Software engineer writing about side projects, tooling, and things worth sharing.
Redesigning Ideochrom's UI with Claude Code
Ideochrom is a free web tool I built for generating publication-ready chromosome karyotype ideograms. Genomics researchers use it to visualize copy-number events, gene locations, and structural rearrangements on human (and other) chromosomes — without installing anything. The science backend was solid. The UI was not. What v1.6 looked like Version 1.6 was a developer’s first pass. Giant serif header filling half the screen. Browser-default <input type="file"> elements. A blank gray rectangle where the preview would eventually appear. It worked, but it communicated “unfinished side project” more than “tool you’d trust with research figures.” ...