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Ray Li

Beyond work

Beyond Engineering & Life Highlights

A more personal corner of the site: reflections on building products with AI, the things I've gone out of my way to learn, and what keeps me curious outside of work.

Tech Essays & Reflections

What I've learned about building products, working with AI, and turning ideas into shipped software.

  • Reflection

    From Anniversary Gift to Multi-User Product

    Remember began as a website to hold memories for my girlfriend's and my first-month anniversary. Once it was live, I realized other couples, friends, and families could use the same thing, so I re-planned it as a multi-user platform with private shared spaces, profiles, friends, and invitations.

    Visit letsremember.app(opens in a new tab)
  • Reflection

    Working With AI as a Product Manager

    I use Gemini to brainstorm and write PRDs, then direct Claude Code like an engineer on my team: explicit requirement breakdowns and approval, isolated feature branches, atomic commits, local QA, and a maintained changelog. I still review every Supabase table change myself and ask the AI to explain unfamiliar models before I rely on them.

Continuous Learning

Courses and skills I've gone out of my way to learn, often on a deadline.

  • Learning

    Vehicle Dynamics in a Month

    Joining the Columbia Formula Racing software team meant learning tire models from scratch. In about a month I went from no background to fitting Magic Formula coefficients to real tire test data for the car's traction-control work.

  • Learning

    Harvard Summer School: Economics of Innovation

    Spent summer 2024 at Harvard studying how innovation happens and gets funded (grade: A-), a lens I still use when thinking about which products are worth building.