About
Simple systems. Long memory.
Emmaus Development is Rene Kropf. I've been building business systems for small companies since 1990: distributors, contractors, law offices, rental houses, event companies, print shops and a few dozen more.
Over that time the records got better and the questions got harder to ask. Every business I've worked with had the answers it needed sitting in its own system, and no easy way to get them out. That's the problem this work goes after.
What I build now
- Capsule Base lets a business ask its own records questions in plain language and get answers that cite the records. The design is on GitHub, free for anyone to use or change (MIT license).
- Tend8 is the paid add-on: it watches the business and tells you what needs attention.
- RouterLM keeps your AI answering when an AI company goes down, with one running on your own machine as the last backup.
- Free apps: ScopeGuard, BusinessPro, FlexTime and MD Tune-Up, open source; they keep your data on your own computer.
How I work
Fewest moving parts that hold up. Your data on hardware you own. Prices worked out for your business, in writing before work starts. And care afterwards, because nothing that lives and changes keeps working for long without it. More in Philosophy.
The book
The Last Interface is the argument behind all of this: that the way we'll use business software is by talking to it, and that a business should own the layer it talks to. last-interface.com