AI solutions that hold up in production.

Rebuilding abandoned software

PIPP 2.5.9, a widely used astrophotography tool, has had no updates since January 2017 and causes problems on Windows 11. Its source code was never published.

An AI agent analysed the program statically through an MCP server for reverse engineering (rea): structure, options, file formats. The feature set was then rebuilt independently, without third-party code, and improved where it mattered. Licence: GPL-3.0.

• Windows app (Tauri 2) and web version, all processing local
• New eclipse mode, time-lapse as MP4, colour cameras
• Totality in eclipse mode aligned on the lunar limb, automatic HDR images from exposure brackets
• New in version 0.11: camera RAW photos (incl. NEF, CR2, CR3, ARW, DNG)
• Measurably better than the original (see figure)

The same approach works for business software whose vendor no longer delivers.

Status: version 0.11 (November 2026), under active development.

TypeScript · Tauri 2 · FFmpeg · rea (MCP) · Ghidra

LINDA: a studio platform from zero to production

Within the hands-on part of my AI Automation Manager training, I took the entire digital platform for a new EMS studio in St. Gallen into production. My role: project manager and application owner. Target date of 16 September met, studio opened on 1 October 2026.

• Website with around 15 pages, accessible, mobile-first
• Separate dev and prod servers, automatic updates with rollback
• Enquiries evaluated by an AI agent in n8n, daily self-check with alerting (healthchecks.io)
• Booking system SportsNow with 124 course series, data protection under Swiss FADP and GDPR
• Lesson learned: a configuration error briefly took the form offline. The daily self-check reported it the next morning, and it was fixed the same morning.

linda.messmer.studio ↗

Claude · Next.js · Tailwind · Hetzner · Coolify · Cloudflare · n8n · Google Workspace

Prequel: launching the studio in seven weeks

Seven weeks from the first analysis to opening day, one month earlier than planned.

Before the platform came the launch of the studio itself. As project manager I steered it: from planning the launch, finding the location and choosing the legal form to the business plan, liquidity planning and the documents for insurers and authorities.

Claude Opus 5 served as analysis partner and production tool, deliberately set up to challenge and cross-check. Core assumptions were overturned six times. Instead of patching, the whole document set was re-derived each time from a central financial model. Research relied on primary sources; anything that could not be verified was marked as such.

The result: 15 versioned documents and an automatically compiled binder.

A language model is valuable when you make it work against you: invoices against requests, contracts against assumptions, presentations against their own arithmetic.

Claude Opus 5 · Markdown · pandoc · pypdf · openpyxl

From terrain model to real drone flight

An agent (Codex) drove several tools through three MCP connections: a mountain peak was modelled in Blender from swisstopo elevation data and textured with my own drone footage. The virtual fly-around blends seamlessly into the real flight, with a soundtrack mixed in.

Codex · MCP · Blender · swisstopo · DJI

Buildings in 3D from public sources only

An AI agent controlled Blender through its Python interface and reconstructed two existing buildings as walkable 3D models, with a camera path from the outside into the interior.

• Meglisalp mountain inn (Alpstein): model from publicly accessible photos, landscape from swisstopo elevation data and aerial imagery. 60-second fly-around, entrance, two dining rooms.
• Schankweiler Klause (Eifel): chapel from its building description, Wikipedia and photos from Wikimedia Commons, with a furnished interior.
• Every step reproducible as a script, with verification logs for model and video.

Illustrative reconstructions, not surveys, not commissioned by the owners.

Blender (Python) · swisstopo · AI agent

Job matching portal for the Swiss market

My fourth use case in the training became a working prototype I used for my own job search for a while.

• Upload CV, references and certificates as PDF, scanned ones too (OCR). The profile is built automatically, no retyping.
• Live search via the open Job-Room API (SECO), with several queries derived from the CV.
• Every job gets a match score with reasons per criterion: content, experience, languages, canton, level, education.
• Access on request only, with a company email address and approval by an administrator.

Python · SQLite · pdf.js · Tesseract.js · Job-Room API · Docker/Coolify

Apps you couldn't buy

When nothing suitable exists for a specific need, I have it built. Three Android apps, developed with Google AI Studio and Codex, in daily use.

• SIP calling for Sipgate: the provider had discontinued its app. Mine calls Germany via a German local number at local rates, used every week.
• Jürgen's departure boards: live departures for every Swiss stop, filters for trains or bus, tram and boat, delays, platform and all following stops.
• Weather worldwide: my own weather app for locations worldwide, free and ad-free, built on publicly available data. Built with Google AI Studio.

Android · Google AI Studio · Codex · SIP