Currently shipping / Chicago, IL

AI products,
shipped.

An AI automation studio for commercial real estate, finance, and SMBs. I design, build, and ship production systems that run every day — cold outreach engines, deal sourcing pipelines, back-office CRMs, market analysis tools. Systems that ship in weeks, not quarters.

0
Systems live in client production
0days
Avg. scope → shipped
0×
Active client engagements
0+
Records processed in latest build
CLAUDE OPUS 4.7 NEXT.JS 15 SUPABASE N8N AUTOMATION VERCEL TYPESCRIPT RESEND POSTGRES TAILWIND CSS OPENAI API STRIPE WEBHOOKS CLAUDE OPUS 4.7 NEXT.JS 15 SUPABASE N8N AUTOMATION VERCEL TYPESCRIPT RESEND POSTGRES TAILWIND CSS OPENAI API STRIPE WEBHOOKS

Real products. Real users.

Every build below is live in a client's production environment or my own. Real users, real numbers, real receipts. No mockups, no consulting-speak.
01 /
Consumer Finance

VaultTrace

A lookup tool for forgotten 401(k)s. Users upload their IRS Wage & Income transcript and get back a structured list of every retirement account they've ever been enrolled in — pulled directly from W-2s and 1099-Rs the IRS already has on file. Built with Claude for transcript parsing, Supabase for storage, Resend for transactional email.
Next.jsClaude APISupabaseResendVercel
100%
Of input transcripts parsed without manual review
Visit
02 /
SMB Acquisitions — Production Deployment

Multi-engine deal sourcing system

A nine-engine operational system built for Vision Realty Investments, a Chicago-based commercial real estate and SMB acquisitions firm. Engines span the full deal-sourcing funnel — broker outreach, bank and note-buyer prospecting, foreclosure tracking, public records mining, CRExi/LoopNet monitoring, and direct mail orchestration. Each engine runs independently, feeds a central deal pipeline, and surfaces qualified targets daily without manual intervention.
Claude APIN8NPublic Records APIsSkip TracingEmail AutomationScheduled Jobs
9×
Engines architected end-to-end · live in production
Build yours
03 /
CRE Finance — Outreach at Scale

Self-storage owner outreach system

A five-market cold outreach system for a commercial mortgage advisor targeting self-storage owners. Yardi Matrix property data pulled and normalized across IL, TX, CA, FL, and the Northeast, deduped and filtered to owner-level records, then run through a two-pass Cowork enrichment pipeline that resolves LLCs to named principals via state corporate databases. A three-touch email sequence sends daily on the client's mailbox, with reply detection auto-suspending future touches per contact.
Cowork AgentsYardi MatrixState Corporate DBsGoogle SheetsOutlook SendReply Detection
27%
Email recovery rate across 4,627 owner records
Build yours
04 /
B2B Advisory — Back-Office CRM

Full-stack CRM & follow-up agent

A complete back-office rebuild for a tourism advisory firm. Contact import, native Gmail sync, Calendly integration, Fireflies meeting transcription, and a six-stage sales pipeline wired into Attio as the system of record. On top of that, a Cowork follow-up agent that reads the Attio timeline, detects stage per contact, and sends the correct sequence email through the client's mailbox — with hard guardrails against double-sends, wrong-stage sends, and reply overrides.
Attio CRMCowork AgentsZapierFirefliesCalendlyGmail Sync
227×
Contacts staged and sequenced end-to-end
Build yours
05 /
Healthcare CRE — Market Screening

Nationwide market opportunity engine

A two-phase market screening system for a healthcare real estate buyer. Phase 1 ranked every US county by 65+ population density against nursing home bed supply using CMS and Census data. Phase 2 added hospital-aware composite scoring using Medicare discharge volumes and proximity data, expanded age band segmentation across three cohorts, seven analytical enrichments (workforce supply, CON regulatory detail, payer mix, closure flags), and operational playbooks for the top thirty markets. The composite scoring completely inverted the Phase 1 rankings — the kind of finding that only shows up when the analysis is done right.
CMS DataCensus ACSMedicare ClaimsPythonOpenPyXLComposite Scoring
3,143×
Counties scored and ranked nationwide
Build yours
06 /
B2B SaaS — Real Estate

Lead Qualifier for brokerages

An AI chat widget that drops onto any real estate brokerage site and runs full lead qualification — budget, timeline, neighborhoods, pre-approval status — in natural conversation. Scores leads Hot/Warm/Cold, fires instant email to the right agent, logs to a sheet, and can book showings on the calendar. The agent gets a complete brief in under 30 seconds.
Claude APIN8NNext.jsGoogle SheetsWebhooks
<30s
From site visit to scored lead brief in the agent's inbox
Get a demo
07 /
Consumer Product — Co-Founded

