Moss AI Studio Is Up and Running - What It Is and How It Got Here

For the last few months, this blog has been my workshop.

I’ve written about running Gemma 4 locally, building tools that keep my data on my own hardware, and experimenting with everything from family dashboards to Chrome extensions.

Each post was a project, and each project was me answering the same question over and over: what can I build with AI that actually makes life easier, not just for me. But for others?

All of that work has been building toward something bigger than any single tool.

Meet Moss AI Studio.

Where it started

I’ve been shipping software since 2014. I started building things for myself, then for other people who needed the same thing. That habit never really went away, it just changed shape as the tools changed.

When AI models got good enough to run on your own hardware, something clicked for me. I wrote about taking control with Gemma 4 - running models locally instead of renting access to them. You get your privacy back, you control the costs, and you’re not at the mercy of some company changing the rules on you.

That led to a string of projects. The Sunshine Family Dashboard, which my wife and I use every day. SkyBuddy, my Bluesky engagement extension. Automations and agents running on my own hardware. None of them were meant to be businesses. They were meant to be useful.

But somewhere along the way, I realized the same approach could help other people too.

The first public product

Handmade Checker was the turning point. It started with a frustration - AI-generated listings flooding Etsy, seeing post after post on social media about people getting ripped off, and sometimes making it impossible to tell what was actually handmade. So I built a Chrome extension that checks any listing and tells you, in one click, whether it’s likely handmade or AI-generated.

It went live on the Chrome Web Store last month in July. And at the end of that post, I made a small promise: Handmade Checker is the first public product from Moss AI Studio. Don’t stop there. Stay focused and keep building.

That wasn’t just a tagline. It was the plan taking shape.

What Moss AI Studio is now

So what is it, exactly?

Moss AI Studio is me. One developer in Portland, building AI tools and custom software without the enterprise price tag or agency overhead. No team, no bloated process. Just building things that work, and supporting them directly.

Every product gets its own home. Handmade Checker lives at handmadechecker.com. CopySprout, my Etsy writing assistant, will live at copysprout.app. Each site stands on its own, and each product gets the focus it deserves.

The studio also does custom builds. If a business needs automation, an AI integration, or a tool that doesn’t exist yet, I build it. Same approach, same philosophy - practical software that solves a real problem.

How I build

I build with AI at my side. Local models for anything private, API models for the heavy lifting, and a lot of vibe coding in between. I wrote about my current setup a few months back, and it’s only gotten faster since. I will write a new post about some of my recent reasons I swap to the Deepseek API directly during sessions.

But, the workflow is simple. Find a real problem. Build a tool that solves it. Ship it. Get feedback. Improve it. Repeat. Just steady progress. With my mindset and goals leading the way.

What’s next

CopySprout is in the works right now - a writing tool for Etsy sellers that handles titles, descriptions, tags, reviews, and more, with Etsy’s rules built right in so you don’t have to learn them. I’ll have a full post on it soon, so stay tuned for that one.

Beyond that, more products on the same foundation, and more custom work for people who need something built. The studio is new, but it’s real, it’s running, and it’s ready to help people.

Come take a look

The studio is up at mossaistudio.com. You can see the products, read about how I work, and reach me directly if you have something in mind.

It’s been a long road from my 3 year break from tech, a new blog, and a handful of local experiments, to a real studio with real products. But every step of it is documented right here, and the best part is, this is just the beginning!

Keep dreaming, keep creating, and most of all don’t stop being you.

~ Tarlow