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I’m currently building a RAG system for an e-commerce company, basically giving an AI assistant access to the company’s own knowledge and product information so it can give useful, context-aware responses instead of just generating random answers.
The interesting part isn’t just connecting an LLM.
It’s making sure the AI can:
→ Find the right information
→ Understand the user’s question
→ Retrieve relevant context
→ Give an accurate response
→ Actually be useful in a real business workflow
Still working on it, but I’m excited about where it’s going.
This is the kind of AI automation I enjoy building, systems that solve actual business problems, not just AI demos.
Building something similar? Let’s talk.
I’ve built something similar for Purchaser, an e-commerce marketplace for automotive and industrial products.
I built a RAG-powered AI agent inside Slack that gives the team access to Purchaser’s product and spare-parts database. Instead of opening Excel and manually searching...
Using Slack as the interface is a really cool way to make the RAG actually useful for the team.
Thanks, Paul! 🙌 Exactly—that was the goal: make the RAG system something the team can actually use within their existing workflow instead of adding another tool. Slack made it much more practical.
One thing that will save you a lot of time: build a small evaluation set early — 50–100 real questions with the document or product that should be retrieved for each. Before tuning prompts, measure retrieval quality (does the right doc surface in the top 3?) with it. Chunk size...
Yeah, absolutely. I agree with this. I’ve been testing the RAG with a small set of real e-commerce questions first, so I can see where the retrieval is strong and where it needs improvement. I’ll definitely add an evaluation set and measure retrieval quality before tuning the...
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Took part in the Descript “Teach Us Something” challenge and honestly… I had no idea what I was doing at first 😂
I’d never made something like this in my life, so this is literally my first attempt at creating a video like this.
I learned a lot while making it, especially about turning an idea into an actual story instead of just keeping it in my head.
Would love to know what you guys think 👀
Be honest. How did I do for a first attempt?
Automation & AI Developers — Ongoing Project Work Across Multiple Clients
#1. What this is
We run an automation agency in Quebec, Canada. We build systems for small and mid-sized businesses that are stuck doing manually what software should be doing for them.
I'm not hiring for one project. I'm building a bench of developers I can bring in as client work comes through the door. Different clients, different industries, different problems — construction, trades, professional services, retail, clinics, logistics. What stays constant is the shape of the work: find the bottleneck, build the system, deploy it, document it, hand it over.
If you're the kind of developer who gets bored building the same funnel twelve times, this is the opposite of that.
---
#2. The kind of work that comes up
You will not do all of this. Tell me which parts are yours.
**Lead capture and response**
- Instant multi-channel response to inbound leads (SMS, email, chat, WhatsApp)
- Voice agents that answer calls, qualify, book, or escalate to a human
- Missed-call text-back, form routing, lead scoring and assignment
**Scheduling and dispatch**
- Booking systems tied to real availability, crew capacity, or travel time
- Reminder and confirmation sequences to cut no-shows
- Route and job assignment logic
**Quoting and estimating**
- Intake-to-draft-quote generation from historical pricing
- Proposal assembly and e-signature flows
- Approval routing
**Knowledge and retrieval**
- RAG pipelines over a company's own documents — contracts, price lists, SOPs, spec sheets, policy manuals
- Internal assistants that give staff accurate answers instead of "ask Marc, he knows"
- Search across systems that were never designed to talk to each other
**Document and data processing**
- Invoice, receipt, PO, and contract extraction into structured data
- Intake form parsing, OCR pipelines, validation and exception handling
- Data cleaning, deduplication, enrichment, migration between systems
**Back-office operations**
- Inbox triage and drafted replies
- Invoice reminders, collections sequences, payment links
- Inventory and reorder triggers, supplier price monitoring
- Employee onboarding checklists, timesheet and payroll prep
- Compliance and reporting deadlines that currently live in someone's head
**Retention and reputation**
- Post-job review requests and response handling
- Reactivation campaigns against dormant customer lists
- Churn signals and renewal nudges
**Visibility**
- Dashboards that show owners what's actually happening: lead volume, response times, conversion, job margins, capacity
- Alerting when something breaks or a number moves the wrong way
**Integration and infrastructure**
- Connecting CRMs, accounting, field service, scheduling, and phone systems that don't natively integrate
- Custom API work where no off-the-shelf connector exists
- Deployment, monitoring, error handling, and cost control
---
#3. What I'm looking for in a developer
- **Range over specialization.** I need people who can move from a Twilio flow to a document pipeline to a dashboard without needing a new hire each time.
- **Strong Python**, plus fluency with at least one workflow platform (n8n, Make, Zapier, GoHighLevel, Activepieces).
- **API-first thinking.** Most of this work is gluing systems together well, not training models.
- **LLM application experience**: prompt design, structured output, evaluation, and knowing when an LLM is the wrong tool.
- **Vector databases** for retrieval work — Pinecone, Qdrant, Weaviate, pgvector, whatever you prefer.
- **Telephony and messaging APIs**: Twilio, Vapi, Retell, or equivalent.
- **Deployment you can hand off.** Cloud-native, documented, maintainable by someone who isn't you. I will not accept systems only one person can touch.
- **Data handling judgment.** Client data, sometimes personal or financial. You treat credentials and PII seriously.
- **French/English is a strong plus.** Many clients operate in French and their customers write in French. Not a requirement for every project, but it decides who gets certain ones.
#4. How I work
- Each project is scoped and priced on its own — hourly or fixed price per phase, your preference once scope is locked
- I handle the client relationship, requirements, and decisions; you build
- Fast approvals, no committees
- Work comes in waves as clients sign, not on a fixed schedule — be honest about your availability
- Good work gets repeat work. That's the whole model.
---
#5. To apply, answer these
1. From the list above, which categories have you actually shipped to production? Name the specific projects.
2. Which would be new territory for you, and would you take them on anyway?
3. What's your default stack for automation work, and what would make you deviate from it?
4. Describe a system you built that someone else had to maintain afterward. How did you hand it over?
5. Tell me about an automation you were asked to build that you argued against. What did you propose instead?
6. Current availability — hours per week, time zone, and how you prefer to communicate.
Start your reply with the word **BLUEPRINT** so I know you read this rather than skimmed it.
Templated proposals get ignored. Show me something you built.
