From Consultant to Builder: My Open Source Journey

Eighteen months ago, my GitHub profile was a graveyard of private repos and forked tutorials. Today, I maintain 15+ active projects, contribute to community tools, and ship code every week. Here is how that happened and why it matters.

The Catalyst

I was in a board meeting presenting an AI strategy to a PE firm. The partner asked: "Have you actually built any of this, or is this all slides?" Fair question. My answer was honest but weak—I had built things, but nothing I could point to publicly.

That night I published my first real open source project. It was rough. It did not matter.

What I Shipped

Over 18 months, I shipped:

• Professor Falken — a WarGames-themed AI tool (professorfalken.com)
• Slang Craft — a word-merging puzzle game (slangcraft.com)
• Agentic Design Patterns — a curated collection of AI agent patterns
• Claude Code Plugins — curated slash commands for Claude Code
• Chrome MCP Server — browser automation via Model Context Protocol
• 500+ GenAI Case Studies — a curated collection of real-world AI deployments
• Skill Validator — a Go tool for validating AI agent skills
• And 8 more projects across AI, tools, and frameworks

The Tools That Made It Possible

GitHub Copilot changed my velocity. I am not a full-time developer—I am a consultant who codes. Copilot bridges the gap between "I know what this should do" and "I can ship it this weekend."

VS Code is the IDE. With Copilot Chat integrated directly, I can design, build, debug, and deploy without context-switching.

GitHub Actions handles CI/CD for every project. Automated testing, deployment to Vercel, and dependency updates.

Azure provides the compute backbone for anything that needs a backend. Azure OpenAI powers several of the AI projects.

Why Consultants Should Build in Public

1. Credibility is earned, not claimed. A live project is worth more than a hundred slide decks. When a PE partner asks "Can you actually do this?" — I send them a URL.

2. Building sharpens thinking. Every framework I have published started as a messy prototype. The act of building forced me to clarify my thinking in a way that writing never did.

3. Open source creates leverage. The agentic design patterns repo has been starred by developers at companies I could never cold-email. Open source is the best business development channel I have found.

4. It is fun. After 20 years of consulting, building things that people actually use is the most energizing part of my work.

The Lesson

You do not need to be a full-time developer to build in public. You need a weekend, an idea, GitHub Copilot, and the willingness to ship something imperfect. The market rewards builders. Start building.