Gaurav Sharma — projects, tools, and deep dives

Writing

Stillness is power 2026-07-16
We picture power as motion, but reactivity is remote control: whoever can provoke you operates you, and he who rules his spirit outranks he who takes a city. On the hinge, the axle and the eye of the storm (everything that moves is moved around something still), the still mind as the only accurate instrument, quietness as strategy in the scriptures, stillness as uncoerced action rather than passivity, and the turn the strong most need: the citadel is rented, and the chain of still points does not ground out in you. Be still, and know that I am God.
Keeping appetite small 2026-07-16
Sufficiency is a fraction: means over wants. We spend whole lives enlarging the numerator while the denominator quietly outgrows it, because appetite is not a quantity to satisfy but a variable that grows by what it is fed. On the eye that resets on every delivery, desires with ceilings versus desires with horizons, appetite laid down ring by ring (each feeding deniable, hearts trained in greed), why the grown appetite reads as desperate and repellent from outside, the ration rather than the barn (manna, daily bread), contentment as a learned skill, and why a small appetite is not small ambition but what funds large aims. You are as rich as what you no longer need.
The shape of a tree 2026-07-14
The question that consumes decades near a destructive person: can't he, or won't he? A tree shows why it's malformed. Character is laid down like rings: each refusal a real choice at the time and structural afterward, until a can't stands assembled entirely out of won'ts. On why argument fails (the receiver was never built), why crisis fails too (storms break mature trees or they don't; they never reshape them), the release in learning there was no chance, and the gospels on wood that will not bear.
Needless vigilance is needless cost 2026-07-12
Vigilance is a cost levied continuously, even on days nothing goes wrong: the blind corner charges for every crossing, the safe ones included, because the price is not the accident but the attention. On bought vigilance (attention exchanged for risks chosen for good reasons) versus needless vigilance (alertness that buys nothing because the danger could be designed out, routed around, or never signed up for), Martha and Mary read as death by a thousand small claims, and the audit that beats the discipline: willpower is a payment plan; design is paying it off.
The gift test 2026-07-05
We measure freedom by what we can acquire and keep. Measure it instead by what you can give away: the gift is the one act that cannot be performed unfree, which is why the ancients named generosity after freedom. Whatever you cannot gift owns you: on the rich young ruler, the open ledger behind most giving, the widow's two coins, the gifts harder than money (time, credit, the grievance), and why giving doesn't just prove freedom but produces it.
Neither violence nor appeasement 2026-07-05
When wronged, we think the menu has two items: hit back or give way. Both were written by the aggressor. Violence remakes you in his image; appeasement is not a purchase of peace but a subscription to aggression, premiums rising. On the third way (resistance without violence, firmness without hatred), the turned cheek read as defiance, why strength is what makes gentleness possible, and the harder path between the sword and the surrender: loved first, the rest downstream.
Know your project 2026-06-29
We think hard decisions are hard because the options are close. They're hard because we never named what we're choosing for. Name your project (your vocation, the real thing your one life is organised to do) and the question dissolves rather than gets answered. On telling load-bearing wants from borrowed scripts, optimising for the ordinary Tuesday over the first-day shine, and why building the self is a house on sand while meaning is built only by whoever founds a life on a calling and stays to tend it.
Education through the posture of discovery 2026-06-23
For most of the modern era, education has been front-loaded: cram knowledge in young, then spend it across a career. Why AI ends that bargain (turning learning into discovery, just-in-time and lifelong), what becomes scarce, and the foundation discovery still needs.
Boundaries without judgment 2026-06-12
Judging others and protecting yourself look alike from the outside and are opposites underneath: the courtroom we convene when we judge, judgment as the subtlest idolatry of self, how to adjourn it, why a boundary needs no defence (don't JADE), and why even self-protection runs only to the level grace permits.
Surviving our own choices & unexamined idols 2026-06-09
Why we defend the structures of our lives so fiercely (not because we chose them, but because they quietly became load-bearing): on unexamined idolatry, what an idol really is, and how to live gently alongside it.

All 12 writing →

Projects

Feeltracker Founder
A suite of iOS apps for tracking health signals (blood pressure, mood, weight, and sleep) with AI insights and Apple Health sync.
Stealth startup Cofounder
An early-stage AI education startup. Currently in stealth.

All 2 projects →

Startups

Raising money for a London startup: a guide to how, and a directory of where.

