Software Developer in Auckland. AuDHD mum, career-pivot at 45. Accessibility-first.
I worked in customer service for nearly 30 years, from the supermarket I started at 16 to the short-holiday company I left at 45. Three decades on the other side of the counter taught me that respect is earned, not given. That strength is built. That the people with a fighting spirit often find their path. And that I'm stronger than I thought.
I went back to school at 45 because I finally believed I could. Dev Academy turned out to be the road I'd been looking for. I've found it, and I intend to be on this journey for the long haul.
I want my work to serve people who get left out. Brightly Wired is a community platform I'm co-building because I wish I'd had something like it growing up — and at three, when my son's school called him "naughty, a bully, difficult to have in class," and again later when I was being diagnosed myself. The same idea drives bright-fit (an ND-friendly employer directory + application tracker for the adults still hiding who they are) and the Learning Companion Project (an AI study companion shaped for ND brains). Three projects, one audience: the unheard child, the struggling mother, the adult afraid that society will judge them.
I also want my kids to watch me do this. They are neurodivergent too. I want them to see a mother who stepped out of her comfort zone, took an unknown road full of curves and blockers, and kept walking it. I want them to know they can carve out their own path and create bright futures for themselves — and that being who they are is enough.
What keeps me coming back to the keyboard? My brain is part chaos, part calm. The calm has finally found its foundation on the backend — schemas, migrations, seeds, the relational layer I love. It took me 45 years to find the place that makes my heart sing and my mind a calm ocean. Now that I've found it, I want to keep exploring everything coding and the tech industry has to offer. That's why I've applied to continue at Dev Academy's AI Launchpad (starting 27 July), and why I'm aiming at Summer of Tech after.
- Now — Dev Academy AI Launchpad (27 July → 13 November 2026). Just finished the group project on Buzz, an open-source hive-mind communication platform. I owned the documentation corpus — 233 files covering architecture, schema, standards and capabilities
- Building — The Professor, a skill that creates docs, maintains them and vets them, all in one. Docs are my least favourite job, so I automated the whole loop rather than just the first draft. Built for Buzz, finishing it for myself
- Also building — agent-verification-kit and a test automation suite. Both started for Buzz and outgrew it — I wanted tools I could use anywhere, on any project
- Applied — Summer of Tech 2026/27
I build the guardrails, not just the prompts.
| Project | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| agent-verification-kit | Test automation and verification for agentic coding. Ships hooks, not only skills — a skill is advice, a hook is a gate | Active |
| serina-skills | My skills library — the review gate, QA, planning and build pipelines I use on every project | Going public |
| Buzz | Open-source hive-mind communication platform. I owned the documentation corpus — 233 files across architecture, schema, standards and capabilities | Launchpad group project, complete |
| loom | A dashboard over a fleet of coding agents working in parallel git worktrees | Shipped |
| agent-hooks-case-study | Seven Claude Code hooks, and the case study of finding four had never worked once. Published with two defects still live, stated before the install instructions | Shipped |
| Avalúne | Next.js site for my shared fantasy universe. Accessibility rules enforced in the build, not left to memory | Private, active |
| Atlas | A visual concept library, accessibility-first. Topic-coded cards on a dark canvas | On hold |
| Moonlit Library | A personal book library — designed for the way I actually read | Deployed |
| vixenz-portfolio | The source for vixenz.dev. Built in Astro — new stack for me, learning by doing | Deployed |
| Kiwicom | A community hub for developers to discover, share and collaborate on open-source projects. Dev Academy final group project | On hiatus |
| Project | What it is | Status |
|---|---|---|
| Brightly Wired | NZ neurodiverse community platform, co-built with my husband. Umbrella for the two below | Planning, long-term |
| bright-fit | ND-friendly employer directory + application tracker, for the adults still hiding who they are | In design |
| Learning Companion | AI study companion shaped for ND brains | In design |
→ Full case studies and live demos at vixenz.dev
| Languages | TypeScript · JavaScript |
| Frontend | React · Next.js · Astro · Vite · CSS Modules · MDX |
| Backend | Express · Knex · SQLite · Postgres · Supabase |
| Agentic / AI | Claude Code skills + hooks · agent orchestration · LLM APIs |
| Testing | Vitest · Playwright · axe-core |
| Deploy | Cloudflare Pages · Cloudflare Workers · Render |
| Learning | Python · Docker · Rust |
| Next up | Kubernetes · React Native + Expo |
I learn new tech by building something with it. Astro became this site, Python became loom and the Learning Companion, Next.js became Avalúne.
- Portfolio — vixenz.dev — case studies, blog, CV
- LinkedIn — linkedin.com/in/serinamcfall
- Best reach — LinkedIn DM, or via the contact page at vixenz.dev