A US startup came to me with a problem. They'd been working with another team for months. What they had to show for it was a codebase full of shortcuts, no real design system, and an app that didn't reflect what their product actually was.

The concept was strong – an AI agent for personal finance and budgeting. Not a tool with an AI feature bolted on. The AI was the product. The whole value proposition lived in a proactive, intelligent assistant that understood your finances and guided you through them. But open the app and none of that came through. There was a button. The button opened a chat window. That was it.

An AI product that hides behind a button isn't an AI product.

I started by understanding what this experience was supposed to feel like – then rebuilt everything around that vision. The architecture shifted to put the AI at the centre of the app. A floating chat input followed the user through every screen, always present, always contextual – so they could ask about exactly what they were looking at in that moment. AI suggestions, insights and proactive prompts appeared throughout the experience, woven in naturally. The product stopped feeling like a finance app with a chatbot and started feeling like an intelligent assistant that was genuinely paying attention to your money.

I also built the entire design and design system from scratch – then carried it consistently through every screen. What had been a patchwork of inconsistent decisions became a coherent product. The codebase was restructured for scale and long-term maintainability.

The client had been sitting on something with real potential. It just needed someone to see what it was supposed to be – and then build toward it properly.