Jonathan Avison

Composer & Developer

Soft work for the web and Mac — BackPicker, Squirrel AI, TunedSphere, plus Smile, Laugh, and Mood.

About

In 2015 I dreamed of a soft little record label with a home on the web. The first try was messy — but the mood stayed. That spark grew into TunedSphere: music, artists, festivals, and shop flows that still feel warm and human.

Alongside that, I build Smile, Laugh, and Mood — a local-first media ecosystem where music and video stay on your machine, and Mood is the optional cloud when you want sync. I also ship BackPicker, a hiking pack composer that turns gear into a clear weight and volume picture, and Squirrel AI, a chat workspace for threads and exports. Soft UI, serious craft, and a little room for a smile. According to my wife, I should keep coding — preferably in a hoodie and glasses.

Work Experiences

  1. 2024 — Present

    Indie apps · Smile, Laugh & Mood

    Designing and shipping a local-first media ecosystem — Smile for music, Laugh for video, Mood as the optional sync layer. Soft products, privacy-first defaults, and craft that still leaves room to smile.

    Swift
    macOS
    iOS
    Next.js
    Hono
    Product

  2. 2022 — Present

    Full-Stack Developer · TunedSphere

    Building the live Psygroove platform end to end — music discovery, artist & label pages, festival tracking, and a store for artists. Soft UI, solid product architecture, and the little moments that make people smile.

    React
    Next.js
    TypeScript
    MySQL
    Stripe
    UI/UX

View Full Résumé

Projects

  1. BackPicker

    Pack smarter — compose hiking gear and see weight and volume like a DaisyDisk sunburst, with a shared catalog and personal gear library.

    Next.js
    TypeScript
    Neon
    Clerk
    Drizzle

  2. Squirrel AI

    An AI chat workspace — threads, pins, a library view, and conversation export to PDF and slides when the talk needs to leave the room.

    Next.js
    TypeScript
    AI SDK
    Clerk
    Upstash

  3. Smile

    Local-first macOS music player — tags, metadata, EQ, and soft themes. Optional Mood sync when you want the library elsewhere.

    Swift
    macOS
    GRDB
    Sparkle
    EQ
    Privacy

  4. Laugh

    Local-first video player — smart library, cinematic playback, wide formats. Privacy-first; Mood for media sync later.

    Swift
    macOS
    mpv
    GRDB
    AVFoundation
    Privacy

  5. Mood

    Shared sync for Smile & Laugh — one vault, predictable tiers, local-first until you choose the cloud.

    Hono
    TypeScript
    Postgres
    B2
    Stripe
    JWT

  6. TunedSphere Shop

    A storefront for artists — products, categories, subscriptions, and payments — kept clear so the music still feels like the main character.

    React
    Next.js
    TypeScript
    Zod
    Clerk
    Stripe
    Resend

  7. TunedSphere Music

    Artists, albums, labels, DJs, and festival tracking — a listening home with mood and genre paths, still growing.

    React
    Next.js
    TypeScript
    MySQL

  8. Docs & Stories

    Blog, articles, and documentation in markdown — clear words for a soft product.

    MDX
    Contentlayer
    JSON