SimpleAFSimpleAF
A one-person lab where I build AI-assisted research tools and small, sharp pieces of custom software, then point them at real problems to see what holds up.
What this is
My main business is a perfume and cologne company. The custom tools I built to run it changed that business more than anything else I've tried, both in how much work gets done and in how much money comes in. SimpleAF is where I take what I learned and try it on other problems.
Most of the tools are Claude Code skills: repeatable research procedures that search, cross-check sources, and write up what they found, with a confidence level and a citation on every claim. I use them for my own decisions first. If a tool keeps being useful, it gets sharpened. If it doesn't, it gets deleted.
No team, no investors, no customer logos. Just one person and a lot of automation.
Tools & research areas
Supply chain & ownership
Who actually owns a brand, and who can actually supply a hard-to-find material. Registry lookups, parent chains, and supplier shortlists with contact paths.
chain-of-ownershipvendor-findergleifwikidataLocal service providers
Finding and vetting contractors and local services: reviews, licensing, availability. Nothing goes out to a provider until I approve it.
find-providerlocal-intelMarket research
Deep, multi-source briefs on a market or technology, including competitor maps, review mining, and what real users complain about.
super-deep-researchmarket-intelligencereview-miningDomain portfolio analysis
Which domains in my portfolio are worth building on and which should be sold. The tools go from opportunity discovery to spec to build-ready brief.
domain-discoveryproduct-specbuild-prepHidden dependencies
Long-form investigations into the obscure single points of failure that complex systems quietly rely on. 122 systems examined so far.
linchpin-discoveryCustom business backends
Order and work-management systems built for small local businesses, so they can drop a pile of monthly subscriptions they were paying for.
next.jssqlclaude codeReplacing subscriptions
For local small businesses, I've built custom order and work-management backends that do the specific jobs they were renting several separate SaaS products to do. Once the custom system is running, they cancel those subscriptions, which is usually several hundred dollars a month in fees that no longer get paid.
Lab log
- Who owns the parking gate company?An earlier report called FAAC "a conglomerate you've never heard of" but never said who owns it. The UK register lists FAAC S.p.A. plus three individuals, whom Italian press identifies as trustees of the trust that runs FAAC for its sole owner, the Archdiocese of Bologna. The register also dates FAAC's takeover of the UK company from ASSA ABLOY to 31 August 2020, the same day ASSA ABLOY says it completed the sale the EU required.
- Sterilization: checking the owner on the record.The UK register confirms Sotera Health as the controlling company of Sterigenics UK, in a 2024 filing. The original report had relied on Sotera's own investor materials. Older 2016 entries show the private-equity ownership that came before Sotera's 2020 IPO.
- Wastewater chemicals under other names.SNF (UK) is owned by France's SNF Group and has held UK chemical companies whose names don't mention SNF. Two of them, Goldcrest Chemicals (founded 1978) and Rheolab, are now dissolved. It's a concrete example of how hard it is to tell who makes what in that market.
- Internet routing & time.Traced what the world's clocks and routing tables quietly depend on. Most of the cesium clocks behind UTC turn out to be one 1990s instrument model with a single-source wear part.
- Urban stormwater pumping.How a protective relay setting, not a power outage, took dozens of flood pumps offline mid-storm.
- Neighborhood crime data.Opportunity-first discovery run across 270 sources: which crime-data products a solo builder could actually ship.
- License verification market.Market brief that turned into a professional-license verification API, now in development.
Principles
- // Every claim links to a source, and every conclusion comes with a confidence level
- // Public and open data first; paid data only when nothing public will do
- // Data stays on my machine: nothing is sold, shared, or resold
- // Automation drafts the message, and I decide whether it gets sent
- // Small tools that do one job well beat big platforms that do everything badly
Contact
Questions, ideas, or a business drowning in subscriptions? Email me directly. The address isn't in the page source, to keep spam bots from finding it.