I Got Restructured.
Then I Shipped 8 Projects.
A career transition is usually a gap on the CV. This one is a portfolio. 8 production systems in ~8 weeks — real users, live backends, custom domains.
The Context
In late 2025, my role at NCCRED/UNSW was restructured. I’d spent two and a half years building systems for Australia’s national substance use education sector — a live drug alert network reaching 85 organisations, knowledge management infrastructure, partnership governance. The kind of work where you make invisible scaffolding that other people’s work hangs on.
I didn’t plan the next eight weeks. I just started building.
What followed was the most productive period of my career. Not because of any particular efficiency method — but because fifteen years of cross-domain experience had compressed into instinct. The tools were new (AI-augmented development). The thinking was fifteen years deep.
What Got Built
Eight systems shipped. Each solved a different problem, for a different type of user, at a different scale. The range is the point — because the pattern underneath is always the same: take fragmented reality, build shared infrastructure, give people governed access to what they need.
Digital operating system for a café. Admin-editable menu (39 items, 5 categories), loyalty tracking, real-time updates. Owner changes the menu — it’s live in under 60 seconds.
emoji-cafe.pages.dev ↗Platform for a 10-year nonprofit I co-founded. LMS (64 lessons, 1,158 quizzes), volunteer management, 836 reconciled participants, 4,130 media files, ops dashboard with RE-AIM measurement.
primed.community ↗Multi-tenant personal development platform. Cross-platform (iOS/Android/web from one codebase). Five Kingdoms™ gamified development, LMS integration, community infrastructure. Architecture informed by Primed’s real-world needs.
evolved.community ↗Bilingual (English/Spanish) website for a dance instructor. Afro-Colombian Pacific cultural patterns in the design system. Service packages, Instagram integration, Schema.org SEO.
samara.network ↗Information architecture for a national harm reduction signal system. Pentagon governance model, 22+ research citations, 6-tier access controls. Drawing on direct experience building the PRN at NCCRED.
harm-reduction-hub.pages.dev ↗Personal operations cockpit for 14 projects. 85 relay automations, command palette, pentagon radar, live health signals. 35KB total JavaScript, zero runtime dependencies.
The consulting practice itself: site, branded email infrastructure, booking system, 89 template files across 4 industry verticals (café, trades, home services, specialists).
edbroadbent.info ↗Model Context Protocol server — AI-to-infrastructure bridge. 24 tools, 4-tier autonomy governance (auto/notify/approve/manual), semantic memory search, inter-agent signal bus.
The Work
The Pattern
Café menus and governance architectures. Nonprofit databases and AI infrastructure. Dance websites and multi-tenant platforms. These aren’t scattered interests — they’re the same architecture applied at different scales:
Whether the users are 85 organisations receiving drug alerts, 836 community members in Medellín, or a café owner updating today’s specials.
This pattern has been my work for fifteen years. What changed in this eight-week sprint is the velocity — AI-augmented development let me move at a pace that would have been impossible alone. But the architecture decisions, the accountability, the stakeholder relationships, the “what do these people actually need?” conversations — those are still human. The instrument is new. The instincts aren’t.
What I Learned
Shipping beats planning
One project per week forces decisions. No time for feature creep, no room for hypothetical requirements. The constraint produced better work, not worse. Each project had real users or a real purpose from day one.
AI amplifies instinct, not replaces it
AI-augmented development gave me higher velocity, but the cross-domain pattern was already there — the same way I approached program design at NCCRED, community architecture at Primed, and governance at UNSW. The decisions are still mine. The accountability is still mine.
Full-stack ownership matters
No managed platform dependencies. No recurring SaaS fees. Understanding the whole stack — DNS to database to deployment — makes everything faster and keeps costs predictable. Infrastructure I own is infrastructure I can hand over, adapt, or extend without calling a vendor.
Career breaks are build windows
The gap on the CV is the portfolio. The restructuring created the conditions for the most productive eight weeks of my career. Not by plan — by instinct. Sometimes the best response to “what next?” is “let me show you.”
Stack
| Layer | Approach | Scale |
|---|---|---|
| Hosting | Edge-first, CDN-delivered | 8 projects |
| API | Serverless workers | 3 custom backend layers |
| Database | Edge database (SQLite-compatible) | 65+ tables |
| Storage | Object storage + CDN | 4,130 media files |
| Auth | OAuth + RBAC + OTP access control | 3 projects |
| AI/MCP | Model Context Protocol + semantic memory | 24 tools, 4-tier governance |
| Mobile | Cross-platform framework (React Native) | iOS + Android + Web |
| Automation | Relay actions + pipeline scripts | 85 actions + 25 scripts |
| Transactional + routing + domain-branded | 3 projects | |
| Security | Self-audited, RFC 9116 security.txt | 41/42 vulnerabilities resolved |
Full infrastructure ownership across all projects. No managed hosting dependencies, no per-seat SaaS subscriptions. Portable, predictable cost at scale.
The builds are live. The CV is a portfolio.
Looking for the right environment — employment, consulting, or something I haven’t imagined yet. Every project listed above is deployed and running.