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One person, on purpose.

LanceTek is a one-person software company in the UK. There is no account manager and no junior to hand your project to. The person who scopes it is the person who builds it, runs it and answers when you ring.

I build software for small businesses the way I would want it built for my own: small enough to understand, documented well enough to hand over, and running somewhere you control.

Most of my work starts with a process that someone does by hand every week. Copying figures between systems, chasing paperwork, answering the same question in the inbox. Sometimes the answer is a small web app. Increasingly it is an AI agent that does the reading and drafting while a person keeps the final say. Often it is just a better-run server and a backup that has actually been restored.

Working alone is a choice, not a stage. It keeps prices honest, because there is no agency overhead to cover, and it keeps the work careful, because my name is on every line. It also means I take on a few clients at a time, and say so when I am full.

The Journal is where I write up the tools I use and why, so you can judge the reasoning before you trust me with the work.

Fig. 04  The homelabSimplified
firewall switch node-aproxmox node-bproxmox node-cproxmox + gpu nas upsbattery · clean shutdown EdgeVLANs, no open ports Networkclient labs isolated Clustermirrors a client setupbefore it ships Local AIprivate model tests StorageZFS mirror, snapshots,off-site copy nightly Powerrehearsed power cuts
No client data lives here. It is a rehearsal space: every deployment, upgrade and restore is tried on this rack before it touches yours.

Five habits, every project.

None of these are clever. They are the things that stop small software projects going wrong.

  1. Written down before it's built

    A scope you can read in ten minutes, decisions logged as we go, and a runbook at the end. If it only exists in my head, it is not finished.

  2. Boring where it counts

    Proven tools for your data, backups and deployments. Newer tools only where they clearly earn their place, and I will tell you which is which.

  3. People sign off

    Automation proposes; a person decides anything that sends money, emails customers or deletes things. That line is in every scope.

  4. You can always leave

    Your code, your accounts, your passwords, from the first week. No proprietary platform, no licence fee to keep the lights on.

  5. Small and steady

    A few clients at a time, so replies come within a working day and the attention is real. When I am full, I say so and give you a date.

What your project is made of.

A deliberately short list. Every tool here is open source or widely used, so another engineer could pick up your project without a phrasebook.

Build

  • Python services, agents
  • TypeScript web front ends
  • Go small tools
  • Plain HTML & CSS where it's enough

Data

  • PostgreSQL the default
  • SQLite small apps
  • pgvector document search
  • S3-compatible files

AI

  • Hosted models via API
  • Ollama local models
  • Replay tests real cases
  • Approval queues people decide

Run

  • Docker Compose deploys
  • Proxmox virtual machines
  • Tailscale private access
  • restic backups
  • Grafana monitoring

Tell me what eats your week.

A few lines is enough: what the job is, how it is done today, and roughly when you would like it sorted. You will get a straight answer on whether I am the right person for it.

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