Developer. Writer. Builder. Creating products, stories, and experiments at the intersection of human creativity and artificial intelligence.
Latest Video
Weekly video series breaking down practical AI skills without the hype
Stop treating AI like Google. Learn the key difference between search and conversation, and master the iterative approach that makes AI actually useful.
A weekly video series breaking down practical AI skills without the hype. No overpromising, no generic advice—just what actually works. Each episode includes social media clips optimized for TikTok, Instagram, and X.
Latest Thinking
Thoughts on AI, technology, productivity, and the future of human-machine collaboration
Featured Work
Products and stories at the intersection of human creativity and AI
Nolan & Claude
Human + AI Fiction
A physicist attempts to contact her colleague lost in a particle accelerator accident. As grief meets cutting-edge physics, the boundaries between life and death become negotiable.
Website Design
Custom-designed websites that capture your brand and drive results. Built for restaurants, healthcare, beauty, and professional services.
Need a website for your business?
Let's Talk About Your ProjectWeb Applications
Complex web applications with dual portals, custom workflows, and data management. Built for real estate, staffing, and enterprise needs.
Need a custom application for your business?
Discuss Your ProjectMost AI initiatives fail because they start with technology instead of business outcomes.
Knowledge bases, compliance automation
AI-native products, competitive advantage
Back-office automation, document processing
Lead qualification, content generation
Prove value with tactical wins before betting on strategic plays.
Every initiative lives in a quadrant. Know which one you're in.
Projects migrate between quadrants as you learn. That's the point.
From manual reproduction using Claude Code to fully autonomous AI agents. Most companies skip stages—and fail.
"You can't build an autonomous AI agent if you don't understand how to connect an email trigger to a database update. That's like building a skyscraper before you've stacked two blocks."
Use Claude Code to identify tasks worth automating.
Each stage teaches patterns for the next.
Most teams skip Stage 2 and wonder why AI agents fail.
I'm Nolan Northup—a developer, writer, and AI enthusiast based in Wisconsin. This site is a living portfolio of what's possible when human creativity partners with artificial intelligence.
After 20+ years in enterprise technology, I've become fascinated by the emerging collaboration between humans and AI. Not as replacement, but as partnership. These projects—the apps, stories, and experiments—are explorations of that frontier.
Background, experience, and credentials
How this collaboration began
Open source projects
Professional background
Want to connect?
hello@upnorthdigital.aiBased in Wausau, Wisconsin • Building at the frontier of human-AI collaboration
