Steven Burns
AI solutions architect in Atlanta.
I design and build systems where AI does real work, and I lead the teams that ship them. Twenty-five years across network engineering, web platforms and live experiential installations, now focused on LLM products, agent tooling and local-first generative pipelines.
Open to contract work
- 1998–2005Networks and Unix systems
- 2005–2014Web platforms and commerce
- 2014–2022Experiential and IoT
- 2022–nowAI systems
- 1998–2005Networks and Unix systems
- 2005–2014Web platforms and commerce
- 2014–2022Experiential and IoT
- 2022–nowAI systems
Selected work
All work- 2026LullSpec, design and buildCalm lost my wife’s prepaid year and had no fix to offer, so I rebuilt what she actually used in a morning. Within two days it was a daily practice shared hand to hand: generated and recorded soundscapes, a breathing practice with streaks and push nudges, single-use invites, and a lock-screen mode that keeps sound playing overnight. No subscription. Live and invite-only, with the source on GitHub.Case study on makerATL.com
- 2025–2026Enterprise AI learning platformTechnical owner, end to endA client’s open question, how do we use AI with our product, became a costed plan, a six-week proof of concept, and then an enterprise learning platform I have owned end to end for 11 months. Its AI guide knows each learner and never invents what it doesn’t know. Three enterprises have signed, with a fourth close, each on its own isolated database. A model-swap bench found a higher rubric score at about 38% of the cost. The client is confidential.Case study on makerATL.com
- 2026BiomeGame design, simulation, AI and buildAn evaluation lab built as a strategy game: 44 local and cloud models on a live ELO ladder, a deterministic ecosystem simulation judging every move, and self-play fine-tuning that produced a 14B model ranking fourth of 44, ahead of most cloud models on the same ladder.Case study on makerATL.com
- 2026WaywyrdProduct, design, build and AIA rune-practice app where the model has one narrow job: read each cast against researched rune, sky and stone lore, and never claim more than the sources support. A provider-agnostic gateway runs Claude on Bedrock alongside open-weight models via Ollama on the same sourced context. Friends invite friends, and a reading is never charged for.Case study on makerATL.com
- 2023–2026Random Acts of Creativity with AIDirector and toolsmith: workflows, MCP servers, pipelines, art directionThree years at the frontier of generative image, video and audio: hand-built ComfyUI experiments from 2023, work licensed by Horiar to mature its generative platform, and now a local pipeline. I have written about 20 MCP servers, including ComfyUI with 17 workflows, music and voice, so project agents render art, film, voice and music as part of the build in Lull, Waywyrd, Biome and Ninth Candle.Case study on makerATL.com
- 2022–2025AI News BrewFounder and sole builderMy first launched AI product: I built the pipeline and set the editorial rules for three years of daily news, cross-sourced across dozens of outlets, bias-scored and distilled to a summary and a haiku, with a human approving what published. It closed when its data license ended; 5,738 articles remain as a searchable archive.Case study on makerATL.com
- 2014–2021Experiential installationsVP of Development, Look ListenMobile escape rooms, a Final Four basketball simulation and STEM activations for national brands, built on web sockets, custom sensor boards and video capture. Best in Show, AIMA 2018.Read more
Experience
Full experience- 2025–nowTechnical Owner, Enterprise AI learning platform (contract)Confidential client
- 2003–nowFounder, AI Innovation and Solutions ArchitectCre8ive Industries LLC
- 2022–2023Director of Software DevelopmentToolbox No. 9
- 2021Director of Development and InnovationLUCKIE
- 2016–2021VP of DevelopmentLook Listen