# David Retegan

Founder, designer, engineer, student. I occasionally write.

[Discombabulate](https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/discombobulation)

Site: https://combabulating.com

## Things I've built

- **Lantr** — iOS · macOS · Android · Windows · 2025–2026. A cross-platform presentation
  workspace, made agentic: you started from a story before it let you build a single
  slide. Narrative arc blocks, 13 city-named themes, a speech-to-slide pipeline that
  listened to your meaning and built visuals live. Co-founded; I led design, the iOS and
  macOS apps, and the AI system. Sunset. Case study: [/lantr](/lantr/index.md)
- **Ino Restaurants** — iOS · 2024. Restaurant discovery for my city: search by cuisine
  and time, see what's open, reserve a table. ~200 people tried it.
- **Via Transilvanica** — iOS · watchOS · design · 2023. Unofficial trail companion for
  Romania's cross-country hiking route. Live journey tracking, region search, water and
  medical stops, an Apple Watch face that warns you when you've left the path.
- **Roadout** — iOS · Android · 2022–2023. Parking reservation for Cluj-Napoca. Designed
  twice, once per platform.
- **Serodoze** — design · 2022. Design work for a social app around real events, booking
  and tickets. Figma.

Full list: [/projects](/projects/index.md)

## Teaching

I teach a design course at [DpIT](https://dpit.ro), a non-profit that mentors students
into IT. Three years of courses so far (2024, 2025, 2026).

## Swift

- [LazyLayoutKit](https://github.com/Dave861/LazyLayoutKit) — lazy custom layouts for
  SwiftUI. Declare sizes up front so layout is pure arithmetic and builds nothing
  offscreen. 120 fps over 1,000,000 items.
- [swift-span-algorithms](https://github.com/Dave861/swift-span-algorithms) — algorithms
  for Span and RawSpan: search, comparison, trimming, chunking, windowing, splitting,
  cursors. Zero allocations, proven by benchmark.
- [JudgeCalibrationKit](https://github.com/Dave861/JudgeCalibrationKit) — inter-rater
  agreement for model judges: Cohen's κ, weighted κ, Krippendorff's α, bootstrap CIs,
  CI gates. Abstentions counted separately.

Member of [swiftlang](https://github.com/swiftlang).

## Essays

- [Why Build Anything?](/why_build_anything/index.md) — Sep 2026
- [Spoken Slides](/spoken_slides/index.md) — May 2026
- [Complex Things](/complex_things/index.md) — Feb 2026
- [Stealing the Stage](/stealing_the_stage/index.md) — Feb 2026
- [The Human Mind](/the_human_mind/index.md) — Jan 2026
- [Building with Intelligence](/building_with_intelligence/index.md) — Dec 2025
- [Web. Native. AI](/web_native_ai/index.md) — Oct 2025

## Elsewhere

- GitHub: https://github.com/Dave861
- X: https://x.com/davidretegan

*If this feels unfinished, good, I'm not done yet.*