Field dossier № 001Roswell, Georgia

Dustin
Logan

Declassified

I am a principal product manager at Kaiser Permanente. That is the day job, and it is the one that comes first. Everything else here is what I build after hours to keep learning: software for the coffee shop I own, games for my kids, and a way to actually find something to play on the arcade cabinet in my basement.

Day job: Principal product manager, Kaiser Permanente
Coffee shop: Summit Coffee Roswell, franchise owner
Side studio: Vulpin Labs
Home: Roswell, Georgia
Building: Butter · Waypoint · Tuff Games · ArcadeVault · Claude skills

00 / About

The honest version

I like building things. That is most of the explanation.

The day job is where the real work happens, and it is the thing I am best at. But there is a difference between managing a product and actually making one, and I could feel myself losing the second one. So I started building again at night. Small things, mostly for people I already know.

“I am the user, so I know what is needed” is one of the easier ways to talk yourself into the wrong thing.

Owning a coffee shop helps, because it hands me real problems with real money attached instead of made up ones. I try to stay honest about that though. I am one person with one shop and my own habits, and I am not the one opening in the morning. The people who actually work the counter have caught me building for a version of the job that only exists in my head more than once.

So I still ask. I just get to check the answer faster than most people do.

01 / Projects

Things I've built

None of these are startups. Each one started because something in my own house or my own shop was annoying enough to do something about.

№ 01

Running in my shop

Butter

Answering the questions I kept guessing at.

Why I built it: I bought into a coffee shop and found out fast how much of running one is guessing. How much oat milk do we need this week? Did the pastry case actually make money? The answers exist somewhere, spread across the register, a stack of invoices, and somebody's memory, and by the time anyone adds them up the week is over.
What it does: It looks at what we sold, what the weather is doing, and what is happening in town that week, then says what to order and why. Counting what is on the shelves works from a phone, because nobody is doing that at a desk. It has been running in my shop for a while now, which is the only test I trust.

getbutter.app

Next.js
Supabase
Toast
In daily use

№ 02

Used constantly

The review panel

Three AI reviewers who tell me when I am wrong.

Why I built it: I build alone, which means nobody tells me an idea is bad until I have already built it. I missed having people in the room. Not cheerleaders, the ones who ask the annoying question early enough to matter.
What it does: Three reviewers I wrote, each based on somebody who would actually use the thing: the owner paying for it, the manager stuck in it all day, and a designer who only cares whether it still makes sense in a year. They argue with me and with each other. When they disagree, that is usually the question I was quietly avoiding. I keep a list of the arguments I have already settled so I stop having them twice.

Claude skills
Mostly writing
A list of settled arguments

№ 03

In use by two kids

Waypoint

Teaching the test, not the material.

Why I built it: There is no shortage of SSAT prep out there. Almost all of it is practice tests and content review, which assumes the hard part is knowing the material. For a fifth grader, the hard part is the test. Does she even know what an analogy is? Does she know how the screen is going to work, or what happens if she finishes a section early? Nobody seemed to be teaching that part, so I did.
What it does: It explains each kind of question before anyone tries one, so an analogy becomes something you understand instead of something you guess at. Vocabulary is taught as patterns, roots and how words relate, rather than a list to memorize. And the practice test behaves like the real screen, so the interface is not one more thing to work out on the day. They each get a PIN. I get my own.

ssat.dustinlogan.com

Next.js
Word patterns, not word lists
Built for two kids

№ 04

Survived the drive

Tuff Games

Games for the car, for kids who are not putting the phone down.

Why I built it: I built this on the drive home after dropping my daughters off at summer camp. On the way there they spent most of the trip on their phones, watching things and texting friends, and missing everything outside the window. I am realistic about it. I am not winning that fight. But if the screen is going to win anyway, it could at least point them at each other and out the window.
What it does: A pile of games the whole car plays at the same time, each on their own phone. Some are about what is actually out there: spot the plate, photograph something off the list, collect all fifty states. Others are just for passing time together. You join with a five letter code, nobody makes an account, and it keeps working in the dead spots where you need it most.

tuffgames.dustinlogan.com

React
Plays in the car
Works with no signal

№ 05

On the cabinet

ArcadeVault

9,800 games, and a way to actually find one.

Why I built it: We put an arcade cabinet in the basement. It came loaded with about 9,800 games, which sounds incredible right up until you try to pick one. The built in menu is a wall of names, most of which mean nothing, so you scroll for a while and then play the four you already recognize.
What it does: A catalog for the cabinet. Every game has a description, the year, how hard it is, whether two people can play, and whether it is fine for a nine year old. Search it, narrow it down, or hit a button and let it choose. Mostly it means we find something new instead of playing the same four games again.

arcade.dustinlogan.com

One HTML file
9,800 games
Opens instantly

№ 06

Still adding to it

Claude skills

Teaching it to do things the way I would.

Why I built it: A lot of what I do every week is not hard, it is just specific. It needs my sales numbers, my shop's voice, my kids' schools. Generic help is not much help, because I end up redoing it anyway.
What it does: A set of written instructions so the work comes back the way I would have done it. One plans the coffee shop's posts for the week and knows to push the quiet days instead of the busy ones. One reads my email for anything school or activity related and tells me what I have missed. A few are just my own opinions written down so I stop repeating myself.

Mostly writing
Saves me a morning a week

02 / Elsewhere

Also me

Franchise owner

Summit Coffee Roswell

I own the Summit Coffee franchise here in Roswell. It is a real shop with a real staff who run it better than I would, and it is where most of Butter's problems come from in the first place.

Summit Coffee The freelance name

Vulpin Labs

What I put on the work when somebody local needs software built, or wants help working out where AI actually fits and where it is just noise. Named after the fox.

vulpinlabs.com

03 / Contact

Say hi

I like talking about this stuff. If you are building something similar, or you have an opinion about any of it, or you just want to tell me the arcade catalog is missing your favorite game, I am around.

DustinLogan