Builder for hire · Victoria, BC · works anywhere

You bring the problem.I build the solution.

I'm an AI-first software builder. You hand me the fuzzy, complicated, nobody-can-pin-it-down problem. I ask questions until it has edges, then I hyperfocus until it's working software in your hands. Clean handoff, no payroll, done means done.

Real software, live in productionFixed-scope gigs with a clean handoffYou call me. We jive. It's off to the races
jacob@jlh:~/build

$ availability

Booking project calls for fall 2026.

$ based_in

Victoria, BC. Remote everywhere.

$ first_call

No obligation. No pressure.

Receipts

Shipped, live, in use.

Not mockups, not tutorials, not a portfolio of promises. Working software that runs every day, built by one person directing AI with intent, while also running a coaching practice.

Live SaaS · private beta

CoachTide

A complete coaching-practice platform: booking pages, client pipeline, session prep, invoicing with card and Interac payments, a secure client portal, automatic ICF hour tracking, reminders and newsletters. I built it because nothing out there fit how a real practice runs. It runs mine end to end, from first hello to paid invoice.

coachtide.com
CoachTide
Public experiment

The Honest Bot Experiment

Five trading bots with rules frozen in advance, publishing every result in public, win or lose. A daily data engine, a locked rulebook, and a dashboard anyone can audit.

Audit the bots
You are looking at it

This website

The whole thing is a build: the content system I edit every page with, the galleries and blog, the business books with AI receipt reading, and a stack of private tools behind the login.

Wander the studio
Private app

Goukanson Ledger

A shared household expense app that replaced our family spreadsheet. It imported 591 past expenses on day one and caught math errors the spreadsheet had quietly carried for months.

Private app

Jarvis

A personal executive-function dashboard built around how my brain actually works: quests instead of to-do lists, timers, momentum, and a memory that never drops the thread.

Private app

By Heart

A trainer for memorizing long-form text word for word, built because I wanted to carry certain passages with me.

Free tool

Fishing Forecast

Tides, marine weather, and trip viability for 22 BC fishing spots in one view, so the go or no-go call takes ten seconds.

Check the water
Free tools

Creative utilities

A color-harmony palette builder and a rhyming dictionary, built to serve my own painting and songwriting.

Try the palette picker

The method

How a build works

Bring me the mess

No spec needed. Describe the pain in your own words, at whatever altitude it lives in your head. The shape comes out in conversation, and the first conversation is free.

I ask until it has edges

Questions are my sharpest tool. Any industry, any domain: we dig until the real problem is on the table, which is rarely the one in the first email. You'll know within an hour whether I'm your builder.

Hyperfocus does the heavy lifting

I build with AI deliberately and say so plainly: the tools bring speed, I bring direction, taste, and relentless testing. You see working software early, then improvements often. Momentum is the method.

Handoff, then I get out of the way

You get the finished product, every account and key, and plain-language docs. No retainer, no dependency, no payroll. When the next idea shows up, that's a new gig.

Terms, plainly

The deal

Gigs, not payroll

Every project has a built-in finish line. You get delivery, not a dependency, and you never have to figure out what to do with me afterward. That's a feature.

Scope agreed up front

We define what done means before I start. When the build teaches us something mid-flight, we talk about it in the open and decide together.

You own all of it

Code, accounts, data, docs. Your thing keeps running without me, and any developer can pick it up cold.

Honest by wiring

If something is a bad idea, I'll say so before you pay for it. If a simpler tool would serve you better than a custom build, I'll tell you that too.

The builder

Neurodivergent, on purpose, out loud.

More about me

I'm AuDHD: autistic and ADHD in the same brain. For years I treated that as something to manage around. It's actually the engine. Hyperfocus means that when I'm on your problem, I am fully on it, in deep stretches most schedules never allow. Pattern recognition across a lot of lived fields (professional kitchens, bands and records, galleries, executive coaching, software) means I come at problems from angles a specialist won't.

The other half of my week, I coach neurodivergent leaders as an ICF-certified coach. Same brain, same craft of questions and systems, different deliverable. It's why the discovery part of a build, the part most developers rush, is the part I'm best at.

Got a gnarly one? Good.

Bring it exactly as it lives in your head. The first call is thirty minutes, costs nothing, and you'll leave with sharper edges on your problem whether we work together or not.

Victoria, BC · remote everywhere · gigs only