I help small teams cut through the AI noise — figuring out what to automate, what to leave alone, and what to build. Plus the process, data, and research work that often turns out to be the real bottleneck. Independent practitioner, by Amy Laird.
Four overlapping disciplines. Most engagements draw on two or three at once — that's usually where the real value lives, in the seams between them.
Helping small teams move from "we should use AI" to specific working systems. Prompt design, workflow automation, custom tooling, and training that sticks.
Turning the things that live in someone's head into documented, repeatable processes — so the team scales without the founder being the bottleneck. This is what ProcessPilot does; consulting is the human version.
Rigorous independent investigation on hard questions. Literature reviews, methodology design, pattern analysis, and the kind of structured thinking that turns "we don't know" into "here's what we found."
Custom utilities for getting data out of messy sources — public records, scraped APIs, PDFs, geographic boundaries. Most useful for nonprofits, researchers, and small teams without dedicated data engineering.
Each tier applies across any of the four capabilities. We figure out which capability you need on the strategy call — most clients start there.
One focused 90-minute working session. You walk in confused, walk out with a written action plan and a prioritized list of next moves. Recording and summary delivered within 24 hours. Most clients start here.
Two-week productized engagement. I map your current workflows, identify the 5–10 highest-leverage opportunities (AI, process, data, or research), and deliver a ranked implementation roadmap. For teams that want clarity before committing to a build.
Four-week hands-on engagement. We pick one workflow, system, or research question — I build it, train your team, document everything, and hand it off ready to run. Includes prompts, SOPs, custom tooling, and a written close-out memo.
Monthly retainer for teams that want ongoing partnership. Two working sessions per month plus async Slack/email. Best for clients who've already done a Sprint or Audit and want continuity as their needs evolve.
No surprises, no hidden scope. The shape stays the same whether it's an Audit, a Sprint, or a retainer month.
Every engagement starts with understanding what you're actually doing — not what you think you should be doing. I ask uncomfortable questions about the workflow before I propose anything.
I'll always propose the smallest version of the work that's still genuinely useful. Bigger engagements come from earned trust, not from talking you into them upfront.
Every engagement ends with written deliverables you keep — SOPs, prompts, scripts, memos, decision logs. If I disappear tomorrow, your team should still be able to run what we built.
Independent projects across the four capabilities. Most are open source. They exist because I built them, not because a client paid me to — which is why they're a stronger signal than typical case studies.
A Chrome extension that captures browser workflows and turns them into structured SOPs. The product version of what I do for clients — automating the "explaining the same process for the fourth time" problem.
Quantitative transition-grammar analysis of the Voynich Manuscript. Identifies distributed sequential rules, a structural constant across visual registers, and a bidirectional self-clustering signature. The kind of methodology I bring to client research.
Open data pipelines for Texas child & adult nutrition programs — CACFP, SFSP, plus a campus boundary extractor. Built to make program data more usable for analysts, administrators, and nonprofits.
A pattern-based adult self-reflection tool exploring autism-leaning, ADHD-leaning, and mixed presentations — including the masked patterns existing instruments miss. Free, gender-aware, research-informed.
Send a few sentences about what you're working on and what you've tried. I read everything that comes in. If we're a fit, I'll send back a calendar link within 48 hours.