be a marker of growth",
      "We define 'success' for ourselves",
      "It's okay to take a break. What's important is that I begin again",
      "Physical adventure is a gateway to deeper understanding of ourselves",
      "Personal AI systems should augment natural workflows, not replace them",
      "Done isn't just produced output—it's proved coverage and showed work"
    ]
  },
  "adventures": {
    "sailing": {
      "current_boat": "Merit (Drascombe Lugger)",
      "status": "Preparing for 2026 launch",
      "dreams": [
        {
          "goal": "Watertribe Everglades Challenge",
          "target": 2028
        },
        {
          "goal": "Race to Alaska (R2AK)",
          "target": 2030
        }
      ],
      "philosophy": "Sailing provides enforced presence—temporary relief from the optimization\nmindset. Solitude, physical reality, mastery pursuit, and enforced unplugging.\n"
    },
    "exploration": [
      "France—exploring places we might like to live",
      "Wilderness time (consistently needed, often deferred)",
      "Taking harder paths because they're more interesting"
    ],
    "music": {
      "instrument": "Saxophone (dormant 8+ years, recovering)",
      "status": "Goal: recover sax and start playing again"
    }
  },
  "connect": {
    "website": "https://ajvanbeest.com",
    "github": "https://github.com/theaj42",
    "linkedin": "https://linkedin.com/in/ajvanbeest",
    "email": "ajvanbeest@protonmail.com",
    "daemon": "https://daemon.ajvanbeest.com"
  },
  "mentions": [
    {
      "source": "tasks-ng INSPIRATION.md",
      "url": "https://github.com/0xsalt/tasks-ng/blob/main/docs/INSPIRATION.md",
      "quote": "My goal with that is to provide so much context to my robot that I can simply ask 'Given everything, what should I work on now?' ...and its answer will be right.",
      "date": "2026-01-10"
    }
  ],
  "recent_posts": [
    {
      "title": "Composable Security Investigations",
      "date": "2026-01-01",
      "url": "https://ajvanbeest.com/posts/2026-01-01_Composable-security-investigations",
      "summary": "How to build agentic security playbooks using composable, reusable steps—like security Legos."
    },
    {
      "title": "Building My Daemon",
      "date": "2025-12-01",
      "url": "https://ajvanbeest.com/posts/2025-12-01_Building-my-daemon",
      "summary": "The story of building a machine-readable identity API for the AI age, inspired by Daniel Miessler."
    }
  ],
  "media": {
    "currently_reading": [
      {
        "title": "[Add current book]",
        "author": "[Author]"
      }
    ],
    "recently_read": [],
    "currently_watching": [],
    "recently_watched": []
  },
  "_meta": {
    "tier": "public",
    "generated": "2026-09-19T10:38:11.952Z"
  }
}