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 deal with me the whole way through.
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
Search that understands what people mean, built over your own content, and MCP servers that let AI tools work with your systems. I built both for Music Ally, and I keep an eye on what they cost to run.
-
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
-
Music Ally
Case study coming soon
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. We built that first, ingesting the archive in bulk, adding embeddings and a retrieval layer, and putting an MCP server in front of it.
-
Sonata
Case study coming soon
Music licensing marketplace
A licensing marketplace for content creators and the creative industries. I ran the product discovery sessions, then designed and built the platform, including AI search, subscriptions, audio transcoding and streaming, the API and the Vue frontend.
-
AWAL
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
Contact
Drop me a line.