Dept. 01
Systems
What makes a loop settle instead of wander.
Stocks, flows and feedback. Does this process have a quantity that only moves one way? If not, it will never tell you when to stop.
Systems · Psychology · Technology
Small tools to think with.
I'm Charlie O'Donoghue, a solutions architect in EV charging infrastructure. I build small tools to think with, read further into a problem than it needs, and write up what I find so I stop forgetting it.
Dept. 02
Psychology
People are systems too.
Feedback, psychological safety, and the recurring ceremonies that let a team correct its course before the drift shows up in the numbers.
Dept. 03
Technology
Understand the mechanism, build the small version.
Architecture for large EV charging networks by day. Agents, prose linters and menu-bar tools by night, built with Claude as my pair.
Latest memoranda
All writing →- Termites solved agent orchestration in 1959Two agents handing work to each other should not message each other. A 1959 paper about termites explains why, and a mud wasp shows what goes wrong.
- Finding Product Market Fit with Renewables: Crafting Products that Resonate with Government Initiatives and Consumer NeedsEVs are a gateway drug into home energy. What demand side response means for the product managers trying to make EV charging simple, cheap and predictable.
On the desk
All case files →Manuscript BK-001The Missing CeremoniesIn progressBuilding culture through emotional management. Three recurring meetings, read as feedback loops, and why a business is its people.Book · manuscriptOpened Apr 2024Manuscript BK-002An EV Charging 101In progressThe infrastructure and operations behind EV charging, from "I know EVs exist" to "I understand how this industry actually works".Book · LeanpubOpened Mar 2026Case file CF-002agent-mailboxactiveTwo agents, two repos, one folder between them. No messages, no queue, no delivery.PythonOpened Jul 2026Case file CF-004crispactiveTurns "this is too complex" from an opinion into a test that exits 1. Strips the AI tells, cuts the clutter, scores against a budget.PythonOpened Aug 2026Case file CF-006lineageactiveAn encyclopedia of programming languages and their stories, with a playground that runs real code. Built in the spirit of Bell Labs, Murray Hill, circa 1972.SwiftOpened Jul 2026
Standing order
What matters is the structure outside the model: durable records, state you declare rather than infer, and knowing where a human has to make the call.
Most of this started from a primary source, not a blog post. Grassé on stigmergy, Prigogine on when a system stops being predictable, Meadows on stocks and flows, Hickey on simple versus easy. More about how I work →