Production AI Systems · East Texas & Dallas · Remote nationwide

Quotes, orders, invoices: still typed in by hand, all day. Get those hours back, with receipts.

In a plant, a steel service center or an oilfield services yard, the back office runs on documents that arrive as PDFs and photographs: work orders, field tickets, mill certs, invoices. The hours spent retyping them into QuickBooks or the ERP are payroll, and cash sits uncollected while the paperwork waits. Automation that misreads a digit and reports nothing is a second cost, and a harder one to see.

Start an Assessment ↗ See what’s running ↓

I’ve spent thirty years in technology and the last eleven as a Staff Site Reliability Engineer, keeping large-scale production systems running and fixing them fast when they don’t. I build AI systems the same way, then operate them, because a system nobody maintains goes out of date.

Paid assessments · Fixed-price builds · Operations retainers · Small-business sprints · AI workshops

Steel order desk S3 · order 1 of 3

The ordinary case

$0.06 · 31s of real time

shipped

triage no model call pass
intake sonnet-5 I'll search the catalog to verify that the W14x283 designation exists and check its stock length.
quote sonnet-5 I need to verify that W14x283 is a valid heavy wide flange beam in the catalog and confirm it belongs to the wide_flange family, then set up the price line with 2 pieces at 40 feet in A992 grade.
quote-verify no model call every number recomputed clean; total 12678.40
review sonnet-5 The quote matches the order perfectly across all specifications—designation, pieces, length, and grade all align, with the certificate requirement met. It was issued today and remains valid through August 2026, with theoretical weight basis and no conflicts. The reference to the mill-order passthrough we discussed checks out, and there are no complications like or-equal clauses, weld intent requirements, CVN specifications, or Buy America restrictions. Everything looks clean and the order can proceed at the quoted price.
allocation no model call 2 tag(s), 1 heat(s), shortfall 0, excluded 0
gate no model call clean: 0 block(s), 0 question(s)
ship+invoice no model call dock ACCEPTED; 1 MTR(s) in the pack; scale 22480 lb; invoiced 12678.40
reconcile no model call paid in full

Who this is for

Energy services, industrial manufacturing and distribution, and the trades. From a crew with one office manager to 500 employees: if the back office runs on documents, the fit question is the process, not the size. Nationwide, remote first.

Who it isn't for

The $18,000 build ladder is not for a five-person shop, and I will say so. Small businesses start with the $1,500 sprint instead, and when even that will not pay for itself, I will name the off-the-shelf tool that will.

The first step

Mid-market starts with a $2,500 fixed-scope assessment: two weeks, written report, yours to keep. Small businesses start with the $1,500 one-week automation sprint.

The Arithmetic

Keeping a system monitored, verified, and current starts at $3,500 a month, so a build has to remove more than about $42,000 of work a year before it pays, on top of the $18,000 build itself. One clerk at $28 an hour fully loaded, retyping documents 25 hours a week, costs about $36,000 a year and does not clear that bar. I will say so, and point you at the $1,500 sprint or an off-the-shelf tool instead. Two clerks doing that work clear it in the first year. The assessment runs this arithmetic on your actual volumes before anything is built.

02 / About

The engineer behind it.

I’m Byron Walker, a Staff Site Reliability Engineer based in East Texas. I’ve spent thirty years in technology, the last eleven keeping very large production systems running and fixing them fast when they don’t.

That background is why I work this way. Most AI projects don’t fail because the model wasn’t capable enough. They fail the way all software fails, months after everyone stopped watching. I spent a decade on the other side of that, in a follow-the-sun rotation where somebody is always awake and looking. Most AI systems in production were handed off to nobody. I’ve watched enough technology cycles to know which promises survive production and which do not.

So I build AI systems the way I build production infrastructure: instrumented, independently verified, and honest about whether they’re actually working. Then I stay on and operate them, because in a field where new models ship every few weeks, a system nobody maintains goes out of date. Everything is built in your accounts and owned by you outright, documented down to a written exit runbook, so replacing me someday is a planned event, not a crisis.

On capacity: I take one assessment at a time and cap Operate at eight systems under management. If I can’t start when you need me to, I’ll say so rather than hold the slot. The phone rings through to me from 8am to 8pm Central and goes to voicemail otherwise, and email gets a reply within one business day.

I work with mid-market companies of roughly 50 to 500 employees, first in energy services and industrial manufacturing and distribution, with non-clinical healthcare administration as the adjacent lane. I also take on smaller operations that run on the same paperwork: roofing, HVAC, plumbing, field services, the trades. If your back office runs on documents, the fit question is the process, not the industry, and the price should fit the business. Companies at that size have real operational complexity, real integration debt, and no internal team to spare for this. That’s the work I’m built for. For regulated environments, confidentiality and compliance are engineering constraints I design around from the start, not a review I fail at the end. Local? See Tyler, Longview, and Dallas / Fort Worth. Everywhere else, the work runs remotely, which is how it runs here too.

Running a crew, not a plant? The paperwork problem is the same shape at five trucks as it is at five hundred employees, and the fix should be priced accordingly. The $1,500 automation sprint takes the one job your office still does by hand, quoting, invoicing, chasing paperwork after the crews roll out, and builds the smallest thing that removes it. One week, fixed price, shown working on your real data.