Runback — AI mock interview platform

An AI-powered mock interview platform for college students. Live at runback.app. Four-person founding team — I'm one of two on the product side. Users pick a vertical (42 supported, from investment banking to consulting to product management), run a live voice interview with an AI interviewer, and get back structured feedback plus a saved history. Next.js, Supabase, Google OAuth, Claude for question generation and scoring, custom Teal Glass design system.
Next.js 16SupabaseClaude APIGoogle OAuthTailwind v4Vercel
42×
Verticals with calibrated question libraries
Visit ↗
08 /
Internal Tooling — Trades

Contractor Finder

An internal research tool that takes a city + a trade (plumbers, electricians, GCs) and returns a vetted list of 15 contractors with phone, website, and a two-sentence cliff-notes summary covering specialties and reputation. Live web search routed through Claude. Cuts what used to be a half-day of Googling into a thirty-second query.
Claude w/ Web SearchNext.jsServer Actions
15×
Contractors returned per query, fully researched
Build yours
09 /
— Open Slot —

Your build, here.

I take on a small number of new engagements per quarter. If you have a workflow that costs your team hours every week — cold outreach, deal sourcing, document intake, market analysis, back-office admin — it can almost certainly be automated end-to-end in weeks, not months. Bring me the problem, I come back with a scoped plan within 48 hours.
Custom ScopeTwo-Week SprintYou Own the Code
14d
Standard sprint, from kickoff to deployed product
Pitch a build

Capabilities, not buzzwords.

Five categories cover ~90% of what businesses actually need from AI today. Everything else is a custom scope conversation.
/ 01

Conversational AI & Lead Qualifiers

Chat widgets that hold real conversations with site visitors, qualify them, and route them to the right person on your team — embedded in your site as a one-line script.

Lead captureSales botsCustomer support
/ 02

Document Intelligence

Pull structured data out of unstructured documents — tax transcripts, contracts, financial statements, RFPs — and route it into your existing systems. The grunt work, automated.

PDF parsingOCRForm extractionContracts
/ 03

Workflow Automation

N8N and webhook-based pipelines that connect the tools you already use — Gmail, Sheets, Slack, your CRM — and remove every manual step that isn't actually decision-making.

N8NZapierWebhooksCron jobs
/ 04

Internal Tools & Dashboards

Custom internal apps for your team — research tools, dashboards, scorecards, deal trackers. Built fast in Next.js, deployed on Vercel, accessible to anyone on your team with a login.

Next.jsSupabaseAuthDashboards
/ 05

AI Research & Web Scraping

Agents that run structured research on your behalf — vetting prospects, monitoring competitors, building target lists — and deliver the output to you in whatever format you'll actually use.

Web searchScrapingEnrichmentList building
/ 06

Custom — Pitch It

If you've got a workflow that feels like it shouldn't take this long, it probably doesn't. Bring me the problem, I'll come back with a scoped build plan within 48 hours.

Open scopeTwo-week sprint

From idea to live, in two weeks.

No retainers. No 6-month engagements. No discovery decks. We talk, I build, you ship.
01
Discovery call

30 minutes. You walk me through the workflow that's eating time. I'll tell you on the call whether it's a fit and what it'd take to build.

Day 0 / 30 min
02
Scoped build plan

Within 48 hours of the call: a written scope, fixed price, and a hard ship date. No "phase 1 of 4." One scope, one deliverable, one number.

Day 1–2 / Fixed bid
03
Two-week sprint

I build. You get a Loom every Friday showing what's done and what's next. No status meetings. No surprises on ship day.

Day 3–14 / Heads down
04
Ship + handoff

Deployed to your domain (or mine, your call). You own the code, the API keys, and the database. Two weeks of free fixes included.

Day 14 / Live

Built by an operator, not an agency.

I'm Josh Panfil — junior at USC studying finance, originally from the Chicago suburbs. Prior acquisition analyst work in commercial real estate, now running Engine 8 full-time alongside school. Six active client engagements across CRE, finance, and healthcare, plus co-founding a consumer product on the side.

I started building because I kept watching real operators pay real money for "AI strategy" decks that never turned into anything in production. So I started building the systems myself — for my own use first, then for clients who wanted the same. The pattern's the same every time: most teams don't need a strategy deck. They need someone who'll open the editor, ship the system, and stay accountable to whether it actually works.

Every build lives in the client's own account, on the client's own domain, using the client's own API keys. You own the code, you own the data, you can fire me tomorrow and nothing breaks. That's the model. If that's the deal you want, we should talk.

— Josh
SYSTEM STATUS LIVE
OperatorJosh Panfil
StudioEngine 8
BaseColumbia, SC / Chicago, IL
SchoolUSC ’28 / Finance
PriorCRE Acquisition Analyst
Active Engagements6 clients
VerticalsCRE · Finance · SMB
Avg Ship Time14 days
Capacity1 build open
Response Time< 24 hrs
StackNext · Claude · Cowork · Supabase
Start Here

Got a workflow worth automating?

Drop your email below or shoot me a note directly. I'll come back within 24 hours with whether it's a fit and what a build would look like.

or
Book a 30-min intro call Free · Pick a time that works · No pitch deck
or email josh@aibuilders.online directly