Zack Richardson

Milwaukee, Wisconsin

I build software that runs my life.

Most of my nights and weekends go to building software. Some of it runs my house, some of it writes code for me, and some of it helps run our spin studio in the Third Ward.

Through my company, Richardson Business Ventures, I build websites for Milwaukee businesses, and I set up the same kind of behind-the-scenes help I use myself.

  1. 01 Auryn runs my household
  2. 02 The Deck how things get built
  3. 03 Wordhold dictation, kept at home
  4. 04 Spire Fitness our studio
  5. 05 Games for my friends
  6. 06 Smaller projects around the house
  7. 07 Work with me websites and chores
  8. 08 Writing essays

01 Auryn

My house runs on it.

Auryn is a personal assistant I built. It runs on a computer at home and handles my email, calendar and reminders, puts together a briefing every morning, and runs the lights. It also does a lot of my coding.

Underneath it is a live map of everything it looks after, from services to devices to the vendors we pay. The map checks itself every five minutes, so when something quietly stops working, Auryn notices before I do.

The name comes from the amulet in The Neverending Story. I built it for myself, not to sell.

How Auryn works, and what it replaced

  1. Morning briefNews and the day ahead, ready first thing.
  2. CalendarThe day, laid out.
  3. EmailSorted before I sit down.
  4. ReminderThe thing I'd otherwise forget.
  5. LightsOn, on schedule.
  6. StudyTonight's CFA practice set.
  7. CodeBuilds run while the house sleeps.
A normal day, roughly.

02 The Deck

Only real decisions reach me.

When I want something built, Auryn writes a short brief and hands it to coding agents, each working on its own copy of the code. A second model reviews every change against the brief before it's merged. In October that was 463 jobs.

What only I can answer, like “does this look right?” or “should we spend this?”, goes to my phone as a card: one decision, Auryn's own pick and why, answered with a swipe. In its first six days I answered 49 of 54 cards, with a median of under ten minutes.

This replaced my Software Factory, an earlier experiment that wrote whole apps from a long spec. Its best run rebuilt cal.com and passed 99% of 127 test scenarios, but it needed about a line of spec for every line of code. I retired it in October.

  1. Wordhold: retry a slow dictation instead of losing itMerged
  2. Deck: make the card follow my fingerMerged
  3. Prints: a one-inch wall grid tileMerged
  4. Game Night: animated how-to-play videoMerged
  1. Auryn briefs each job and a coding agent builds it.
  2. A second model reviews every change against its brief.
  3. The one call that's mine goes to my phone.
Recreated from real jobs and a real card, lightly paraphrased.

03 Wordhold

I talk, it types, and it stays home.

Wordhold is a dictation keyboard I built for my iPhone, my Android phone and my Mac. A computer at home turns speech into text, and a small model on the same computer cleans it up: filler words come out, and when I correct myself mid-sentence, it keeps the correction.

It replaced the dictation app I used before, and it's now the only one on my devices. It isn't released.

Um, so the class moved to, uh, Tuesday, sorry, Wednesday at six.

Typed The class moved to Wednesday at six.

  1. I talk into my phone or laptop.
  2. Fillers and the false start come out.
  3. The clean sentence lands where I was typing.
Illustration of a real feature. Speech and cleanup both run at home.

04 Spire Fitness

Our studio in the Third Ward.

Spire is a spin and strength studio we bought in October 2025.

Its website, spire-fitness.com, used to run on Squarespace. It now runs on a site I built. It looks the way members already knew it, works on a phone, and class booking still goes through the studio's booking system.

How I rebuild a business website

Third Ward, Milwaukee.

05 Games

Games I built for my friends.

Bet Boyz is our weekly pick'em. Everyone picks five games, and the standings update live while the games are on.

Game Night is a set of party games played on everyone's phone. The first one, Against the Tide, is trivia where one player is secretly on the other side and scores when the team gets it wrong. It's free at play.richardsonbusinessventures.com.

  1. 1Lakefront41
  2. 2Bay View38
  3. 3Third Ward35
  4. 4Brew City33
  5. 5East Side27
Bet Boyz standings. Demo data; team names are made up.

06 Smaller projects

Smaller projects.

  • A wall display with the day's calendar and lists.
  • A study app for the CFA exam.
  • A wall grid for tools, designed at home and being 3D printed there: 17 identical tiles, about eight hours each.
Wall display
Study app
Printed wall grid

07 Work with me

Richardson Business Ventures

Better websites for Milwaukee businesses.

People find local businesses by searching Google, checking Maps or asking the assistant on their phone. Your website is one of the places those tools read, and it's the one you control. Hours in a photo or a menu in a PDF are harder for people to use on a phone, and harder for search engines to read correctly.

I rebuild sites so they load fast, look good on a phone, and spell out the basics (hours, prices, menu, location) in a way people and search engines can both read.

  1. Before: hours in a photo, the menu in a PDF, tiny text on a phone.
  2. After: the same business, rebuilt.
  3. Hours, menu and location written out as plain text.
Illustration of a typical rebuild. Not a real client.

How a website switch works

  1. I build a new version

    Using what's already on your site, I put together a private preview. It's free.

  2. You take a look

    You see your own business on the new site before anything changes.

  3. We switch it over

    If you like it, I move it to your domain and keep your old links working. The web address stays in your name.

$25 to switch, then $99 a month for hosting, changes and upkeep.

  • Hours, prices, menus and events written so Google can read them
  • A plain-text summary for AI assistants (llms.txt)
  • Fast pages that work on any phone

See how I rebuilt our studio's site

One recurring chore, taken off your plate

The second thing I do is smaller. If you do the same piece of busywork every week, I can set it up to run on its own, one chore at a time, on accounts you own. The examples below already run for me or for our studio.

  • A reminder that sends itself. When one of our instructors picks up someone else's class, they get an email two days ahead with a calendar invite. It's read from the booking system every morning.
  • A short summary waiting for you. What happened yesterday and what's coming today, in one message before you start.
  • Questions come to you as yes or no. Anything that needs your call arrives on your phone with a suggested answer, and everything else gets handled and logged.

Tell me about the chore, and I'll tell you plainly whether it's a good fit.

Email zjorichardson@gmail.com

This site is built the same way. Here's its llms.txt.

About

I'm Zack. I live in the Milwaukee area, I co-own Spire Fitness, and Richardson Business Ventures is the company I do outside work through. I'm studying for the CFA Level III exam in February 2027.

I build software in my spare time, mostly to make my own life easier, and lately to help other businesses. The two longer write-ups, Auryn and websites, are the best place to see how I work.