A one-person software studio in Manchester
Order, out of the noise.
Most projects start noisy: half-formed ideas, competing priorities, a backlog that keeps growing. My job is to find the order in it and turn that into software that works.
// no two visits are the same
const seed = 00000;
const palette = "Ink on paper";
const style = "flow";
// drawingStudio
Most of my work starts with a conversation about what to build and ends with me running it in production. You work directly with me, from start to finish.
Sometimes that means building a whole platform. Sometimes it’s a few months inside someone else’s team, or a second opinion on a big decision. There’s never an account manager in between.
What I do
-
Technical direction
Advice on what to build, what to buy and what to leave alone, including whether AI is worth it for you. It can be a one-off conversation or a regular part of how you work.
-
Platform builds
New web platforms, designed, built and kept running. I usually work in Django and Vue, and I’ll help pin down what actually needs building before we start.
-
AI in production
AI is useful when it solves a real problem. I build things like natural-language search, intelligent content discovery and integrations that connect AI tools to existing systems. No AI for the sake of it.
-
Extra hands
If your team has more work than people, I can join for a while. I’m used to fitting into other people’s codebases and ways of working.
Selected work
-
AI-enabled content engine
Music Ally asked for an API. After a few product workshops it was clear the bigger win was making their archive of articles, podcasts and other content usable by AI tools, so we built that first. Their team can now ask Claude or ChatGPT questions that draw on the whole archive, cross-reference their startup database with podcast episodes or follow a thread through different companies over the years. None of that was possible before.
-
Fractional CTO & founding engineer
A licensing marketplace for content creators and the creative industries. I’ve been there from the start as founding engineer, and now lead the product and technology alongside the CEO. I ran the discovery sessions that shaped what we built, then designed and built the platform, including AI search, subscriptions, audio transcoding and streaming, the API and the Vue frontend.
-
York Instruments
2017
Software for a brain scanner
York Instruments made a next generation brain scanner. I helped build desktop apps that run alongside it, including a real-time display for monitoring brain activity and a tool for building and starting scan protocols.
-
AWAL
2010–2012
Digital music distribution
The distributor behind releases from Radiohead, Prince, Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds and Todd Terje. I built the platform artists used to upload their music and staff used to check it and send it on to iTunes and other stores. It handled tens of thousands of products.
About
I’m Ben Tappin. I’ve worked in agencies, software houses and product companies for more than 15 years, on frontends, backends and the infrastructure that runs them.
Code Kitchen is just me. When a job needs a specialist, I bring in freelancers I know and trust. I work remotely, or on-site around Manchester.
- Stack
- Python
- Django
- REST APIs
- Postgres
- Infrastructure
- Vue
- AI
- MCP
- DigitalOcean
- AWS
- Where
- Remote or on-site in Manchester, UK