How I build

Things I built because I needed them

I don't wait for someone else to build the tool. When something is annoying enough, at work, at home, or in the middle of a project, I build a fix. These are real examples of how I think about automation and AI: find the friction, identify the smallest viable solution, ship it.

What this page is really about

Something got in my way, so I built the fix. That's it. Before I build anything, I figure out why the problem is really there, then I build the smallest thing that fixes it. Give me a broken process or a manual chore and I'll come back with something that works, then move on to the next one.

Guides
Guide · Free
How to Build a Portfolio with AI
The problem

Most people who'd benefit from a portfolio don't have one. They're not designers, they don't code, and they stare at a blank screen not knowing where to start.

The fix

The exact process I used to build this site with Claude Code and GitHub Pages — content database, brand, story, and a live site you own. Prompts included, free to use.

Read the guide
AI & workflow tools
AI workflow
Paste-to-HTML Editor
The problem

Our team kept hand-formatting AI-drafted content into clean HTML for the website. Slow, error-prone, and a bad use of anyone's afternoon.

The fix

A paste-in editor that turns drafts into clean, ready-to-publish HTML in the browser. I built it as a lead magnet for PH360™, and the team uses it in real workflows.

Open tool
AI workflow
AI Text Reformatter
The problem

AI outputs markdown. Word doesn't speak markdown. Every document required manual reformatting (headers, bold, tables, all of it) before it was usable.

The fix

Paste markdown, click format, and copy. The output pastes into Word with correct heading styles, table formatting, and bold intact. The 20-minute reformat loop takes 10 seconds.

Open tool
AI · Jira · Calendar
Jira Time-Blocking Calendar
The problem

My Jira backlog and my Outlook calendar lived in separate worlds. I'd plan my week in my head, then watch it fall apart by Tuesday because nothing was time-blocked.

The fix

An AI-powered workflow that pulls your Jira tasks, reads your Outlook calendar screenshot, and builds an interactive drag-and-drop week view. Export as ICS and import directly into Outlook.

See how it works
Automation & scraping
Web scraping · Live
Central Lake County Fun
The problem

Every library, park district, and museum near me posts events on its own site. Finding something to do meant juggling a dozen tabs.

The fix

I scraped the sources into one place and built a filterable page for local events. It's live now.

See it live
Productivity
URL Extractor
The problem

Researching vendors, briefing prep, processing AI outputs. I was constantly copying URLs out of rich content by hand, ten times a week.

The fix

Copy anything, a webpage, an email, a document, then paste it here and get every URL extracted and filterable in one shot. Copy all to clipboard and move on.

Open tool
Automation
Library Hold Automation
The problem

2,400+ books in the backlog. Two library accounts. A manual process that needed to happen every week. Annoying enough to automate.

The fix

A Selenium-driven Python script that navigates the library catalog, places holds across both accounts, and falls back to interlibrary loan automatically. I haven't placed a manual hold since.

Read the story