I design everything on this site. I'm the architect and the engineer. I decide what the thing is for and who it's for, then work out what systems it needs, research them, and lay out how they fit together and which way the data moves through them. AI is the tool I build with. It writes the code, all of it, and it's the most valuable tool I've ever had. What comes out of it depends on what goes in: knowing what you're after, breaking the job into its parts, and understanding how the thing you're building actually works, whether that's a restaurant taking orders or a lawn crew working a route. Typing "make me a poker calculator" into a chat window gets you nothing that works. The thing has to be designed from the ground up first, and that part is mine. Then I read what comes back, understand why it's written the way it is, and send it back until it does the job it was meant to do. That's how I built the first one and it's how I still work today.
I started with a poker tool and ChatGPT in a browser tab, copying pieces out one at a time and putting them together myself. That took two years, and it's how I learned to read code. Everything else here came after it, and faster.
A lot of these started in a field I knew nothing about. That has never been the thing that stopped me.
I didn't pick my tools off a list. The first thing I built was a poker tool in JavaScript and CSS, because that was what I could get running in a browser. It worked, and it was slow, so it got rebuilt in C++, which is what you reach for when something has to read a screen and answer while the hand is still being played. The first version of the lawn care software was plain PHP for one business. When it had to serve many businesses, I rebuilt it on Laravel. Most of what's below got here the same way: something simpler came first, and I found out where it stopped being enough.
PHP and Laravel on MySQL for web applications a business runs on every day.
Plain HTML, CSS and JavaScript with Tailwind for websites that load fast and stay simple.
C++ with Qt, OpenCV and Tesseract for desktop software that reads a screen in real time.
Python with FastAPI for small tools and background services.
Swift and SpriteKit for iPhone.
My own Linux server to run all of it.
A lot of the job is connecting to what a business already uses, so nothing has to be replaced. Stripe for card payments and payment plans. Square, so online orders land in the same system as the register. Uber Direct for delivery. Google Maps for addresses, drive times and route order. Claude, Whisper and Piper when the product itself needs to think, listen or talk.
I'm always watching what's new, because this moves fast and I love seeing new tools show up. Over the past three years I've changed my mind about what's best more than once, and I've learned that the right tool depends on the job. One kind of database is great for a business's records, a smaller one is better for a tool that lives on a single machine, and another is built for searching by meaning. Even a tool that only fits one small situation is worth having. It's one more thing in the kit for building bigger things for people.
This is the work on this site. It starts with finding where a business actually gets stuck: a stack of subscriptions that don't talk to each other, or work being done by hand that software should be doing. Then I design the thing that fixes it, build it, put it on a server, and keep it running.
Years of running my own days with nobody managing me. Every shift is a live routing problem: several platforms at once, orders stacking up, a clock on each one. I know what a day of stops feels like from the inside, and it shows in the scheduling and routing I build.
Six years on the phone with people who were confused, desperate or angry is where I learned how to find out what somebody actually needs, which is why every project starts with a conversation. Then I moved into quality assurance and coached other agents to do the same thing. That taught me how to walk somebody through a process until they fully understand what's happening, and I do that with the people I build for too.
I've been making technology make sense to people since the nineties, teaching adults who were starting from zero and getting them through their certification exams. After that came a decade of running busy bars and restaurants. Along the way I even designed a complete bartending school program from scratch, including curriculum, testing procedures, video training, and website.
Everything above comes down to one thing. I find out what somebody actually needs, and then I build exactly that. Six years of listening to people on the phone taught me the first half. The projects on this site, a lot of them in fields I knew nothing about when I started, are the second half.
It all starts with a conversation. Tell me what you're dealing with and I'll tell you what I'd do about it. You won't get a hard sell, because I'm not a salesman and I don't bullshit. If I'm not the right guy for it, I'll say so, and you'll still leave with a few ideas you can use. I like talking to people who see what this stuff makes possible, whether or not it turns into a project.
If it feels like something we can work on, what follows is a lot of questions. For a simple website, a few. For a full system, a lot more, and I'll want to spend time at your place seeing how things actually run. Then I go build it in my own space, and you can follow along the whole way, because every change I make is written down where you can read it.
I work as an independent contractor or consultant. I do my best work with small businesses, single owners, and people chasing their own thing. Email me. ryanheeskens@gmail.com