Independent AI systems practice · St. Paul, Minnesota
Custom AI tools, built like products
Tony Sharon is an independent AI systems integrator, a fabricator, and the entire staff of Pathfinder Prototyping. He builds custom AI tools, automation, and agent systems for small businesses and working professionals, and he got here through CNC machining and hardware development rather than a computer science degree. He ships software at a pace that makes people ask what the team size is. The team size is one.
Three reasons to call him
He speaks both languages
Most AI people have never held a finished part. Most shop people have never shipped software. Tony has run Hurco and Haas machines, wired LED signage, and poured resin. He has also built RAG document pipelines and the custom MCP servers that connect an AI to other software. The gap between atoms and bits is his home address.
He finds the general shape
One Stream Deck plugin became 35 because he noticed the engine underneath was specific to nothing. He builds one thing well, extracts the pattern, and reuses it relentlessly. That is the whole method, and it works on plugins, pipelines, and businesses alike.
He ships like a department
He has built 35 products, a company website, a working business plan, and a stack of commissioned physical builds. All of it came from one desk, in a matter of months, and the products are out in public for anyone to judge. AI is the multiplier. The judgment steering it is the product.
What is actually for sale
Time. Every plugin in the catalogue exists because a menu was three clicks deep and somebody needed it two hundred times a day. Every dial with a live readout exists so nobody has to get up and check. The state keys, the follow modes, the honest dash on the strip when the app is closed: all of it is one product. A few seconds handed back, over and over, until it adds up to an afternoon.
Custom work is held to the same standard. The tool has to give back more than it cost, the quote is on the outcome, and the client walks away owning it. Good, honest business is not a slogan here. It is the only kind that produces a second engagement.
Because at the end of the day, what anyone really wants is
a bit · more · time