Built on my own time
The code is AI's. Every product decision is mine.
I made six builds between April and August 2026. Claude and Codex wrote nearly all the code, and I did the scope, the decisions and the testing. Vard CRM came first, and it was my first build with a frontend, a backend and a database. Before that I'd only built prototypes.
Why I keep building
Between roles since March, building is how I keep doing product work for real instead of only talking about it.
It also shows me where my own judgement runs out. Architecture, security and what the code will cost to change need a developer's judgement.
Vard CRM
CRM for a freelance photographer · 2026
A small CRM built around the way one freelance photographer works.
Finished for a friend. He got a job before he needed it.
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This website
Personal site · 2026
Built from scratch and treated as a working product, which gives me somewhere to test tone, structure and delivery on something I own.
Still changing while I use it for my own job search.
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Resume Builder
CV document tool · 2026
A structured CV editor that keeps reusable content separate from layout, with fast previews while editing and a rendered PDF check before export.
In production. I use it myself, and a few select friends.
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Archive Lens
Historical photograph catalogue · 2026 · React, FastAPI, Supabase, Cloud Run
A searchable catalogue for a friend's photograph collection, with the originals left in Google Drive. OCR reads each card, an AI pass on her own key suggests fields and a person approves them before anything reaches the catalogue.
In user testing with the person I built it for. Feedback goes straight back in.
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News Agent
AI news curation agent · 2026 · Python, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, OpenAI
AI agents wrote the code. I set the spending caps, made the decisions and checked the AI's news judgement against my own, then closed it once I'd learned what I set out to learn.
A handful of sessions, then closed. I kept the learning and dropped the product.
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Job Matcher
AI job-ad scorer · 2026 · Next.js, OpenRouter
A scorer that reads job ads and predicts my interest. AI agents built it, and I tuned it against 188 of my own ratings. The hard part turned out to be the job boards.
Closed after two days. The rulebook and what I learned about evals are still useful.
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The harder part turned out to be judging the result. I scored the AI's news picks against my own on 46 articles and taught the job scorer with 188 rated ads before testing it blind. I also set spending caps and checked that they stopped things.
They're in the order I built them. What changed most across them was my own practice, meaning how I plan a build and write the prompts, and having a second model review the first one's plan and code before I trust it.
One of these was never used and I closed two of them myself. What each was for and what it changed is in the write-ups.