/work

Problem

Teams struggle to ship AI-enabled systems quickly without losing control. Projects stall in discovery, prototypes don't harden into production, and AI work becomes fragile, opaque, or over-engineered.

Approach

Built Nought.digital as an outcome-driven delivery practice with a fixed execution model.

• Defined a clear end-to-end process (Outline → Research → Build → Integrate → Test)
• Focus on shipping real systems, not decks or demos
• AI used as an accelerator, not a black box
• Emphasis on observability, guardrails, and human-in-the-loop workflows
• Delivery scoped by outcomes, not hours
• Designed to drop into teams, unblock delivery, and leave behind production-ready systems.

Outcome

• Complex projects delivered in weeks instead of months
• Clear ownership, predictable delivery, and fewer rewrites
• AI systems that teams can understand, control, and extend
• Repeatable framework now used across multiple real projects

Problem

Teams need polished web products, brand systems, and AI automation shipped fast — without calendar theatre, bloated agency process, or black-box delivery.

Approach

Built LemonOctopus as a creative-first studio with a fixed brief-to-deploy workflow.

• Full-stack delivery across Astro, Next, Shopify, and WooCommerce
• AI workflows, content systems, and operational automation
• Brand identity, art direction, and launch assets
• Architecture, performance, integrations, and production code
• Async retainers for ongoing optimisation and support

Outcome

• Typical go-live windows under a week
• 95+ PageSpeed scores on launch
• Conversion-focused sites with measurable post-launch lift
• Repeatable delivery model across web, brand, and AI projects

Problem

Restaurants need to manage allergen data accurately and keep menus up to date. Most systems are static, error-prone, and awkward to update, which creates real legal and health risk.

Approach

Built a SaaS platform focused on speed, structure, and compliance.

• Structured ingredient and allergen model
• Real-time menu updates without redeploys
• Embeddable menus and QR-friendly delivery
• API-first architecture for custom integrations
• Structured workflows to reduce manual mistakes
• Multi-tenant product foundation designed to scale

Outcome

• Restaurants can update menus instantly
• Compliance risk is reduced through structured data and validation
• Menus stay consistent across web, QR, and embeds
• Platform is ready for SaaS scale

Problem

Resellers often list the same item across multiple platforms such as eBay and Vinted. Managing listings manually across marketplaces is repetitive and error-prone. Common issues include duplicate data entry, inconsistent pricing or descriptions, and listings remaining active after an item sells elsewhere. Existing tools are usually rigid or expensive.

Approach

Designed a platform to simplify and automate cross-listing workflows.

Key ideas:

• Single source of truth for listings
• Automated cross-posting to marketplaces
• Structured item data that can adapt to platform requirements
• Lightweight automation to reduce repetitive listing work

The focus was on reducing friction for resellers, not building another complex listing tool.

Outcome

• Significantly reduced time spent creating listings
• Consistent product data across platforms
• Fewer mistakes caused by manual duplication
• Scalable foundation for marketplace automation

Problem

Refactoring ACF field structures is risky. Renaming fields, changing layouts, or reorganising flexible content can silently break data, corrupt content, or require fragile one-off scripts. Teams often avoid necessary changes because rollback is painful or impossible.

Approach

Built FieldCraft, a tool for safe, repeatable ACF data migrations.

• Declarative mapping from old to new field structures
• Supports nested, repeater, and flexible content fields
• Dry-run and validation workflows before applying changes
• Reversible migrations to protect production data
• Designed to run safely on live sites
• Focused on data integrity and developer confidence, not speed at all costs.

Outcome

• Enables large ACF refactors without data loss
• Eliminates risky manual scripts and database edits
• Makes long-term schema evolution feasible
• Safer production changes with predictable outcomes

Problem

Foragers lack a structured, up-to-date reference that ties species knowledge to real locations. Field guides and forums are fragmented, hard to search on the go, and rarely connected to where food actually grows.

Approach

Built a web app combining field-guide content with a living, searchable map.

• Species reference content structured for quick identification
• Map-based discovery of foraging locations
• Designed for use in the field, not just at a desk
• Foundation for a growing, community-driven dataset

Outcome

• Practical tool for identifying and locating wild food
• Field guide and map in a single product
• Platform ready to grow with more species and locations

Problem

The same car part is often fitted to several different vehicles at very different prices. Garages, fleets, and drivers routinely overpay because compatibility data is fragmented, supplier stock is siloed, and nobody has time to cross-check every alternative.

