Jump to: Enterprise ITSM Time To Plate Spine & Leaf Network Mad Monkey Creative
Production

Enterprise IT Service Management Platform

Self-hosted, enterprise-grade ITSM built from scratch to replace commercial tools quoted at up to $152K/year. 10-container Docker stack with an autonomous AI remediation agent, 41 ticket types, and full Slack/Active Directory integration.

$152K+
Max annual savings vs. ServiceNow
10
Docker containers in production stack
41
Ticket types across 12 categories
100+
API endpoints, 17 routers

The Problem

A growing AI company needed enterprise-grade IT service management — ticketing, approvals, hardware tracking, change management, access requests. Commercial options were evaluated: InvGate quoted $30,520/year, ServiceNow enterprise tier runs $152K+. Both were overpowered for internal use and locked into vendor timelines for customization. The decision was made to build instead of buy.

What I Built

A complete, self-hosted ITSM platform — designed, architected, and built from scratch. Every layer: database schema, REST API, React frontend, authentication, approval workflows, AI integration, Slack connectivity, Active Directory sync, SLA enforcement, and the hosting infrastructure it runs on.

  • 41 ticket types across 12 categories — IT requests, hardware, access, change management, incident reports, and more
  • Autonomous AI remediation agent — monitors tickets for known error patterns, executes approved remediation playbooks without human intervention, escalates when confidence is below threshold
  • AI ticket assistant — helps submitters write clear, complete tickets before submission
  • 3-tier RBAC with department-scoped approval workflows (sequential, parallel, any-of)
  • Active Directory / LDAP sync — users and groups pulled automatically; no manual provisioning
  • Slack interactive approvals — approval requests delivered and actionable directly in Slack via Block Kit
  • SLA enforcement — first response 4h, resolution 72h, automatic stale ticket escalation
  • Self-healing infrastructure — autoheal container monitors and restarts failed services

Architecture & Stack

API
FastAPI 0.115 Python 3.12 Celery 5.4
Frontend
React 18 TypeScript 5.7 Vite 6 shadcn/ui Tailwind CSS
Data
PostgreSQL 16 Redis 7 JSONB
AI & Integrations
Claude AI Slack Block Kit SendGrid Active Directory
Infrastructure
Docker Compose 10 Containers autoheal Self-Hosted

Cost Comparison

Tool Annual Cost Notes
ServiceNow ~$152,000+ Enterprise tier, vendor customization, long implementation
InvGate (quoted) $30,520 Per-seat SaaS, limited customization
Jira Service Management $15,000–$40,000 Estimated at scale, additional cost for AI features
This Platform (Built In-House) ~$0 Infrastructure cost only — self-hosted on existing hardware

My Role

Sole architect and developer. Defined requirements, designed the data model, built every layer of the stack, integrated AI and Slack, stood up the hosting infrastructure, and currently operate the system in production.


Live — timetoplate.com

Time To Plate

Recipe manager and event execution engine with a human-aware, backward-planning scheduler. Assigns cooking steps to appliance lanes, enforces human bandwidth limits, and handles allergen safety — built for people hosting real events at scale.

Live
timetoplate.com — production SaaS
Phase 8
Scheduler engine complete
PWA
Progressive web app with push notifications
100%
Self-designed, built, and operated

The Problem

No existing recipe manager solves the actual execution problem: you have a Thanksgiving dinner for 15 people, 6 appliances, and a hard serve time. How do you coordinate 20 cooking steps across multiple appliances without burning anything, missing a pickup window, or serving something to a guest with a tree nut allergy? Every existing tool stops at the recipe — none of them handle the event.

What I Built

A full SaaS platform — from concept through production deployment. I designed the product, wrote the PRD, built the full stack, designed the database schema, implemented the scheduler algorithm, and operate the hosting infrastructure.

  • Backward-planning scheduler — works backward from a hard serve time, assigns each cooking step to an appliance lane with capacity constraints
  • Appliance lane model — indoor and outdoor appliances treated uniformly; event-level exclusions disable appliances (e.g., "disable outdoor grill — it's snowing")
  • Human bandwidth limitsmax_active_tasks constraint prevents scheduling more simultaneous tasks than a cook can handle
  • Allergen safety — warn-and-allow with confirmation; tree nuts and peanuts are separate categories; custom per-guest avoid ingredients (e.g., "nutmeg")
  • Template system — reusable event blueprints that never mutate; events are instances of templates
  • Timeline with timers — live execution view with push notifications for each step
  • Pluggable AI — optional AI assistance via user-supplied API keys; core works without AI
  • Multi-tenant — family/group accounts with shared recipes and individual profiles

Architecture & Stack

Frontend
Next.js 14 App Router TypeScript PWA
API
Fastify TypeScript Zod Drizzle ORM
Data & Workers
PostgreSQL 16 Redis BullMQ
Auth & Infra
Lucia Auth Docker Turborepo pnpm

Scheduler Algorithm

The scheduler is the core differentiator. Given a serve time and a set of recipes, it:

  1. Walks backward from serve time, placing the latest-finishing step for each dish first
  2. Assigns each step to an appliance lane respecting capacity (one item per appliance at a time)
  3. Checks max_active_tasks before scheduling any step — if exceeded, delays earlier steps
  4. Inserts automatic startup, preheat, rest, and hold tasks based on appliance type
  5. Detects hard conflicts (e.g., an appliance is excluded but required) and explains them in plain English: "Remove Beef Wellington to free 45 min on Main Oven" or "Add outdoor grill to schedule turkey before 4 PM pickup"

My Role

Co-founder, sole architect, sole developer, infrastructure operator. Every line of product definition, every schema decision, every API endpoint, every UI component — and the Docker infrastructure it runs on — is my work.


