The one-man band

On 20 September 2026, the Vouchernaut repository was an empty starter. Twenty-two days later, on 12 October, vouchernaut.com had fifteen live products on it, from checked codes for 995 UK shops to a platform for brands with its own Shopify app. Behind them were 772 commits and about 530,000 lines of code, 145,000 of them tests.

I did every job myself: product, design, engineering, operations and selling. Agents did most of the typing while I wrote the specs, made the calls and checked the work. This is how that went, and why I came back to a site I started ten Black Fridays ago. There's a longer version too, with every feature and decision in it: the 40-page case study as a PDF.

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vouchernaut.com The case study (PDF)

#typescript #nextjs #hono #postgres #llms #architecture #zerotoone #designsystems #attribution #ecommerce #growth

The Vouchernaut homepage on 26 November 2020: dark plum, a search box for UK stores and the astronaut mascot with a pink V on his chest — Vouchernaut on Black Friday eve 2020, from the Internet Archive. The astronaut with the pink V is the one who became Vinny.

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Doug Silkstone

Benson is back

On 24 September 2026, the Benson repository was an empty Turborepo starter. Ten days later, on 4 October, I relaunched Benson at trybenson.com with a Shopify app, a WooCommerce plugin, a dashboard, a marketing site, a press release and a series of explainer films behind it. By the end of the second week, the repository held 836 commits, 44 product specs and about 655,000 lines of TypeScript, with 785 test files among them.

The original roadmap for the same scope estimated 14 to 18 weeks. I built it with a team of AI agents doing most of the typing while I did the deciding.

Benson is still a work in progress. It's also the piece of work I'm proudest of, because it's the first time I haven't had to cut an idea down to fit the hours I had.

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trybenson.com

#typescript #nextjs #hono #postgres #llms #architecture #zerotoone #attribution #ecommerce #growth

The Benson dashboard overview in a demo store, showing protected value, live controls and insights — The Benson overview in a demo store with sample data. It shows what's protected, which controls are live and the next step in the recommended playbook.

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Doug Silkstone

RaceMake

Live telemetry and analysis for sim racers

Interim technical lead · Led architecture, team and delivery

View RaceMake project

RaceMake helps sim racers understand their driving through live car and lap data, AI-assisted analysis and interactive 3D visualisations. The interim technical leadership role covered architecture, team leadership and delivery across the desktop app, web app and the data pipelines connecting them.

Led architecture and delivery across a Rust/Tauri desktop app and React web app.
Rebuilt both clients around extensible high-frequency telemetry pipelines and per-game adapters.
Built an AI pit team and interactive 3D visualisations on top of live telemetry.

racemake.com

#rust #tauri #typescript #react #nextjs #telemetry #llms #leadership

Doug Silkstone

WithSeismic

Independent product engineering and growth

Founder · Scoped, built and supported 100+ client engagements

View WithSeismic project

WithSeismic is an independent product-engineering business that builds software, analytics and marketing automation for client teams. As founder and sole operator, the role spans finding the commercial problem, scoping the work, designing and building the solution, and supporting it after launch.

Delivered 100+ product-engineering engagements over 10 years for clients including Framer, The Motley Fool, Groupon, Contra and Weedmaps.
Scoped, priced, delivered and supported every technical build independently.
Runs a fixed ten-business-day, £12,000 Revenue Loop Sprint that finds one material commercial leak and ships one corrective system into production.

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withseismic.com

#typescript #react #nextjs #nodejs #python #llms #aws #gcp #postgres

Brian TigheHead of Technology @ The Motley Fool

Doug is a pro. I'd hire him again for any future marketing & technology initiatives.

Verified on Clutch•5.0

Doug Silkstone•STRV

STRV

Conversational lead generation

Product engineering · Built the enquiry and qualification interface

View STRV project

This project gave prospective STRV clients a conversational way to explain what they needed instead of filling out a contact form. The engineering work covered an AI chat interface that gathered project requirements and qualified enquiries before a sales conversation.

Built a conversational lead-generation interface.
Qualified inbound visitors inside the product instead of sending them through a form.

strv.com

#llms #react #typescript #growth

Doug Silkstone

Promptheus

Voice-to-ChatGPT browser extension

Independent builder · Built and grew it to 30,000+ users

View Promptheus project

Built a voice-to-ChatGPT browser extension independently.
Reached 30,000+ users within a year.
Set as a standalone assessment on MIT's Generative AI and LLM course.

#typescript #react #zerotoone #llms

Doug Silkstone•ctxdc.com

ctxdc

Interactive context-engineering course

Design & engineering · Built the course site and simulation

View ctxdc project

ctxdc is an eight-week course on context engineering: how to give AI systems the instructions, information and memory they need. The work covered the course site's design and implementation, using an interactive Conway's Game of Life simulation to help visitors explore the material.

Designed and built an eight-week LLM course around Conway's Game of Life.
Used the live simulation as the course map.
Received an Awwwards Honorable Mention.

ctxdc.com

#llms #react #typescript

Doug Silkstone•Helix.ai

Helix.ai

Research website for an AI lab

Design & frontend · Built the public research site

View Helix.ai project

This Helix.ai project was a research website intended to explain an AI lab's work to both technical and non-technical visitors. The engagement covered the site's visual design and frontend implementation, not the underlying research platform.

Designed and built a research site for an LLM lab.

#llms #react #nextjs #typescript

Doug Silkstone

Benson

Coupon-extension and AI-agent control for ecommerce

Founder & technical lead · Rebuilt and relaunched in ten days with AI agents

Read the full case study

Benson shows online stores which coupon extensions and AI shopping agents are in their sessions and what they cost, then lets them hide, cap or replace them with a holdout behind every change. The founder and technical lead role covered building, operating and selling the original getBenson platform, then reacquiring the brand and rebuilding it for the relaunch at trybenson.com.

Rebuilt Benson from an empty repository to a public relaunch at trybenson.com in ten days, against an original roadmap of 14 to 18 weeks.
Wrote the product as 44 PRDs and ran the build as an orchestrator, with AI agents delivering each task through tests, adversarial review and simplification: 836 commits and 785 test files in under two weeks.
Shipped ten apps and fifteen packages: a 2.5KB storefront loader, ingest on Redis Streams, Postgres with row-level security, a dashboard, an embedded Shopify admin, a WooCommerce plugin, a Cloudflare edge detector and an MCP server.

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trybenson.com How Benson was rebuilt

#typescript #react #nextjs #nodejs #hono #postgres #llms #architecture #zerotoone #attribution #ecommerce #growth

Doug Silkstone

Vouchernaut

UK shopping guide, comparison tools and brand platform

Founder & sole operator · Rebuilt alone in 22 days with AI agents

Read the full case study

Vouchernaut is a UK shopping guide with checked codes for 995 shops, a shop, comparison tools for phones, broadband, energy and airport parking, What's On listings, guides and a platform for brands. The founder and sole operator role covered every job: building and running the original site alone from 2016 to 2022, then rebuilding it at vouchernaut.com in 22 days in 2026.

Rebuilt Vouchernaut from an empty repository to fifteen live products in 22 days: 772 commits and about 530,000 lines of code, 145,000 of them tests.
Wrote the specs and made the product calls while AI agents did the typing across 203 Claude Code sessions, with every result checked against its spec before it went live.
Shipped store pages for 995 UK shops, a shop of 5,220 products with price watch, a phone finder, a broadband checker, an energy comparison, 21,087 What's On listings, airport parking, discount hubs and group cashback.