Black Sheep SystemsDesktop applications
Native and cross-platform tools in Rust, Electron, and Slint, packaged to deploy the way the rest of your fleet deploys.
DEV
Software Development
Custom applications and internal tooling, built to run on your hardware and keep your data there.
Most internal software gets built by people who have never had to support it. This is the opposite arrangement: the tooling here comes out of nearly thirty years on the other side of the ticket, watching support teams do the same thing by hand for years because no vendor would build the small, specific thing that would have fixed it.
The work is mostly desktop applications and internal tools — the unglamorous software that sits between systems nobody else will touch. Built in Rust and Electron, with Slint where a native interface earns its keep.
Where AI features make sense, they run against models on your own hardware rather than an API key and somebody else's retention policy. That matters more in a validated environment than most vendors will admit.
This division is commissioned work — software built for you, that you own and can hand to anyone afterwards. The products developed under the Black Sheep name are a separate thing, listed under Software.
What this covers
Local LLM integration
Retrieval, summarization, and assistant features running on hardware you own. No data leaves the building.
Internal tooling & automation
The scripts and small apps that remove a recurring manual step from somebody's week.
Systems glue
Getting two systems to talk when neither vendor supports the integration and both blame the other.
Rescue work
Projects that stalled mid-build, inherited code with no author left, and the estimate for finishing it honestly.
Documentation
The handover material that means you are not dependent on me afterwards.
How it runs
What working together looks like.
Scope before code
A short paid discovery: what the tool has to do, what it has to run on, and what it must not do. You get a written scope and a fixed range before anything is built.
Build in visible increments
Working software in your hands early and often, rather than a long silence and a launch. You redirect while it is cheap to redirect.
Deploy into your reality
Delivered as something your environment can actually install and update — not a laptop demo that dies at your group policy.
Handover, always
Source, build instructions, and documentation are yours. You can hand the project to anyone afterwards, including someone who is not me.
Fit
Worth a conversation — or not.
A good fit
- A recurring manual process that has outlasted two attempts to fix it
- A tool that must run on-premises for compliance reasons
- AI features you want without sending data to a third party
- An internal app whose original developer is long gone
Not a fit
- Consumer mobile apps and games
- Large multi-team platform builds needing a staffed department
- Work where the deadline is already impossible and the ask is to agree it isn't