Built From Scratch. Running Real Operations.
A custom operations platform for a federal supply business: designed from screenshots of a spreadsheet-and-notes workflow and built into a database-driven production system in under 90 days. It runs the business every day. Because of the nature of that work, the live system stays private, so this page and its demo use a fictional company and sample data.
Project: custom operations platform for a federal supply business · Designed, specified, directed, tested and deployed by: Clinton Douglas IV · AI coding partner: Claude by Anthropic · Build window: July 18 – October 14, 2026 (88 days)
Real system · Discreet presentation
Ace Tomato Supply Co. — the public demo
Ace Tomato Supply Co. is a made-up federal supply company. Its site shows what the real platform does — bids, parts research, suppliers, batch RFQs, awards, orders, shipments and leadership reporting — without showing a single real name, number, customer, supplier or price.
A production platform, not a practice project
The platform is a private, custom web application that runs the daily operations of a federal supply small business. There was no template and no prior codebase. The starting point was a set of screenshots of the spreadsheets and notes the business was already using.
Eighty-eight days later, those habits had become one database-driven system that the business uses every day for:
- Opportunity research and prioritization
- Bid entry and tracking, from opportunity to submission
- Part and stock-number research tied to federal parts-catalog data
- Supplier sourcing and manufacturer capability matching
- Supplier quote history
- Batch requests for quotes and supplier outreach
- Contract awards and purchase orders
- Shipment and delivery tracking
- A leadership dashboard, events and reporting
- Spreadsheet exports throughout
“This is a real, working operations platform I designed and built from scratch. It runs a federal supply business every day. Because of the nature of that work, the live system stays private. What you see here is a faithful demo recreation using a fictional company and sample data.”
— Clinton Douglas IV
Why you’re looking at a tomato company
Federal contracting work is confidential by nature. The build itself — its scale, technology, discipline and timeline — is fully shareable. The operation it runs is not. So the public presentation follows strict rules.
Never shown
- The real company, its website or where it is hosted
- Real customers, suppliers, pricing or contract numbers
- Real stock numbers, agencies or contracting officers
- Database, file or infrastructure details, or how sign-in and security are implemented
- Screenshots of the live system
Shown instead
- A fictional brand, Ace Tomato Supply Co.
- Six recreated screens, each labelled as a demo recreation
- Obviously fictional records:
DEMO-OPP-1042,DEMO-5306-0001 - Fictional suppliers such as Northstar Forge Works and Prairie Fastener Labs
- Real build metrics, measured from the real project files
The six demo screens
Each screen recreates one part of the live platform with sample data. Every one carries the same line: “Demo recreation of a live production system. Fictional company and sample data shown for confidentiality.”
AI-assisted development, with engineering discipline
The platform was not generated in one pass. Clinton designed, specified, directed, reviewed, tested and deployed it, with Claude by Anthropic as the coding partner. Not every line was typed by hand, and the page doesn’t pretend otherwise. What made it a production system is the discipline around the code.
- CaptureStart from screenshots of the existing spreadsheet-and-notes workflow.
- ModelTranslate real business activity into structured pages, data relationships and rules.
- BuildDevelop with Claude as the AI coding partner, under human direction.
- VerifyVersioned migrations, automated tests before release, staged uploads, error-log triage, backups before deploys and rollback copies.
- ImproveKeep shipping. More than 20,000 lines were added after the first major build phase.
By the numbers
Every figure below was counted from the real project files on October 14, 2026. Blank lines are excluded where noted; documentation is counted separately and is not part of the code total.
Lines of code by category
| Live web application (server pages, shared libraries, HTML, JavaScript, CSS) | 61,834 |
|---|---|
| Automated test suites | 20,299 |
| Database migrations, verification checks and data imports (SQL) | 16,837 |
| Data tooling and design prototypes | 6,223 |
| Back-office automation and health-check tools | 3,309 |
| Private server-side components | 284 |
| Total | ~108,800 (~101,000 excluding blank lines) |
Inside the application
| Source files | ~350 |
|---|---|
| User-facing pages | 46 |
| Shared code libraries | 42 |
| Functions written | ~940 |
| Parameterized database queries | 500+ |
| Database tables | 79 |
| Versioned migrations | 96 |
| Automated test files | 100+ |
| Spreadsheet / CSV export points | 23 |
| Bundled third-party code libraries | 0 |
Built, then maintained
This wasn’t a one-time build. About 42,700 lines of live code were in place after the first five weeks; at least 20,150 more have been added since, measured across 12 full-site backups. The project is documented in 66 written build records and a 168-document knowledge base, and its development history is organized into five volumes, from foundations to verification.
Technology
Kept at a general level, on purpose.
| Server-side | PHP |
|---|---|
| Database | MySQL-compatible relational database, managed with SQL migrations |
| Front end | HTML, CSS, JavaScript |
| Data and automation tooling | Python, Windows batch scripts, shell scripts |
| Authentication | Google sign-in with role-based access |
| Government data | Imports and processes federal parts-catalog data for sourcing research |
| Testing | Custom automated test suites in PHP, Python and JavaScript |
| AI development partner | Claude by Anthropic |
What this project shows
- Turning a manual, spreadsheet-based workflow into a working web application
- Database design for real operations: 79 tables, 96 migrations
- Shipping fast without skipping tests, backups or rollback copies
- Directing AI-assisted development from specification to deployment
- Presenting confidential work honestly, without exposing it
- Continuous improvement after launch
The platform described on this page is real and in daily production use. Everything shown publicly — the Ace Tomato Supply Co. brand, its screens, names, part numbers, opportunity codes, suppliers, values and dates — is fictional and was created for this portfolio. The demo is not connected to any real data. Its photography is AI-generated illustration. The metrics are measured from the real project files. AI-assisted development: designed, specified, directed, reviewed, tested and deployed by Clinton Douglas IV, with Claude by Anthropic as the coding partner.
Custom web application development, operations software, database design, SQL migrations, PHP, JavaScript, Python automation, automated testing, Google sign-in with role-based access, government data integration, AI-assisted development, technical project direction.
Open the Ace Tomato demo → See the Bahar & Bloom page build → Back to the portfolio →
100,000+ lines. 88 days. One custom operating system built from scratch.
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