Journeyman Builds • Brandon

IBEW journeyman electrician turned indie builder.
Commercial foreman by day, shipping tools for the trades by night.
Documenting the whole thing.

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

I'm an IBEW Local 666 journeyman electrician in Richmond, VA.
Foreman on commercial jobs during the day.

At night, I build software with AI tools.

I don't have a CS degree. I don't have a co-founder. I don't have funding.

Thread

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

Finished the brain for my first product in 2 days. Zero coding experience. I'm an electrician.

5 AI commands for foremen: toolbox talks, RFI drafting, submittal tracking, daily logs, and photo reports. All built with Claude Code.

#buildinpublic

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@TTrimoreau The ability to fail repeatedly, dust your self off, and keep throwing things at the wall until something sticks.

Having a disposable income also helps

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@asaio87 Just finished vibe coding the brain for my MCP server with this exact same method. I run OpenClaw on Opus and have Bender, my agent, create a whole sectioned README. Works like a charm

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@sironyeka Knowing myself, building a house would have been a terrible idea because I had no concept behind what I can and can't afford.

Now if you can pay cash, that's a flex

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

Wearing a hardhat doesn't scream "tech guy."

Working on changing that.

Spinning up a free, automated study group to help my union brothers move up the ranks. Idea came from hitting the hall last night.

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@asaio87 What a coincidence! I have 4 followers and can also help you grow on X

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@LauraLunaTech I had to get my agent to scrape the tech news daily to keep up with this. Are you planning to work this into a future build?

The Stripe Custom Objects, Consoles, and Database previews seem like a great way to streamline SaaS's as well.

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@tibo_maker I have the exact same problem. Are you gonna go full back brace or just try to discipline away the muscle memory?

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

Remember the construction plans I FOIA'd? Bender and I had this whole idea to build a web app foremen could query instead of digging through 100+ pages of drawings and specs.

Turns out, we're about a year late to that party 😂

Thankfully, we have a backup play to pivot to

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@sironyeka I'm trying to get on that level

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@QiaochuYuan That makes WAY more sense than the battery angle. Don't they have whole factories in India where people do menial tasks with cameras on for robot training data?

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@sironyeka Alcohol giveth and alcohol taketh away

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

My next build is starting to gather some steam.

Did something I never would've done 6 months ago: FOIA'd the Virginia government for a full set of construction plans for a state building. They sent them for free.

More updates coming when I have something to show

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@oleksiyML @steipete @openclaw I'm looking at setting up a Claude code harness for my agent. Which is better? Codex or Claude code?

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

"Always check your agent's work" is the lesson I learned this week.

Bender told me that our WordPress plugin was compliant with their guidelines.

Turns out, it was in direct violation of of rule number 5 which I neglected to read because he said we were good.

Lesson learned

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@pmarca This is what keeps me up at night. What can be done by the people or the frontier labs to prevent this from happening? Or is it simply inevitable?

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@hasantoxr Holy canoli that's a lot of parameters! How much RAM do you need to run that behemoth?

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@steipete @useblacksmith Any chance of the deepseek v4 release driving token cost down?

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

One of the most valuable things my agent does for me runs every morning at 7 AM.

Bender scrapes the tech news and identifies plays we could make to get ahead of the market.

My plugin in WordPress review and the bigger thing I'm scoping next both came from this.

[Journeyman Builds • Brandon @jmanbuilds]

@sironyeka I wish everyone would jump into AI like I did and have the whole world at their fingertips