Stephen Walter 7/9/26 Stephen Walter 7/9/26

Driftwood: An Open Source Design Research Platform for Web Apps

An agile design-research tool for beta testing that turns a live beta's scattered signals into one calm, honest workspace. It runs the full research loop inside a single config-driven app — conducting user research through a triage Stream and an interactive testing guide, running real A/B experiments, and analyzing live product analytics across both web and mobile apps. I developed in with Claude code to replace a stack of paid, bloated tools with a single open source app.

Stephen Walter 6/19/26 Stephen Walter 6/19/26

The Community AI Project

The Community AI Project is constellation of apps I designed and developed that provide communities with free AI tools to more easily and effectively tackle the challenges of civic life. Rooted in accessibility, guided by democratic ideals, protective of privacy, and committed to climate justice, the project aims to take a provocative step away from dependence on Big Tech while still taking advantage of the latest in LLM and computational technology.

Stephen Walter 6/16/26 Stephen Walter 6/16/26

Hush: Toward the world's best free video noise reducer

Every phone and most cameras quietly denoise video before you ever see the frame. And it baked in what it thinks the colors in your image should should be. Step up to RAW or log — the formats that make real color grading possible — and that baked-in cleanup is gone. DaVinci Resolve's own NR is Studio-only; the third-party plugins are paid. And noise isn't cosmetic: every contrast move amplifies it, every key edges against it, every composite inherits it. So we built the safety net — free, transparent, and yours to control. Hush gets rid of the noise. Speak adds back filmic texture. Together they are the world’s most advanced free video noise reduction Open Effect.

Stephen Walter 6/15/26 Stephen Walter 6/15/26

The Hope Group: Building AI Apps for Minority-Owned Small Businesses

Tools that scan, sort, and route — so small operators get the leverage that used to require a back office.

Stephen Walter 1/29/26 Stephen Walter 1/29/26

Neighborhood AI

Build a custom AI assistant for your town, neighborhood, or community organization. Fine-tuned with local knowledge. Governed by community values. Run on your own hardware.

Stephen Walter 11/12/24 Stephen Walter 11/12/24

UpRiver

UpRiver is a two part early warning / early action game for understanding and forecasting water levels along flood-prone areas of rivers. The first part is an analog game designed to help those in flood-prone communities better understand the models of river flooding and the importance of upstream-downstream communication for reducing flood losses. The second part, an SMS-based game played on cell phones, aims to both put into place an actual communication network that relays upstream information (thus triggering preparedness measures downstream), and to crowd-source river level data to improve computer models.

Stephen Walter 11/11/24 Stephen Walter 11/11/24

Community PlanIt

Community PlanIt was a game for community planning, used for processes and issues ranging from the City of Detroit’s Long Term Plan, to youth unemployment in Moldova, to school planning in the LA Unified School District and Boston Public Schools.

Stephen Walter 11/10/24 Stephen Walter 11/10/24

Civic Seed

Civic Seed is an online multiplayer RPG and collective art project developed to prepare college students for community service. It was tested at Tufts University to enhance learning and deepen students' understanding of community contexts. An open source browser-based app developed in HTML 5 and node.js.

Stephen Walter 11/2/24 Stephen Walter 11/2/24

Risk horizon

The global view of risk management as an unaffordable cost, especially in developing countries. The game Risk Horizon allows participants to learn risk management through experiential gameplay. More than 5,000 government employees worldwide found it to be the most memorable part of the course, highlighting its potential to change perceptions of risk management as a development tool.

Stephen Walter 11/1/24 Stephen Walter 11/1/24

Unlocking Health

A digital game that immerses players in a fictional world called Zariba, where they act as World Bank Results-Based Financing (RBF) for Health consultants, designing and implementing an RBF program. They face real-world challenges and adapt their strategies to meet healthcare service goals. The game has two phases and lasts 45 minutes, with the option to replay. In Phase 1, players explore, gather information, and create an RBF program proposal. In Phase 2, they monitor and adapt the program in real time. Developed with the World Bank and played by hundreds of health policy experts around the world.