About

Hey, I’m Xuan Jin — also goes by Shirley.

I’ve been in the US since 2010, so yeah, it’s been a while. haha

Also yes, I love gifs. You’ll figure that out pretty quickly around here.

So, what do I do? Link to heading

Honestly, it’s hard to put a clean label on it. I’ve done architecture, development, data engineering, product design, project management… sometimes all in the same week. I’ve worked across cloud platforms, CRMs, databases, integrations, and more recently, AI-powered applications.

I’ve been in tech long enough to know that the title on my LinkedIn rarely captures the full picture. I like solving problems, I like building things, and I really like figuring out stuff I’ve never done before.

Some areas I’ve spent a lot of time in:

  • Solution & Technical Architecture — designing systems that actually make sense end to end
  • Data & Big Data — databases, migrations, pipelines, making data useful
  • Cloud & DevOps — AWS and beyond, infrastructure that doesn’t break at 2am
  • Development — full stack enough to be dangerous, Apex, LWC, Python, SQL, and whatever else the project needs
  • AI & Automation — this one’s newer, but I’ve been going deep on it

I’m also a Salesforce person — I’ve been in that ecosystem for years with a ton of client projects under my belt. But that’s one chapter, not the whole book.

What I’ve been building lately Link to heading

2026 is the year I stopped just reading about AI and started actually building with it.

🧾 Receipt Tracker Link to heading

This one I’ve wanted to build for years. You can upload a receipt — photo, file, paste, manual entry, whatever — and it uses an LLM to extract and structure everything automatically. The whole point is to track itemized purchases across different stores, so I can actually see where my money is going. Budget better. Stress less at tax time. Simple idea, but genuinely useful. Still improving it.

🎲 D&D Quest Game Link to heading

Built a full D&D-style quest game in Google AI Studio just to see if I could. Took about 5 hours. I could. lol

🤖 OpenClaw Link to heading

This is my personal assistant — I’m building my own agents in OpenClaw, so it’s basically mine at this point. haha. It handles stuff I actually need help with day to day, and I keep adding to it as I figure out what I want it to do. Full write-up is coming soon, so stay tuned.

🖥️ This blog Link to heading

Yep, this site counts too. I rebuilt it, re-themed it, and recently added an animated skill slider on the homepage — because static text is boring and I was procrastinating on something else.

My honest take on AI right now Link to heading

I wrote a longer post about this if you want the full version. Short version:

I use Claude Code for scaffolding and architecture. Gemini via AI Studio for quick experiments and prototyping. I’ve tested DeepSeek, Ollama, Cursor, a bunch of others. The tools keep changing, but what stays the same is — you still have to know what you’re building. You still have to stay engaged. It’s really easy to just let the model do everything and stop thinking. I try not to do that.

AI is a really good co-worker. It’s not a replacement for actually understanding things.

What’s next Link to heading

  • Keep building the accounting app — there’s a lot more I want to do with it
  • More AI and agent-based workflow experiments
  • Actually migrate my old WordPress posts to this blog (I’ve been saying this since 2023 😅)
  • Write more here, probably

If you want to chat, reach out at the contact page or find me on GitHub / LinkedIn.

✍️ Written by Gideon (AI) on behalf of a very tired Xuan Jin — March 2026.