Seven months. Eight web properties.
One tax-resolution firm.
It started in February as one oversized web page. By September it was a continuing-education platform that holds up to the IRS, a partner program in two languages, a 1,122-page public tax library, a white-label partner portal and a convention site built in eight days. One builder directed it, with Claude as the engineering partner.
A whole ecosystem, not a website.
Eight web properties, each doing a different job for the same firm: teaching tax professionals, recruiting partners in two languages, answering taxpayers, and running the channel.
The continuing-education platform
Courses, live and simulive webinars, certificates that hold up to the IRS, regulator filings, a CRM and an email program. No server anywhere: it runs on Cloudflare's edge.
The partner program site
Rewrites itself for ten kinds of business, from tax preparers to lenders to law firms, and creates each new partner in SugarCRM while they apply. English, with full Spanish.
The Spanish-language partner site
Spanish from the first paint, in the formal usted a professional expects. A build check counts the English strings left on it. The count is zero.
A public tax-resolution library
1,122 pages, each a real HTML document a crawler can read, each naming its publisher and citing the primary authority behind every claim.
A convention product site
Built in eight days for a franchise network's convention floor, with printed QR codes that remember where they were posted.
A white-label partner portal
Restyles itself for each of three channel partners from the login domain, with referrals, earnings and payouts read from the CRM.
The enterprise tier site
The partner site cut for the Enterprise tier, packaged as a drop-in Django app that refuses to build if it would render unstyled.
The marketing-tools workspace
The program's marketing tools on their own, split out when the first build became a family of sites, one per program tier.
- A builder that turns a webinar transcript into an eight-email sequence, a landing page, polls and handouts
- A document and e-signature platform with 30 contract templates and a tamper-evident certificate of completion
- A sales hub that shows a rep the prospect, the objections and the close in thirty seconds
- A library of 26 email templates, including co-branded ones for each channel partner
- A sixteen-document specification of the whole ecosystem
From one web page to a regulator-grade platform.
- 01 · Feb 25 to Mar 21, 2026
One oversized web page becomes a partner program
280 changes in seventeen days turned a single 374 KB page into a partner site with a full portal inside it: a referral pipeline, earnings, a business planner that prints a branded roadmap, and AI tools behind a server-side proxy so no key ever reaches a browser.
Alongside it: the e-signature platform, the sales hub, and the first build of the reference library.
- 02 · Apr 23 to Jun 30, 2026
Foundations
The first build split into a family of sites, one per program tier, and the CE platform started from an empty folder.
The partner site was rewritten from an enterprise pitch into a friendly page a busy preparer would actually read, and then learned Spanish. The portal was rebuilt on a Django backend that talks to SugarCRM and the firm's lead relay.
- 03 · July, 2026
Reinvention
On July 17 the CE platform became a webinar engine in a single day: timed questions on native video, embedding inside partner portals, live analytics.
The partner site learned to create partners in SugarCRM and to speak differently to ten kinds of business. The portal learned to wear each channel partner's colors.
- 04 · Aug 4 to 12, 2026
A room for thousands
The whole CE application moved onto Cloudflare Workers and its own address, with no server anywhere.
One live room was rebuilt until a poll reached all 5,000 attendees on a local Workers runtime. The reference library went public with every page a real document.
- 05 · Aug 14 to 31, 2026
The business layer
A CRM, an email hub, a wizard that walks a recording all the way to a published course, twelve real courses, a free-credits offer and a command-center dashboard.
The convention site went from a capture of a live page to the convention floor in eight days.
- 06 · Sep 1 to 3, 2026
Regulator-grade in three days
Monitored credit, a durable compliance ledger, certificates carrying every element IRS Publication 5888 requires, an IRS upload file in the IRS's own template, a California report and a reporting calendar that knows both regulators' holidays.
A numbered requirements register whose rules fail the build if their tests do not pass.
- 07 · Sep 4 to 16, 2026
Attacked from outside, driven by people
Four fresh reviewers went after it and found 19 real defects, each fixed and pinned with a test. The first full walkthrough with the client produced its own list, all fixed.
Deploys became near daily, each one recorded with a way back.
- 08 · Sep 17 to 26, 2026
A live studio, and the hand-over kit
The live room was rebuilt around how people already run webinars: everyone joins as a viewer, the host gives control, the presenter accepts.
Enrollment became a real flow, a restore point of everything was taken, and the room was measured again at 300, 1,000, 3,000 and 5,000 people.
Built from each person's seat.
The tax preparer earning CE
Signs up, presses play, and the video stops only for a question the presenter is actually asking. Passes the exam and has the certificate on screen, as a PDF and in the inbox in the same minute, with a public page anyone can use to verify it.
The attendee in a live room
Arrives early to a holding screen that says "Nothing else to do" and counts down. At zero it becomes the room, with no reload. Polls land on every screen at the same moment, and the LIVE badge appears only once a real picture does.
The host running a session
Picks one of four doors (Live, Scheduled Live, Simulive, Evergreen), drops in the deck and presents from a console with the room on the left, the stage in the middle and the chat on the right. At End, credit is judged and the recording turns itself into an on-demand course.
The compliance officer
Wants to know nothing false will reach the IRS. Completions that pass every check ratify themselves, the rest wait with a reason, and the filing desk keeps out every row the IRS would reject and says why.
