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SHELBY KLEIN / FIELD NOTES

Make room to make.

Current live rhyme studio
Notes on creative work, technology, and the things I build.

Creative work, fewer tools

Building useful tools around the way creative work actually happens.
By:Shelby KleinPublished:September 5, 2026

My projects span software, visual design, broadcasts, and physical products. The thread through them is making the next step easier to take.

01

Keep the context close

My work spans websites, identities, apparel, broadcasts, physical products, and software. Looking across it, a recurring interest becomes clear: I like making things, and improving the tools that help people make them.

Creative work brings coordination with it. The conversation is in one app, files in another, and the reference in a browser tab. Finding everything becomes a task of its own. I want less repeated setup and more time with the idea.

Newton brings persistent AI teammates, projects, conversations, and recurring work into a desktop workspace, connecting tools such as Codex CLI and Claude Code. The question is how to make work easier to return to: what was happening, who was handling it, and what needs attention next?

Newton’s welcome screen with project navigation, teammates, and recurring-work controls.
Newton begins with a project, then the bots needed to work on it.
A workspace to return to
02

Design for the activity

Current works on a shorter timescale. Its live rhyme studio connects spoken or typed words with sounds and phrase ideas. A suggestion has a small window to be helpful; the interface needs to leave room for the writer’s train of thought. Audio, transcripts, and a rhyme log carry the session forward.

Current rhyme studio showing rhymes for motion, phrase ideas, a rhyme scheme, and transcript controls.
Current keeps rhymes, phrase ideas, and the developing pattern in one view.
Suggestions beside the line

Vispix brings photo search, team review, usage rights, and shortlists together. Its AI connection makes the existing library available in other workflows, too.

Consolidation only helps when the activities belong together. Every feature has to earn its space. Deciding what shares context, what can happen automatically, and what needs human judgment is the real design work.

03

Beyond the software window

That thinking runs through earlier work. USA Archery broadcasts connect graphics, scoring, audio, video, and custom software under the pressure of a live event. PlayCase gives an iPhone physical controls and swappable layouts for classic games, spanning industrial design, prototyping, and production.

Title graphic for the 2025 USA Archery Indoor Nationals Final broadcast.
USA Archery: visual design within a live production system.
Blue PlayCase body beside its removable directional-pad and button faceplate.
PlayCase: changing the interface through physical controls.
Interfaces on air and in hand

Arcadia leaves room to experiment with AI activity as a simulated place you can see and navigate. Newton and Current remain in active development; Arcadia is an ongoing experiment.

Building software creates maintenance work of its own. Reducing friction is something to test, not assume. Across these projects, I want to make it easier to stay with an idea and carry it through to something finished.

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