You do not need to understand transformers. You do need to spot the difference between a defensible AI product and a prompt in a trench coat — including when the person telling you is your own contractor.
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Not to start, but you need someone technical whose judgement you trust and whose incentives are not tied to the size of the build — an advisor, a fractional CTO, or a vendor willing to talk you out of things. The risk without that is not being defrauded; it is being enthusiastically agreed with by people paid by the hour.
Frequently yes. If a no-code tool can test your hypothesis in a fortnight for a few hundred euros, do that before commissioning custom work. Custom development earns its cost when you hit the ceiling — usually your own data, real volume, or a workflow the tool cannot express.
Ask what they measured on their last project and what the number was. Strong AI engineers talk about evaluation, failure cases and cost almost immediately; weaker ones talk mostly about models and frameworks. Ask what they decided not to use AI for — anyone who has shipped has that story.
The thin wrapper window has largely closed, and that is a good thing — it never had a business underneath it. What has not closed is applying this to a specific domain you understand better than a generalist team ever will. Domain knowledge plus proprietary data is still where the durable products come from.
Including the ones you suspect are naive. Those are usually the good ones.
30-minute call · no deck
What we built, what stage it is at, and a link to the live thing wherever there is one.
yourOS is an operating system with an AI at its heart. You talk to it like a person, out loud or typed. It makes your calls, plans your days and works on your projects with a crew of agents, on your own private server. Our own product, built from the first commit; the waitlist is open.
Website, backend and app assets for Sonora, a free AI sound-therapy app on iOS and Android published by Cognitive AI.
Brand, website, prototype, apps on five platforms, the AI backend and the algorithm-intelligence pipeline for Podswap, a social growth engine that runs without a human in the loop.
In closed beta: Roxy, a private AI assistant with permanent memory running on infrastructure the user owns. Brand, site, product, backend and conversational design.
Live at coherence.com: brand identity generated with AI agents we directed, the motion system and website for the group behind Sonora, AboutAI, WakeUp and MudShadows. Agent work remains in build.
Live at domainbooth.com for DomainBooth, a premium domain brokerage: a new animated mark, every page redesigned and rebuilt with designed mobile layouts, and a custom CMS for its sales record, featured names, press and enquiries.
Apps, platforms and campaigns for these teams, long before the AI work. Every one is written up on the work page — what we did, and where our part ended.