Approach

Built a cross-reference platform that finds every vehicle a part fits and every supplier that holds it — then surfaces the cheapest match.

• Structured cross-reference graph with cited evidence
• DVLA-verified vehicle data from VRM lookup
• Part-number, VRM, and description-led search
• New, OEM, aftermarket, and breaker stock compared side-by-side
• Auto-growing catalogue with a public REST API

Outcome

• Garages find the cheapest source for the exact part in seconds
• Cross-vehicle matches surface alternatives that manual research misses
• Up to 80% savings compared with main dealer pricing
• Foundation for a UK-wide automotive parts intelligence platform

Problem

WordPress onboarding tools like MerlinWP are theme-bound, brittle, and poorly suited to modern productised workflows. Setup logic lives in themes, making it hard to reuse, version, test, or maintain - especially for agencies and SaaS-style WordPress products.

Approach

Built a plugin-first onboarding framework that decouples setup flows from themes entirely.

• Plugin-based architecture instead of theme drop-ins
• Guided, multi-step setup wizard reusable across projects
• Works with any theme or page builder
• Designed for agencies, product teams, and support workflows
• Clean extension points for custom steps, logic, and validation
• Licensing model aligned with real-world usage (personal, agency, unlimited)
• Focused on separation of concerns, reusability, and long-term maintainability.

Outcome

• Onboarding logic becomes reusable, testable, and upgradable
• Faster project setup without locking behaviour into themes
• Cleaner handover from build to support teams
• Enables SaaS-style WordPress products with predictable setup flows
• Production-ready plugin with pricing and real-world use cases

Problem

WordPress testing is slow, brittle, and hostile to modern workflows. PHPUnit boilerplate, unclear setup, and poor DX mean many teams either avoid tests entirely or maintain fragile, hard-to-read test suites.

Approach

Built a Pest-first testing framework for WordPress that brings modern, expressive testing patterns into a legacy ecosystem without breaking compatibility.

• Native Pest integration tailored for WordPress
• Clean abstractions over WP bootstrap, factories, and globals
• Sensible defaults to reduce setup friction
• CI-friendly configuration for GitHub Actions and GitLab
• Extensive documentation and real-world testing examples (WooCommerce, ACF, roles, caching, background jobs)
• Focused on clarity, speed, and developer confidence, not just test coverage.

Outcome

• WordPress tests become readable, concise, and maintainable
• Faster test authoring with significantly less boilerplate
• Enables teams to adopt modern testing without rewriting their stack
• Improved confidence when refactoring plugins and core logic
• Open-source framework actively usable in real projects

Problem

WordPress search is keyword-based, brittle, and poorly suited to large or content-heavy sites. Important information is hard to find, relevance is low, and extending search quality requires complex custom work.

Approach

Built a semantic retrieval layer for WordPress, designed to improve search relevance without replacing existing content workflows.

• Content indexing and embedding pipeline
• Semantic query matching instead of keyword-only search
• Structured retrieval with relevance scoring
• Works alongside existing WordPress data models
• Designed as a plugin with clear configuration and extensibility
• Focused on retrieval quality, performance, and developer control, not opaque AI behaviour.

Outcome

• Significantly improved content discoverability on large sites
• More relevant search results without manual tagging
• Search behaviour that scales with content growth
• Drop-in infrastructure that does not require rebuilding sites

Problem

Craft CMS developers had no polished, Craft-aware local development tool. Setups were manual, inconsistent across teams, Docker configs were hand-rolled, onboarding was slow, and "works on my machine" was the norm.

Approach

Built a dedicated desktop application for Craft CMS development, designed around reproducibility and developer experience.

Key decisions:

• Craft-aware project detection and versioning (Craft 3/4/5)
• Opinionated defaults over endless configuration
• Blueprint system to make environments reproducible and shareable
• Container backend abstraction (Colima, Docker)
• Desktop UI backed by a Go daemon with a clean HTTP API boundary
• Focused on DX first, not just container orchestration.

Outcome

• Local Craft environments spin up in minutes instead of hours
• Teams get consistent, repeatable environments via blueprints
• Local to Craft Cloud workflow unified in a single tool
• Mac-only native app to start, with stable performance and predictable setups