Hey 👋, I'm Judson Stephenson. Most people call me Jud.

We live in an amazing time. So much to build and so many tokens to burn.

Nights and weekends I build local-first tools. smelt compiles models — chat, speech, even a mesh auto-rigger — into native local programs, operator types what you say into the terminal, mkdn renders what your agents write, kokoro speaks on the Neural Engine, and ve-capsule makes recovery shares self-verifying before they are needed.

Most recently I was a Staff Engineer at Block working on Bitkey. Before that I ran the ad platform at Drizly (acquired by Uber) and a product consultancy helping startups find market fit. I've co-founded a bitcoin exchange, a couple of bitcoin wallets, and a wholesale distribution platform. Grew up at eBay via Svpply.