Tom Rankin · Springfield, Missouri
I’m your huckleberry.
Sovereign software. Hard problems. The right answer — not the popular one. If you’ve got something nobody else can figure out, say when.
What I do
I build things that other people say can’t be built, won’t work, or aren’t worth the trouble. Then they work. Then they’re worth the trouble.
My stack: Rust, WebAssembly, F#, CSS, just enough JavaScript. No runtime frameworks. No dashboards. No SaaS tax. The code you hire me to write is code you own forever.
What I don’t do
Page builders. Dependency waterfalls. Things that phone home to someone else’s control plane. Platforms that decide what you’re allowed to do with your own software.
If your problem needs a consultant with a deck and a roadmap, I’m not your huckleberry. If it needs someone who will actually build the thing, we should talk.
philosophy
What I believe.
These aren’t slogans. They’re the principles I build on — tested in the field, not borrowed from a slide deck.
The Eigenvalue
Find the invariant truth — the thing that survives every transformation unchanged. You can rotate it, scale it, apply any pressure the world has. The eigenvalue stays itself. It doesn’t drift. It doesn’t negotiate.
Clarity as Obligation
Hitchens believed clarity was a moral obligation. Not cruelty — clarity. The refusal to let comfortable vagueness stand when a precise sentence was available. Say it plainly or don’t say it.
Sovereign by Default
Software should work for you, not on you. No surveillance middleman. No cloud dependency. No vendor’s permission required. If you can’t run it without someone else’s blessing, you don’t own it.
Calculate, Don’t Guess
73% of the time, structure gives you the answer without probability. Use a model when you must. Use math when you can. It’s not a breakthrough — it’s discipline.
Hand-Built
If you can solder it, compile it, or cast it, that’s the way to build it. Circuits, antennas, firmware, garden sensors, tube amps — craftsmanship over convenience, every time.
Roots
Family first. The Corps taught discipline. The desert taught patience. The work is the expression of all three. Everything I build, I build because someone showed me it mattered.
heritage
This is where I learned it.
My dad, somewhere in an Ozark field. Denim jacket, glasses, looking out at nothing in particular. He’s the reason I’m still building things by hand, still asking whether it’s right before asking whether it’s popular.
— from somewhere in the Ozarks, on film
i. family
Family.
The reason any of this matters. The first people who said yes when no one else would.
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ii. service
Marine Corps.
Supply lines break. Plans don’t survive contact. The enemy gets a vote. Everything I learned in the Corps, I ended up needing as a software engineer.
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iii. work in hand
Hand-built.
Circuits, tube amps, vacuum tubes, hand-soldered radios — pieces of a sovereign toolkit that runs without anyone’s permission but the person using it.
iv. notes from the desert
Where the saguaros live.
Recent wandering through the Sonoran Desert. Cholla, prickly pear, fifty-foot saguaros older than my grandfather.
v. eigenflight
Built it before I flew it.
Quadcopter dynamics solved end-to-end in Rust + WebGPU + WASM. Six degrees of freedom, RK4 integrator, real propeller curves, real torque coupling. No servers. No accounts. Nothing to phone home.
vi. track record
Track record.
- Sovereign software stack. A hand-built Rust/WASM toolchain for apps that run without a cloud, ship without an App Store, and update without a vendor’s permission.
- Hardware & sensor mesh. LoRa gateways, BLE fabric, FPGA accelerators, iPhone lidar pipelines — raw signal turned into useful decisions, on-device.
- 16 provisional patents filed. Pro se. $65 each. Five waves between January and March 2026. Signal routing, trust decay, mesh discovery, identity without authority.
- Small-government-friendly infrastructure. Mesh networks that work when the grid doesn’t. Evidence pipelines that hold up in court.
- Clients & partners. Quiet work for people who need it. Ask for references if we’re a fit.
vii. writing
From the blog.
What 73% Actually Means
Most of our AI requests are answered without asking a language model. Here's what that looks like in practice.
Mar 15, 2026Filing Provisional Patents from a Laptop in the Desert
Sixteen provisional applications. Pro se. Sixty-five dollars each. From a laptop in Tucson.
Mar 01, 2026The People Who Showed Up
I didn't hire a team through job postings. Greg called because he believed in what I was building. Jerick showed up because he'd seen the vi...
Feb 08, 2026Naming a Company After an Eigenvalue and a Dead Contrarian
The eigenvalue survives every transformation unchanged. Hitchens believed clarity was a moral obligation. Put them together.
“I’m your huckleberry.”
— Doc Holliday (Val Kilmer), Tombstone, 1993
In 19th-century American slang, being someone’s huckleberry meant being the right person for the job. Doc says it to Johnny Ringo to accept the challenge. It’s a yes. It’s the right man, stepping forward.