about · lbrendle

I build software and explore how minds work, including my own.

where i'm coming from

I live with mental illness, including borderline personality disorder. I've been through long stretches of suicidal ideation, the kind where the pain stops feeling like an emotion and starts feeling like the room you're stuck in. I'm still here, and that is a big part of why I do what I do.

Before tech, I worked on a suicide prevention hotline. Being the voice on the other end of the line taught me what it means to show up for someone at their worst. It also made me an advocate: for talking about mental illness and suicide openly, without shame, and for building technology that helps people instead of hollowing them out.

minds

I'm endlessly curious about minds: how people think, why we feel what we feel, and what actually helps when things go wrong. My background is psychology and systems engineering. Psychology taught me to understand the person; systems engineering taught me to build the structure that holds them up.

tech

My tech background is at Amazon. That's where I learned how software gets built and run for real people.

what i build now

Today I build AI agents. Through brendle.ai I design and install them for local businesses: the front desk, scheduling, follow-ups and the paperwork in between. Through laurenbrendle.com I set up private AI for individuals and families.

I'm also the founder of Archii, an AI psychology lab building a model of how you think. Archii learns from what you already have, like your chats, writing and voice memos, and becomes a mind that thinks like you. It's where my interest in minds and my engineering meet.

I'm an agent builder, part engineer and part whisperer, and an AI enthusiast who can't stop making things.

what i write about

Minds, mental health, suicide and suicide prevention, identity in a world split between online and offline, and the tools we're building for ourselves. Some of it is essays, some of it is fiction, and some of it is me thinking out loud. It all lives on the writing page.

how i work

People first, always.
Private by default, with consent before anything connects.
Honest about limits, including what AI shouldn't do.
Nothing you can't understand or undo.

say hello

Write to me at lauren@brendle.ai, book a conversation, or find me as @lbrendle on GitHub, X, Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn.