Build studio for established small businesses

Stop fighting your tools. Start owning your systems.

Custom internal tools, integrations, and AI workflows for small businesses tired of duct-taping their stack. Ship in weeks, not months. Without the agency invoice.

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Trusted by small business owners across the Pacific Northwest

Sound familiar?

Your business is leaking hours to tools that don't talk to each other — and you don't have time to fix it.

You're paying for six SaaS subscriptions that almost work. Your team is doing in spreadsheets what software should automate. You tried Upwork and got a half-finished prototype. AI sounds useful, but every pitch sounds the same.

I build the custom systems that connect what you've already got — and replace what isn't working — using AI as a force multiplier, not a gimmick. Start with a free 20-minute call: enough time to know if there's something worth digging into, and whether we should work together to dig.

Tool sprawl

"I'm paying for six tools that almost do what I need. Nothing connects."

Manual work

"My team is doing in spreadsheets what software should automate."

AI uncertainty

"I don't know if this is a $30 tool, a workflow change, or a real build."

What I build

Services

01 Custom software

The custom tool your business runs on

The booking system, dashboard, or customer tracker you can't buy off the shelf — built around how your business actually works, not five apps duct-taped together. If it runs your operation, I can build it. (Live examples below.)

02 AI integration

AI that does the work you dread

Not a chatbot bolted on. AI that answers from your own documents and cites its source, drafts replies in your voice, or summarizes what nobody has time to read. Wherever AI can save your team real hours, that's where I build it in.

03 Integrations

Get your apps talking to each other

Most tools don't talk, so someone copy-pastes between them all day. I wire them together — Stripe to the books, forms to the CRM, the inbox to the workflow — so the data just flows. The quiet glue work that saves a team hours every week.

What changes

Outcomes my clients walk away with.

Multi-location service business
~60%

SaaS spend cut by consolidating into one custom stack

Bookings, staff scheduling, waitlist, and promos all on one platform they own.

Local business owner
Days → Min

Review response time cut from days to minutes

AI drafts replies in their voice. Owner approves and ships — without leaving the dashboard.

Solo professional
4–8 hrs

Back per week through workflow automation

Lead-to-CRM, form-to-Slack, and recurring report generation — owner stops being the bottleneck.

Why me

I don't need to know everything. I just need to build what works.

Agencies charge $40k for engagements I ship for $18k — because they have a PM, an account exec, a designer, a dev, and a QA all on payroll. I use AI as the multiplier, so one person does the work of three.

You get studio-grade output with no studio overhead. And the honesty to tell you when a $30/month tool does the job better than a custom build.

How I work with you
01 Strategy Structured research into your problem, your market, and your options. You get a documented recommendation — the actual answer — before any code is written.
02 Build I build exactly what the strategy calls for. Clear scope, documented deliverables, no surprises.
03 Launch & Support You own everything. I don't disappear after deploy.
What an engagement looks like

You'll always know the number before we start.

Every engagement starts with a free 20-minute call. Not a diagnosis on the spot — just enough time to know if we should work together.

If there's a fit, paid work begins with a Strategy phase — structured research into your problem, your market, and your options. This is where the actual recommendation lives. You get it documented before any code is written.

Sometimes that leads to a build. Sometimes it saves you from one.

Full builds are scoped and quoted up front. Clear number, clear timeline, clear deliverable.

Project engagements start at $6,000. Strategy phases start at $2,000. Strategic advisory retainers from $4,500/mo — scheduled hours, not on-call support.

Pricing is sized to the work and the value it creates. We talk about it on the call — not before.

Recent work

Selected builds

AI document assistant

Ask Your Docs

Turns your documents into an assistant your team and customers can trust. Every answer is cited to the source — and it says “I don’t know” instead of inventing one. Pick a sample business or upload your own file and ask it anything.

Node.js SQLite Voyage Claude API
View demo
Live product

SiteScore

Free local SEO audit tool for small businesses. Enter any US city and URL — get a weighted score and a prioritized fix list in seconds. City-aware themes, streaming results, shareable reports.

Next.js TypeScript Supabase Vercel
View live app
Local business owner

Reputation Tracker

Cuts review response time from days to minutes. Tracks health score and 90-day trends; AI drafts replies in your tone, you approve, reply ships — without leaving the dashboard.

React TypeScript Claude API Node.js
View demo
Multi-location service business

Booking Widget

Replaced 3 SaaS subscriptions with one custom stack — bookings, staff scheduling, waitlist, and promos all in one. Customer-facing 4-step flow with live summary sidebar; admin dashboard for ops, performance, and growth.

Vanilla JS React Node.js SQLite
View demo
Chris Shannon, founder of Honest Dev Consulting
About me

I'm not going to sell you a six-month project when a two-week build solves your problem.

I started as a musician — drums, production, hours in the studio learning that nothing works until everything works together. That's where I learned to listen first, build second.

Then state government IT and project management — running systems people depended on, closing the gap between what they needed and what their tools could do. That work pulled me into AI. AI pulled me into building.

Now I build custom software for small businesses — with the discipline of government IT, the ear of a musician, and the honesty to tell you when not to build at all.

Based in Washington State. Remote-first with US small businesses.

You own your software

IP terms settled before we start, not after the invoice.

No disappearing act

I don't vanish after launch — support is part of the deal.

Honest answers always

Including "you don't need custom software for this."

Have a project in mind?

Let'sbuild.

Book a free 20-minute call. Enough time to know if there's something worth investigating — and whether I'm the right person to investigate with you.

1 You book → 2 I read your site & socials → 3 20-min call. We decide together.
Book a free audit Just say hey