Hi, I'm Dan Delaney

Engineering leader. Weekend builder. Philadelphia suburbs.

I lead software development at Bentley Systems. On my own time I build agentic tooling — MCP servers in C# and .NET that give AI agents safe, scoped access to real data like email and notes. The best of them are open source.

See my projects Download resume LinkedIn
Portrait of Dan Delaney

01 — About

Engineer first, manager second.

I've spent my career building software for the people who design and build the world's infrastructure — engineers, architects and constructors.

I joined Bentley Systems in 2009, straight out of RPI with a degree in computer science, and spent my first eight years as an engineer writing cloud services and Windows desktop applications for the engineering, architecture and construction industries. In 2017 I moved into management, and today I lead more than 125 engineers across MicroStation, iModel Connectors, iTwin Studio and PowerPlatform.

I still write code every week. Outside of work that mostly means my homelab: a Proxmox cluster, a NAS and a growing set of self-hosted services. Lately I've been building Model Context Protocol servers that let AI assistants work safely with my own data — and publishing them as open source.

Away from the keyboard I'm usually reading — there's always a book in progress and a stack waiting behind it. When I'm not, I'm flying a drone for aerial mapping or working through a backlog of games on my PC and handhelds.

Experience

Bentley Systems · Exton, PA · 2009–present
  1. Dec 2024 — Present
    Senior Director, Software Development
    MicroStation, iModel Connectors, iTwin Studio and PowerPlatform.
  2. May 2022 — Dec 2024
    Director, Software Development
    Managed the development and modernization of MicroStation and PowerPlatform.
  3. Jan 2021 — May 2022
    Senior Development Manager
    Responsible for development of MicroStation, PowerPlatform and OpenServices.
  4. Jan 2017 — Jan 2021
    Development Manager
  5. Jul 2009 — Jan 2017
    Software Engineer → Senior Software Engineer
    Software Engineer (2009–2014), Software Engineer II (2014–2016), Senior Software Engineer (2016–2017).

02 — Projects

Open source

All repositories on GitHub →

Mailvec

Mail, plus a vector.
PROJECT 01

Give your agent your email. Not your mailbox.

An MCP server over a local, continuously synced copy of your mail. Keyword and semantic search fused into one ranking — exact matches and paraphrases both land.

  • Agents can search and read. They can't send, reply, move or delete.
  • Your mailbox lives on your machine. Embeddings and OCR run locally by default; hosted providers are opt-in.
  • PDF and Word attachments are searchable alongside the messages they came in.
C# / .NETSQLite · FTS5sqlite-vecOllamaMCP
Project page → GitHub
search_emails · hybridillustrative
❯ "roof warranty paperwork"
Warranty registration — confirmation
kw 0.71 · sem 0.88 · 1 pdf
0.92
Final invoice and paperwork
kw 0.42 · sem 0.81 · 2 attachments
0.77
Re: shingle guarantee follow-up
kw 0.00 · sem 0.74 · paraphrase
0.58

Knapper

Open-source MCP server for Obsidian
PROJECT 02

Let AI agents into your Obsidian vault without losing a note.

Every write is checked, nothing gets overwritten blind, and anything unsafe stops instead of guessing. Knapper runs always-on in a homelab container and is the single way agents read and write the vault.

knap·pernoun
Someone who shapes obsidian into tools by striking flakes off it.
C# / .NETMCPObsidianProxmox LXCCloudflare Access
Project page → GitHub
vault_batch · auditillustrative
batch 3 edits · expect_sha256 checked
├─ ✓ Projects/Garage.md      a41f→7be2
├─ ✓ Daily/2026-11-09.md     0c93→e1d0
└─ ✕ Reference/Wi-Fi.md      stale read
   changed on another device — re-read

● sync healthy   ◐ 1 retry pending
nothing overwritten blind.

Earlier work

Applecross ARB

Web app · retired

An architectural review board website I built for my homeowners association. It handled hundreds of submissions a year through a structured submit, review and respond workflow, and cut average turnaround from six weeks to under one.

View on GitHub →

Tome

Windows 8 · retired

A Goodreads client for Windows 8, released free on the Windows Store, where it reached a few thousand users before I retired it.

View on GitHub →

03 — Contact

Let's talk.

Questions about Mailvec or Knapper, engineering leadership, or anything else — the best way to reach me is LinkedIn or email.

LinkedIn GitHub Email me