The business owner deciding to partner
Picks what kind of business they run from a small menu, and the whole page rewrites itself around their clients' problem. The application creates their partner record in the CRM as they submit it.
The taxpayer holding an IRS letter
Searches the notice number and lands on a page that answers in its first lines, names who edits it and when, and links straight to the IRS and the Code. Nothing asks for an email address before they can read.
The hard parts, and how they got solved.
A room for 5,000 people
Three costs in the live room grew with the square of the audience: every heartbeat went to everyone, the headcount was recounted on every call, and each event was serialized once per connection.
One serialization per room, one timer, and a headcount announced only when it changes. Screenings flipped around so the room wakes itself at each question's moment.
Every attendee received the poll at 3,000 people in 164 ms and at 5,000 in 285 ms, on real unpooled connections against a local Cloudflare Workers runtime.
"Connected" is not a picture
A video connection can report connected before a single frame has decoded. A LIVE badge on that is a black rectangle wearing a promise.
LIVE is earned by a decoded frame with an actual picture in it. A picture that stays black shows NO PICTURE with a Reload button.
The badge never claims more than the screen shows, and every player names the layer that failed.
Certificates that hold up to the IRS
A certificate that prints a plausible placeholder in place of a real registration is worse than no certificate.
One certificate model carries every element of IRS Publication 5888. When a fact is missing it reads NOT VALID FOR CE CREDIT and names what is missing. The IRS upload file matches the IRS's own template byte for byte.
The platform enforces the IRS continuing-education standards and refuses to round a no up to a yes.
A lead is never lost
The library's lead form handed off through a database that could stall, and a visitor could sit waiting 13.3 seconds when it did.
Every lead is stored before it is forwarded, and the store races a 2.5-second bound so it can never keep anyone waiting.
The worst case went from 13.3 seconds to 2.5, tested with the database unreachable.
A translation that could break the CRM
A translation pass once turned the business-type values the CRM routes on into Spanish. Nothing would have looked wrong. Routing would simply have stopped.
A structural build check that refuses any change to a value the CRM routes on, proven with tests that make each failure fail the build.
Labels translate freely, and the values the CRM depends on cannot change by accident.
Every address looked like the same empty page
The library was a single-page app, so every URL answered with the same small skeleton. To a crawler that does not run JavaScript, a whole library was one blank document.
A build-time prerenderer that writes every route as its own page with its own title, article text and structured data.
Every route prerendered, 1,435 of 1,435 at the time, and the article paints straight from the HTML before any script runs.
The rules it was held to.
One idea ran through every property: a screen tells the truth about what is happening, and when a requirement is not met, the answer is no, with the reason named.
A screen tells the truth
A LIVE badge needs a real picture. A switch that cannot act says "on, but held" and names what is missing. A failed read is never shown as an empty record.
Refusal is the default
When a requirement is not met, the answer is no, with the reason named. A session where no required check fired certifies nobody.
Nothing is invented
Polls mirror what the presenter really asked. Program numbers come from the approved list or not at all. The library never invents a date or claims a credential it does not have.
Stand alone, connect by doors
The CE platform runs its whole learner journey on its own, proven by a browser test with every outside connection switched off. Each integration plugs in through one door with its own switch.
Every deploy has a way back
Each production deploy records where it came from, so going back is one command, and a rollback never touches the data.
The owner's words go in the interface
"Give control", "Add something to the room" and the four door names came from how the product owner described them. The buttons say exactly that.
Counted, not estimated.
Every figure comes from the work's own record, and each one says where it was measured. No usage, traffic or revenue figures appear, on purpose.
recorded changes across seventeen codebases
Git history, Feb 25 to Sep 26, 2026
from an empty data model to a regulator-grade CE platform
Jul 17 to Sep 26, 2026
attendees in one live room, every one receiving the poll
Local Cloudflare Workers runtime, real connections
unit tests, plus 10 browser suites in real Chromium
Last full run, Sep 26, 2026
written requirements, 150 enforced by tests that carry their id
The requirements register
production deploys, each recorded with a rollback id
Deploy ledger, Sep 4 to 26, 2026
library pages with no inbound link
Build measurement, Aug 29, 2026
a library guide page's compressed download, down from about 835 KB
Cold cache in Chromium, real build
English strings left on the Spanish site
The site's own leak check
page nodes compared with the live original, zero differences
The convention site's port guard
One builder. One AI engineering partner.
I directed the work with Claude, Anthropic's AI, as the engineering partner. Of the 1,973 recorded changes, 1,214 were written by Claude sessions under my direction and 158 more name Claude as co-author.
The product owner's words became the interface. Every feature was checked where it runs, and live video counted as working only once a person saw the picture on a real screen.
- A numbered requirements register tied to tests
- An API contract written for a Django backend
- An embed guide for the portal teams
- An onboarding brief for the client's developers
- A go-live guide and a downloadable portal bundle
- A design-token system with rebuild instructions
- A written operating standard for the library, with a 60-check audit harness
- A restore point of the original codebases
Your firm runs on rules too. Build on them.
Tax, advisory, legal and healthcare firms answer to regulators who ask hard questions. The systems that serve them should answer those questions before anyone asks.
Talk about your buildThe client is not named. Client engagements are confidential.