I'm a passionate software engineer focused on building developer tools that enhance productivity and improve the command-line experience. I believe in creating elegant solutions that make developers' lives easier through well-crafted, open-source software.

I also do independent AI research, with a focus on consciousness, computational functionalism, and novel AI architectures.

I'm currently CTO at Atuin, building tools that transform how developers interact with their shell history and terminal workflows.

• 🚀 Atuin
• 🖥️ Atuin Desktop

Previously, I worked as a Senior Software Engineer at GitHub, where I contributed to several high-impact projects:

• Primer Design System: Led the engineering effort to introduce 🖤 Dark Mode 🖤 to GitHub.com
• Electron: Contributed to the development of this popular framework for building cross-platform desktop applications
• Atom: Worked on Git and GitHub integration, as well as the core editor, improving developer workflows in the editor

I'm an active contributor on Stack Overflow with 159k+ reputation, helping developers solve problems across JavaScript, Node.js, React, and more. I've provided over 1,000 answers across various web development topics, with particular expertise in:

• JavaScript & Node.js
• React & Frontend Frameworks
• Ruby on Rails
• Web Development Best Practices

An experiment harness developed for AI research but flexible enough for any systematic experimentation. Write your experiments in code and manage them via a web interface, or via an MCP server. Written in Elixir, taking advantage of the amazing concurrency primitives the BEAM provides.

Magical shell history! Atuin replaces your existing shell history with a SQLite database, recording additional context for your commands. Features include:

• 🔍 Full-screen history search UI (rebindable to ctrl-r and up)
• 🔐 Optional encrypted synchronization across machines
• 📊 Command statistics and analytics
• 🌐 Multi-shell support (zsh, bash, fish, nushell, xonsh)

Built primarily with Rust for performance and reliability.

Runbooks that run! A desktop application that brings powerful workflow automation to your fingertips. Built with modern desktop technologies to provide a seamless user experience for managing and executing runbooks.

I'm always interested in collaborating on interesting projects or discussing technology. Feel free to reach out!

• 📧 Email: michelle@michelletilley.net
• 💼 LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/michellektilley