James Shi

The founder who automates himself out of the building.

I run a portfolio of vertical-AI products on a small stack of agents, and I show the work in public on the way to freedom — so I can go teach. My craft is recursive automation toward pure judgment: solve a problem once, turn the solution into an agent, and never do that work by hand again.

Read the writing About James

Solve once

Recursive automation — solve a problem once, turn it into an agent, climb to the next abstraction, never do that work by hand again.

Building in public

The founder's ledger — what shipped, what a bet cost, what a misfire taught. Concrete, not a highlight reel.

Vertical AI, done right

Opinionated notes on shipping AI into real industries — senior living, marketing attribution, education — not demos.

Teacher-at-heart

AI for humans. The why underneath the machine: freedom by design, on the way to teach.

Now: building the agent stack that runs a portfolio of vertical-AI products — including this site — and writing down the method as it's built, not after the fact.

Recent writing

Solve once
The task I stopped doing by hand: how db.mjs became Ashley's memory
A single writer script, a local WAL, and a batched Supabase flush — the exact mechanics of turning a repeated coordination problem into infrastructure I never touch by hand again.
July 20, 2026