Role: Staff Site Reliability Engineer
Experience: ~30 years in tech · 11 in SRE
Based: East Texas · Tyler, Longview, Dallas
Built for: Mid-market · 50 to 500 employees
Specialty: Agent systems that verify their own work
Engagements: Paid assessment, then fixed-price build

05 / Built & Running

The lab is public.

Every pattern I sell, from verification fleets to autonomous ops, monitoring and full products, I built and run in production first, on my own infrastructure and my own dime. Most vendors show you a deck about what they’d build. Here you can watch mine run, and watch it catch its own failures.

Agent Fleets · Recorded Runs

The Recorded Demos

Two agent fleets on recorded runs: a steel order desk with a deterministic chemistry gate that blocks bad mill certificates with the element named, and an oilfield billing chain that turns field tickets into priced, compliant invoices. Real model calls, real costs, scored against a written answer key the fleet never sees, with every miss published next to the successes.

Watch the recorded runs →

Steel MTR gate · Oilfield ticket to cash · Answer-keyed scoring

How my own systems behave, verified, with the bad days written up →How I keep the methods current, with the evidence for each decision → The rest of the lab, and the four kinds of work I take on, are on the services page →

06 / How I Work

Engineer first. Consultant second. Operator always.

The goal is never "more AI." It’s an operation that runs better and a system you can trust a year from now. These are the rules the work follows.

Nothing fails silently.

Every system I build reports on itself independently and tells you when it’s wrong. If I can’t instrument it, I’ll tell you that before you pay for it.

Diagnose before prescribing.

The assessment is a diagnosis, not a pitch. If the finding is that you shouldn’t build anything this year, that’s the finding you get, in writing, having paid for it.

Fix the process before automating it.

Automating a broken process makes the mistakes faster and harder to see. Sometimes the highest-ROI recommendation costs you nothing to implement.

The smallest thing that works, first.

If an existing tool solves it, I’ll say so and you keep your money. A custom build happens when it’s earned its place.

Measured in your numbers.

Hours recovered and dollars kept, reported monthly, including what went wrong. If I can’t show you the outcome, I don’t get to claim it.

You own everything.

Built in your accounts, documented at delivery, no proprietary runtime and no hostage situations. The retainer has to be re-earned every month.

One engineer is a risk. Here’s the mitigation.

Everything is built in your accounts, with your credentials, documented to the standard I’d demand from a vendor: runbooks, architecture notes, and handoff docs at delivery, not on request. If I disappear tomorrow, your systems keep running and any competent engineer can pick them up. That’s a design requirement, not a courtesy. I also cap operate-and-maintain clients at eight, so nobody’s paying for attention I can’t give.

07 / Engagements

Mid-market engagements start with an assessment. Small businesses start with a sprint.

I don’t quote a build before I understand the operation. The assessment is a real engagement with a real deliverable, not a sales call in a different font.

Start here

AI Assessment

$2,500 · fixed scope · two weeks

A structured diagnosis of where AI creates real value in your operation, and where it doesn’t. You get a written findings and roadmap report, and it’s yours whether or not we work together again.

Interviews with the people who actually do the work
Process and systems mapping across the target functions
Opportunities quantified in hours and dollars, with the assumptions shown
AI Readiness scored 1 to 5, where 5 means automation that verifies its own work
A prioritized roadmap with honest build estimates, including the items not worth building

Start an Assessment ↗

Then

Systems Build

From $18,000 · fixed price

This step comes after the assessment, never instead of it. Your first build is the smallest one on the roadmap, and it has to prove its value in your numbers before anything bigger gets approved. Fixed price against a written scope, by a named date. No open-ended billing and no change-order theater.

Built in your accounts, in your name, with your credentials
Its own checks and alerts are built in. Operate is a person answering them, not the missing half of the build
Full documentation and team handoff at delivery
You own all of it. If you walk away, it keeps running

Ongoing

Operate & Maintain

From $3,500/month

The reason the systems still work a year later. Monitored around the clock, migrated onto better models as they ship, and reported monthly, mistakes included.

24/7 automated monitoring, so detection never depends on a human being awake
Model migration against a regression suite
Incident response by the engineer who built it
Monthly accuracy reporting with the failures shown

Small business · A different door

Automation Sprint

$1,500 · fixed · one week

For the roofer, the HVAC shop, the field-service crew: no assessment required, no roadmap, no committee. One job your office still does by hand, and the smallest thing that removes it, shown working on your real data before the balance is due.

One workflow, picked with you on the first call
A check you can run yourself, so you never have to take the system's word for it
Plain-language handoff. You keep everything I build

Start a sprint ↗

Local · In person

AI Workshops

$79 a seat · teams from $1,500

For East Texas businesses and anyone within ninety minutes of Lindale who wants to use AI properly. An open session once a month in Tyler, or a half day on site with your team, your tools, and your work on the screen. You leave with it set up and working, not with a slide deck.

Open session: two and a half hours, Saturday morning, bring a laptop
Team workshop on site: $1,500 half day, $2,500 full day
What never goes into a chatbot, and how to check an answer before you act on it

See workshop details ↗

There’s no free consultation. A real diagnosis takes real work, and the report is yours either way.

Find out what AI is actually worth
in your operation.

A fixed-scope assessment, delivered in two weeks, with a written report you keep. You’ll know what’s worth building, what it costs, and what it returns. You’ll also know which items aren’t worth doing at all.