Design Complete · Implementation In Progress

Enterprise Spine & Leaf Network Fabric

Designed a 3-spine/6-leaf, all-100G data center network for an AI company's GPU server fleet — replacing a flat network with a BGP underlay, VLT peer pairs, ECMP load balancing across all three spines, and Anycast Gateway per zone.

9
Switches (3 spine + 6 leaf)
100G
All links — no bottlenecks
ECMP paths — full redundancy
eBGP
Layer 3 underlay throughout

The Problem

A growing AI company's server fleet — including GPU compute nodes — was running on a flat network architecture. As the fleet scaled, the flat topology created bottlenecks, single points of failure, and limited east-west bandwidth. The network needed to be redesigned from the ground up to support the demands of AI/ML workloads: high throughput, low latency, full redundancy.

The Design

I designed the complete network fabric architecture: topology, hardware selection, routing protocol, VLAN scheme, redundancy model, and Fortinet firewall integration. The design is complete and implementation is in progress under my direction.

  • 3-spine / 6-leaf topology — all-active spine layer, leaf pairs for each physical zone
  • Dell S5232F-ON switches running Dell OS10 — open networking platform with full BGP support
  • eBGP Layer 3 underlay — every leaf establishes eBGP sessions to all three spines; no STP, no broadcast storms
  • VLT (Virtual Link Trunking) pairs — each pair of leaf switches acts as a single logical switch for server dual-homing; active-active uplinks
  • ECMP across all three spines — traffic hashes across three equal-cost paths; losing one spine degrades gracefully to 2× bandwidth
  • Anycast Gateway — same default gateway IP distributed across all leaf pairs per VLAN; VMs and containers can move without gateway changes
  • All-100G links — spine-to-leaf and server uplinks are all 100G; no bandwidth asymmetry
  • Fortinet firewall — north-south traffic and OOB management; leaf switches handle east-west internally

VLAN Scheme

VLAN ID Purpose
MGMT-DEVICES 10 Out-of-band management for all switches and servers
DATA-10G 20 General compute — 10G-capable devices and legacy workloads
DATA-100G 30 GPU/ML compute — full 100G server uplinks
FUTURE 40 Reserved — storage fabric or additional zones

Hardware

Switches
Dell S5232F-ON Dell OS10 32× 100GbE QSFP28
Routing
eBGP Underlay ECMP Anycast Gateway
Redundancy
VLT Pairs Active-Active No STP
Security
Fortinet NGFW OOB Management Zone Segmentation

My Role

Lead network architect. Produced the full design: topology diagrams, hardware BOM, BGP configuration templates, VLAN scheme, VLT pairing design, and Fortinet integration plan. Presenting and implementing the design with the infrastructure team. When complete, this replaces an entirely flat Layer 2 network with a production-grade Layer 3 spine-leaf fabric.


Live — madmonkeycreative.com

Mad Monkey Creative LLC

Chicago-area creative technology company I co-founded — 7 live product brands spanning apparel, software, music, and education, all running on shared self-hosted infrastructure I designed and operate.

7
Live brands under one LLC
4
Industries: apparel, software, music, education
Co-Founder
CTO — infrastructure, product, architecture
Self-Hosted
All brands on infra I built and run

The Company

Mad Monkey Creative LLC is a Chicago-area umbrella company I co-founded with musician and educator Rick Kelly. The LLC serves as the legal and operational home for a portfolio of independent product brands — each with its own identity, audience, and product line, but sharing the infrastructure I design and operate.

The Brands

Mad Monkey Creations
Apparel

Original design apparel — the flagship brand and primary creative identity of the LLC.

Gear Headz
Music Apparel

Music-themed apparel for musicians and gear enthusiasts.

MMKidz
Children's Apparel

Children's apparel line extending the MMC creative identity to younger audiences.

Time To Plate
Software / SaaS

Recipe manager and event execution engine — the LLC's flagship software product. Live at timetoplate.com.

Rick Kelly Studio
Music Education

Guitar lessons and music education offerings from co-founder Rick Kelly.

Indigo Jazz
Record Label

Independent record label for original music releases under the MMC umbrella.

Where Has Benny Been
Interactive / Entertainment

Gamified fan hunt experience — an interactive scavenger hunt concept.

Infrastructure & Operations

All 7 brands run on shared self-hosted infrastructure I designed and operate. Apache vhosts per brand, PM2 process management for Node.js services, centralized logging, and a unified deployment workflow. No third-party hosting platforms — everything runs in-house on hardware I manage.

Web Serving
Apache vHost-per-brand SSL via reverse proxy
Runtime
PM2 Node.js Docker (per-service)
Self-Hosted
No AWS / Vercel On-prem hardware Internal VLAN segmented

My Role

Co-Founder and CTO. Responsible for all technical infrastructure: server provisioning, network design, web serving, deployment pipelines, SSL/domain management, and the software products (including Time To Plate) that live under the LLC umbrella. Rick Kelly leads creative direction, brand identity, music, and education products; I lead everything technical.