MJ Keys—mith

Air Force vet, WV raised. SQL dev since 2013. CTO by default at a family firm.

Open to consulting
fred // 128×40 · 1-bit
keys-743:~$ 

      
    


    

      
      
      
      
      
      
    

  







  

    
keys-743:~$ whoami

    
The operator

    
I'm from West Virginia, which teaches you early that the smartest person in the room rarely gets the credit, and the folks doing the real work usually aren't the ones doing the talking. I carried that into the Air Force, and I've carried it through every job since.

    
I've written SQL since 2013. I always told people I know enough to be dangerous. I graduated college on a Friday and started at Aptech up Fox Chapel that Monday: a Programmer/Analyst building BI for the hospitality industry. SSIS, Cognos, the whole 2010s BI stack. The kind of tuning that takes a ten-hour ETL run down to six. The unlock that turned PDFs from a hard block into just another data source. I stayed until they sacked me.

    
These days I'm with a family consultancy doing revenue cycle work for FQHCs: the health centers that treat everybody who walks through the door, wallet or no wallet. My job is making sure those clinics actually get paid for the care they give, so the doors stay open. Hotels then health centers. The problems are different, but not. They get garbage data too, it turns out. The fun is turning that garbage into gold. One man's trash, another's come up.

    
AI is the force multiplier that makes the rest possible.

  








  

    
keys-743:~$ ./what-i-do.sh

    
What I do

    
I run Dead Letter Lab: the web-and-data shop for local business. Come see it. deadletterlab.com →

  








  

    
keys-743:~$ sqlite3 keys.db "SELECT * FROM builds ORDER BY pride DESC;"

    
Builds

    

      
projectstatus


      

        

          
FQHC Revenue Cycle Automation

          
Defensive work. The clinics earned the money, my job is making sure they actually collect it. And the best defense in the FQHC game is to be proactive.

        

        live
      


      

        

          
Fredwick - The Pond

          
A keyboard that grew an ecosystem. A 1-bit frog lives on the tiny screen; the pond behind him bleeds out into the key lighting: beaver keeper, herons, foxes, weather, seasons, lineage. Time in the world only passes while you're at the keys. itch.io, eventually.

        

        live
      


      

        

          
MicApp

          
Your phone as a real Windows mic. A PWA streams over WebRTC to a Python receiver and out through VB-Cable. LAN only, no cloud, no account. MIT, on GitHub.

        

        shipped
      


      
      

        

          
Mail agent, on Hermes

          
I run Nous Research's open Hermes agent as an inbox-minder: reads the mail, never sends, on a trust-but-verify ladder that starts read-only (Reagan, 1987). Self-hosted, the data stays home. Powerful tool, you take it slow so it doesn't wreck your shit.

        

        wip
      

    

    
(4 rows)

  








  

    
keys-743:~$ tail -f now.log

    
Now

    

      
2026-07  revenue cycle pipelines for FQHC clients :: running

      
2026-07  teaching Hermes to mind the mail :: in progress

      
2026-07  the pond keeps growing (itch.io, eventually) :: alive

      
2026-07  Camaro: front end rebuilt. exhaust can wait... summer is for driving :: enjoying it