Counterfact
An open-source API simulation framework for realistic OpenAPI mock servers—already published and out in the world.
Patrick McElhaney
Principal Engineer. Fix the system, not the symptom.
I improve engineering productivity by fixing the systems around how software gets built.
I’m a hands-on developer-experience and platform engineer. I start with the developer’s workflow: where people wait, repeat work, lose context, or compensate for unstable dependencies. Then I build the platforms, tools, and technical foundations that remove that friction—so capable people can work with greater autonomy and deliver dependable software together.
Find me
Current work
Things I’m building and exploring.
As of July 31, 2026
AI Draft Buddy
An AI-powered tool for drafting content collaboratively with teammates. (Conception to deployment in a few hours.)
Gatherbrain
A project for gathering and organizing knowledge.
Agentic product development workflows
Exploring agents that act as product managers: creating testable benchmarks, forming hypotheses, planning work, directing subagents, testing results, and repeating the loop.
FDL
A declarative model for defining field behavior—parsing, formatting, validation, dependencies, filtering, and aggregation—once so forms, tables, and other consumers can share the same rules.
i8Diagrams - Coming Soon
Building better ways to think through and communicate complex systems visually.
Job Search Assistant - Coming Soon
An AI workflow for making a job search more intentional, informed, and manageable.
usingTemporaryFiles
A concise, robust way to work with temporary files—and a practical example of JavaScript’s explicit resource management model.
Technical community