>Claude: add a cute, techy, first-person tagline to my website masthead. I'm a CTO, and this website promotes my consulting/fractional CTO work.

✦ Thinking...

Jordan Haines

Hi, I'm Jordan.

I'm a full-time CTO (with Run for Something), a consulting fractional CTO (most recently for LingroLearning), and consistently just one post away from being what I'd consider a writer. More importantly, I'm a dad in Minneapolis who loves history, good coffee, and building things on my computer. In a good week, you can catch me exploring all three with my hobby project, Historio.

LET'S SOLVE A PROBLEM TOGETHER

My capacity to take on consulting work is very limited (see above RE kids). That said, I have a hard time saying no to using novel tech to solve the right challenge with the right people.

The right challenges include:

The right people include: Collaborative creatives with a clear sense of how their impact will better others.

Email me about a project →

Posts

Jun 2026
Who Should Govern California (According to AI)?
What voters hear when they ask a chatbot about the 2026 governor's race — and how fast that narrative moves. Written from CampSight data.
Jan 2026
Living in Minneapolis
Reflections on living in Minneapolis during Operation Metro Surge.
Jan 2026
2026: Starving the Noise to Feed My Curiosity
A new approach to goals that may actually work (UPDATE: did not work).
Nov 2024
The Geometry of Ideas
A little post I almost didn't publish, on a little idea I almost didn't explore.
Oct 2024
Building Historio: Which Feature First?
From a fresh NextJS project to a landing page on Cloudflare, and how I picked what to build first.
Oct 2024
The Early Product Cycle
How to prioritize features in a way that gets your new product off the ground.

Current Projects

CampSight
Answer engine optimization (AEO) for campaigns. CampSight allows campaigns, and the organizations that support them, to track and improve what AI is saying about them. CampSight is a project I lead in my role as CTO of Run for Something
Lingro Convobots
Real-time conversation bots for students learning a new language.
Historio
Share and explore your favorite history with others through interactive timelines, maps, charts, and posts built from your favorite history books.

Press

THE GREAT BATTLEFIELD
Improving What AI Says About You with Jordan Haines
Podcast conversation with Nathaniel Pearlman on my path into political tech, and how we're building CampSight
THE NEW YORK TIMES
Politicians Are Trying to Change What Chatbots Say About Them
How campaigns, including CampSight, are racing to shape what AI chatbots tell voters about candidates.
POLITICO
Democrats Want to Know What AI Says About Their Candidates — and Change It
On Democratic campaigns paying closer attention to their AI footprint, and the tools — like CampSight — built to manage it.
NOTUS / WASHINGTON SUN
A New AI Tool Lets Candidates See What Chatbots Are Telling Voters
How CampSight helps candidates understand and influence how AI chatbots present their campaigns to voters.

Tools and Ideas I Subscribe to

I'm particular about my tools. I like trying new ways of working, experimenting with new workflows, and finding that productivity hack that actually makes me more productive.

My Stack

Notion
For my half-written notes, half-thought-out ideas, and half-completed projects. Which used to be a mess, but now claude makes pretty good sense of it all.
Sunsama
I've tried literally every todo app, and Sunsama is the one that has stuck. I use it to prioritize weekly objectives and daily tasks. Sunsama provides (and kind forces) the right balance of prioritizing vs doing.
Claude & Claude Code
Just trying to be a little more productive before the singularity.
VSCode
More for reading than writing code these days. Still the GOAT.
Pen.dev
Lightweight Figma that claude can control with version controlled files you can save in project repos.
Readwise
To track and sync my notes on Kindle books and articles.
Raycast
A better Mac Spotlight, with focus mode, snippets, and shortcuts for common app actions.
Xbox Game Pass
So I can play Baldur's Gate 3 with my dad.
📓 Dot grid notebooks
Sorry Sunsama, there's truly no better way to lock in on a todo list than a dot grid notebook and pencil (I'll die on the pencil > pen hill).
The Economist
My primary source of news. Huge life improvement when I went from reading tweets every 5 minutes to long-form articles every week. The Intelligence is excellent, too.

My Favorite Books

Bloodlands The Dawn of Everything Everything is Illuminated Four Thousand Weeks The Half Has Never Been Told These Truths Sapiens Dead Wake In the Heart of the Sea

My Favorite Posts

There's no such thing as a fresh start
Oliver Burkeman

"The self you're seeking to transform is the same one that's doing the transforming"

How to Build Good Habits That Actually Stick
Sunsama

"It's harder to say no than to just do it."

Weekly review, AI adoption, and brain modes
Luca Rossi

"You make connections between ideas and turn them into something new. It feels draining but rewarding, like a workout. Every time you create these connections, you're rewiring your brain, improving your mental models."