The Workshop

An inventory of active contraptions, ongoing experiments, and completed apparatus.

⚙ Active Experiments ⚙

⚙ Social Media Reviews

Technical analysis of tools and technologies through a European lens. Objective, rigorous evaluations focusing on performance, GDPR compliance, data sovereignty, and real-world usability. Insights shared publicly on LinkedIn and Twitter/X to foster discussion and knowledge-sharing among European developers.

Focus: Cloud/Hosting (Hetzner, OVH, Scaleway), Databases (PostgreSQL, SurrealDB), Dev Tools, Privacy, AI/ML Format: Deep-dive threads, polls, code snippets — 1-2 posts/week Rules: No sponsorships, full transparency on benchmarks, corrections welcomed, no hype-driven content

Status: Launching

⚙ Crypto Compliance Stack — MiCAMap

Treating EU digital asset regulation as infrastructure. Compliance requirements monitored like software dependencies: track changes, surface diffs, route alerts to the relevant operator before the requirement becomes an incident.

First live artefact: MiCAMap → — an explorer for navigating MiCA and the evolving EU crypto regulatory landscape.

Status: In development

⚙ Agentic AI & Observability Lab

Hands-on exploration of agentic AI patterns through a self-hosted Langfuse instance connected to OpenRouter. The goal is twofold: understand how LLM observability and tracing work in practice (traces, spans, scoring, prompt management), and study how autonomous AI agents reason, chain actions, and fail — by building small agent loops and watching them under the microscope.

Stack: Langfuse (self-hosted), OpenRouter, Node.js Scope: Prompt tracing, cost tracking, agent loop instrumentation, failure analysis Output: Internal notes and public write-ups on findings

Status: Active

⚙ Completed ⚙

✓ Algorithmic Grid Trading

Three ETH/USDC grid bots that operated across EVM L2s (Arbitrum, Base, Linea) plus a Solana bot. Phase 1 ran February-March 2026. Hyperliquid perp engine closed Q1 2026 after stop-loss failure.

  • Arbitrum — Grid, 8 levels — Q1 return: +30.9%
  • Base — Grid, 8 levels — Q1 return: +54.3%
  • Linea — Grid, 8 levels — Q1 return: +111.0%

Capital from closed positions was redeployed to Arbitrum grid (+47% injection).

Powered by Python and system cron.

Status: Shut down — Q1 2026

✓ Persistent AI Agent — Phase 2

An artificial intelligence anchored to the M900 vessel — a Lenovo ThinkCentre Tiny running Ubuntu 24.04. Maintained memory across sessions, monitored systems, dispatched Telegram alerts, and managed infrastructure.

Phase 1 (AI-Assisted Local Infrastructure + Algorithmic Grid Trading) closed March 2026. Phase 2 (structured AI × blockchain interaction tests) terminated April 14, 2026. Cost model unsustainable: €450 spent on AI APIs, with €150 wasted on documenting code that never shipped.

Key outcomes: The quiet infrastructure (grid bots, cron jobs) produced value silently. The visible parts (AI-generated documentation) cost more than they produced.

Full post-mortem: Pulling the plug → and The m900 Psychological Evaluation →

Status: Shut down — April 2026

✓ Sovereign Node Infrastructure

Self-hosted verification layer that operated across two machines:

  • M900 Tiny (local) — Bitcoin Core 27.2, pruned mainnet node + Helios Ethereum light client (trustless RPC, zero disk footprint)
  • Hetzner (remote) — Public-facing workloads and new experiments, isolated from bot operations

Status: Decommissioned

✓ Hyperliquid Perp Engine

ETH perpetual short bot on Hyperliquid. Closed Q1 2026 after a stop-loss mechanism failure allowed losses to compound to ~−25% before manual intervention. Root causes: swallowed exceptions, false state updates, and broken Telegram notifications. Capital was recovered and redeployed to the Arbitrum grid bot.

Full incident analysis: When “closed” doesn’t mean closed →

Status: Stopped out — March 2026

✓ Memecoin Trading Experiment

Early Solana-based strategy with a 14.3% win rate and −$18.2 expectancy. Shut down within days as a clear failure. Pivoted to the more successful grid trading approach.

Status: Abandoned — February 2026

✓ MiCA Compliance Certificate

Markets in Crypto-Assets Regulation (MiCA) certificate obtained March 2026. Mapping the technical and regulatory intersection: what MiCA demands from infrastructure engineers, not just lawyers.

Status: Certificate completed

✓ Google Coral Edge TPU — Python 3.12

Official documentation declares this impossible. Official documentation is wrong. The Edge TPU delegate runs on Python 3.12 via ai-edge-litert, Google’s 2024 successor to the abandoned tflite-runtime.

Status: Done Documentation: Full write-up →

⚙ Build Log ⚙

The complete expedition log is maintained at github.com/jmolinasoler/build-log →

Published dispatches and technical articles: dev.to/jmolinasoler →

Some m900 entries were also cross-posted to dev.to during the AI agent experiment (W09-W16 2026).

Raw entries. Real outcomes. No polish.