Languages & frameworks
TypeScript first. SvelteKit for product surfaces. Plain HTML and CSS when the page does not need a framework — including this one.
Kelowna, British Columbia
Adam M. Carlson.
Founder and technologist. Currently building OKNA — an adult non-alcoholic ready-to-drink beverage company from the Okanagan Valley, with a brand that does not apologize for being sober-curious. Also shipping Dear Reader — serialized fiction, written for exactly one person.
§ 01 — Now
Decisions get written down before they get expensive.
A page of reasoning before a purchase order; a spec before a repo. If the argument doesn't survive being written plainly, the project doesn't start — and most don't. The two that did are below.
Better at endgames than openings, on the board and off it.
§ 02 — Building
OKNA: an adult non-alcoholic RTD, built for people who are done apologizing for the empty glass.
The North American NA category is finally large enough to deserve products designed for it, not bolt-ons from breweries hedging declining beer volumes. I am working through positioning, formulation partners, unit economics, and route-to-market. The brand is now public: OKNA — Okanagan non-alcoholic, crafted from the valley, not the cellar.
- Market research Category sizing, competitive teardown, distribution map, retailer interviews.
- Product planning Format, flavor architecture, functional ingredients, COGs and pricing ladder.
- Brand OKNA. A name that says where it is from; an identity that earns shelf without leaning on novelty.
- Operations Co-pack discovery, supply continuity, BC and broader Canadian launch sequencing.
Pre-launch; the waitlist is open at getokna.com. If you operate in NA beverage, retail, or co-packing in Western Canada and want to compare notes, the contact link is at the top.
§ 03 — Dear Reader
Serialized fiction, written for exactly one person.
A story engine, not a story. Chapters arrive on a schedule, like correspondence. The questions you answer between chapters shape the next one, and the antagonist has your email address. Horror first — three arcs, three intensity settings — with other genres to follow.
Every word is written by an AI engine, and the app says so on the tin. No ghostwriter, no pretending. Built on the same small kit listed below: TypeScript, SvelteKit, Cloudflare.
Live and invitation-based. Request an invitation or read a sample chapter.
§ 04 — Stack
A small kit, used carefully.
Infrastructure
Cloudflare Pages, Workers, and DNS. Linux on the workstation, Linux on the server, Linux on the box that runs the experiments.
AI in the loop
LLMs for research synthesis, documentation, and code generation — treated as a research assistant with strong opinions and no liability, not an oracle. Dear Reader is where that gets stress-tested in production.
Workflow
GitHub for everything that compiles. Markdown for everything that thinks. Notes, specs, and decisions written before the code.
§ 05 — Off the clock
A short list, included only because the work is downstream of it.
- Stoicism Practiced, not posted about.
- Writing Journals daily; ships occasionally.
- Français En cours — patient with the verb tables.
- Chess Slow games; better at endgames than openings.
- Trail & pavement Walks long enough to think the thought through.
- Guitar Acoustic, after the kids go down.
- Games Strategy and sim. Anything with a tech tree.
Worth a conversation?
I keep contact deliberately narrow. LinkedIn is the front door.