The fundraising guide
A Paul Graham–inspired walk through raising money stage by stage: make something people want, stay default alive, and run the raise as a process.
Funding sources
A directory of where to raise: accelerators, angels and crowdfunding, venture capital, grants, EIS/SEIS funds and venture debt, each with how to reach them.

All 2 startups →

AI

Beginning applied AI 2026-06-11
Start building real software with AI even if you’ve never coded or opened a terminal: just enough Git via the GitHub Desktop app, Claude Code on top, and Railway to put it live on the internet.
AI friends chat simulation 2026-06-08
Give it a topic and watch an AI improvise a long group-chat debate between six friends, streamed in live.
AI basics 2026-06-06
A plain-English map of what to learn to get started in AI: the groundwork, how models work, and how to do research and build applications.
Chat 2026-06-05
Chat with an AI model through a secure server-side proxy. Pick the model and reasoning level.

All 4 AI →

Science

Where did we come from? 2026-07-12
The oldest question answered in full — from the first living cell nearly four billion years ago, through animals, primates and hominins, to Homo sapiens and the peopling of the world, and on to where our evolution might go next. Every claim linked to the hard-science evidence as it appears, and — only where the science genuinely concords — set beside the Genesis account. Built around a museum panel whose dates a decade of fossils and ancient DNA has rewritten, with six figures including a grand deep-time timeline and a fork of possible futures.
Computation from scratch 2026-06-06
How a computer works, built from the ground up (from a single bit and a logic gate to a programmable machine), with a short history and interactive widgets to poke.

All 2 science →

Education

GCSEs, explained
The complete interactive guide to GCSEs (their history, the 9–1 grades, subjects and the EBacc, exam boards, results data and demographics, controversies and records, plus six mini-apps) for England, Wales and Northern Ireland.
A-levels, explained
The companion guide for 18: the A*–E grades and UCAS points, subjects and university offers, exam boards, results data, controversies and records, plus mini-apps including a UCAS points calculator and an offer checker.

All 2 education →

Health

Alcohol, from every angle
A deep guide to alcohol: how it's made and how it works on the body and brain, its history and cultures, the etymology of spirits, beer, wine and whisky, and an honest look at where it goes wrong.
Blood pressure
What the two numbers mean, what high pressure does over time, a short history from the first cuff to the SPRINT trial, and how it's measured and managed.
Diabetes
How blood sugar and insulin work, Type 1 vs Type 2, the complications that matter, the discovery of insulin, and treatment from CGMs and pumps to the GLP-1 drugs.
Arthritis
What goes wrong inside a joint, the main types from osteoarthritis to rheumatoid and gout, and how it's diagnosed and treated, from exercise to biologics.
Sleep
The sleep cycle and REM, the body clock and sleep pressure, why we need it, how much by age, what goes wrong, and what actually helps.
Weight
Energy balance and the body's set point, what BMI does and doesn't tell you, why losing weight is hard, and what actually helps, from diet to GLP-1 drugs.
Mental health
Mental health as a continuum, the common conditions, what causes mental ill health, a short history of psychiatry, how it's treated, and where to get help.
Borderline personality disorder
What BPD (emotionally unstable personality disorder) is, the nine symptoms, the biosocial causes, and why it's treatable (with DBT and others) and recovery common.
Burnout
The three dimensions (exhaustion, cynicism and lost efficacy), what causes burnout and what it does to the body, plus a phased recovery guide and a self-check quiz.
Cancer
Cells dividing out of control, the hallmarks, how it spreads and is staged, the types, causes and prevention, screening, and treatment from surgery to immunotherapy.

All 13 health →

Food

The cuisines of India
Every state and union territory on an interactive tile map, coloured by culinary region — tap a state for its cuisine and signature dishes, with a written guide to each regional kitchen.
The teas of the world
The great tea countries on an interactive tile map — China’s six tea families, matcha, Darjeeling, Moroccan mint, Turkish çay and the mate cultures of South America.
The coffees of the world
The great coffee countries on an interactive tile map — from Ethiopia’s ceremony and Yemen’s Mocha to Italian espresso, Vietnam’s phin and the flat white.

All 3 food →

Games

Crazy Pizza 2026-06-11
Build any pizza you can dream up (fourteen cheeses, forty-plus toppings, marshmallows included) on a live canvas pizza, then serve it to a panel of AI customers who score it in character and tell you how to make it better.
3D RC Car Simulator 2026-06-11
Drive an RC buggy around a big 3D park: a from-scratch software-3D renderer, drift physics, launch ramps, a spiral tower to climb, indoor spots, timed gate laps and a race circuit ring with its own clock, all in the browser.
Snooker 2026-06-08
Snooker on a green baize table, run by a from-scratch physics engine with rolling, follow-through and cushion bounces, played two-up in the browser.
Block Drop 2026-06-06
A falling-blocks tetromino puzzle, built from scratch and running entirely in the browser.
Mini chess 2026-06-06
A 5×6 chess variant played against a built-in alpha–beta engine, all in the browser.

All 5 games →

Design

Color tools
An everyday color toolkit: picker and converter (HEX, RGB, HSL, HSV, CMYK, OKLCH, LAB), WCAG contrast checker, harmonies, tonal scales, mixer and CSS gradient builder.
Colorspace tools
Convert across sRGB, Display P3 and Rec. 2020, flag out-of-gamut colors, detect what your display can show, and see gamma vs linear light.
Accessibility (a11y)
A working reference to web and mobile accessibility: WCAG (versions, POUR, A/AA/AAA), what each market requires legally, mobile guidance, testing, and a built-in AI requirements checker, with copious examples.
Christopher Alexander
A working reference to his design theory: all 253 patterns of A Pattern Language, the fifteen properties of living structure, and how to design with them.

All 4 design →

Developer

Apple
Apple-platform tooling, starting with an interactive chart of Xcode build benchmarks for every Mac chip, from the M1 to the M5 Max, on Xcode 26 and 16.

All developer →

Politics

All 10 politics →

Maps

Cathedrals of the United Kingdom
Every cathedral in the UK, mapped live from OpenStreetMap on an Ordnance Survey basemap and colour-coded by denomination: Anglican, Roman Catholic and more.
London
Interactive maps of London built with free, open tools, starting with the laptop-friendly café chains, mapped live from OpenStreetMap.

All 2 maps →

Bible

Old Testament
The Old Testament in the original Hebrew, set beside an English translation of each verse: all thirty-nine books.
New Testament
All twenty-seven books of the New Testament in their original Koine Greek, set beside an English translation of each verse: Matthew to Revelation.
Parables of Jesus
Every parable Jesus told, gathered from the four Gospels and explained one by one, from the Sower to the Sheep and the Goats.
Bible timeline
The sweep of biblical history era by era, from creation and the patriarchs to Jesus and the early church, with approximate dates.
Bible characters
A who’s-who of scripture: the major figures of the Old and New Testaments, from Adam and Abraham to Jesus and the apostles.
The Cross
The mechanism of the cross explained in detail: how the New Testament says the death of Jesus actually works, image by image.
Grace and the Will
The long debate over how salvation is applied and what part the human will plays, from Pelagius and Augustine to Calvin, Arminius and the Eastern synergy.
Martyrs
A table of Christian martyrs through history (how and why they died), from Stephen and the apostles to the martyrs of the present day.
The early church
A who’s-who from the apostolic fathers to Gregory the Great: apologists, councils, and the teachers later judged heterodox like Marcion and Arius.

All 9 Bible →

Economy

United Kingdom
Interactive charts of UK house prices, inflation and the FTSE 100 over time, with detailed tooltips and historical context.
United States
Interactive charts of US house prices, inflation and the stock market (the S&P 500, Dow Jones and Nasdaq) over time, with detailed tooltips and historical context.

All 2 economy →

Sound

MIDI keyboard
A playable in-browser keyboard: all 128 General MIDI instruments, a drum kit, and an effects rack. Mouse, touch, computer keys, or a connected MIDI device.
Classical music player
Public-domain classical works (Beethoven symphonies plus keyboard pieces by Bach, Mozart, Chopin and more) played as MIDI through a real soundfont, with a piano-roll and a flip-to-live-notation view.
Beat maker
A 16-step drum machine with synthesised drums, tempo, swing and per-track controls. No samples, just pure Web Audio.

All 3 sound →

Hardware

Apple
Every product Apple currently sells, in tables: the chip, headline specs, starting price and when each was last updated.
Samsung phones
The current Galaxy lineup (S26 flagships, Z foldables and A-series), with chip, specs, price and release date.
Game consoles
The current consoles and PC handhelds (PlayStation, Xbox, Nintendo and Steam Deck) compared on chip, specs and price.
Graphics cards
Every desktop GPU by maker (Nvidia GeForce, AMD Radeon and Intel Arc), generation by generation, with architecture, memory, specs, price and year.
Running shoes
A survey of the running-shoe world: the brands and their foams, popular models with short bios, cushioning and drop compared, and shoes for arthritis and sore joints.

All 6 hardware →