Tools That Solve One Problem Well
I keep building small, focused tools instead of big platforms. A color contrast checker. A financial model generator. A prompt library. Each one does one thing and actually gets used.
The instinct when you have an AI coding assistant is to build platforms. A dashboard that does everything. An app with twelve tabs. I did this — built an IO dashboard with 18 sections. Most of them I open once, think "that's cool," and never touch again.
The tools that actually get used are the ones that solve one problem I hit repeatedly:
Color Contrast Checker — I run two sites with strict palettes (one green/cream, one blue/white). Every time I pick a text color on a new background, I need to verify WCAG 2.1 compliance. The tool has both palettes pre-loaded. I pick a background, pick a text color, and it tells me pass/fail with the exact ratio. Takes 3 seconds. I use it weekly.
Excel Forge — Consulting deliverables end up in Excel. Always. The client doesn't want a web dashboard — they want a workbook they can email to their CFO. Excel Forge generates investment-bank quality financial models (DCF, LBO, trading comps) with professional formatting, frozen panes, and named ranges. The formatting is the hard part — making it look like a Goldman analyst built it, not a script.
Prompt Builder — A library of prompts I've refined over months, organized by workflow. Not generic "write me a blog post" prompts — specific operational prompts like "classify these job titles against O*NET using the following rubric" or "extract action items from this transcript and tag by project and priority." Each prompt has been used at least five times. If it hasn't been reused, it gets deleted.
The pattern: build the tool the second time you need it, not the first. The first time might be a one-off. The second time confirms the pattern. And keep each tool focused — a tool that does three things gets used for zero of them because you can't remember which tab to open.
The 24 tools on the FTI Training Portal follow the same principle. Each one solves one training need: a report writing reference, a communication framework, a data quality checklist. They're pages, not features. No state management, no API calls. Just the information a junior analyst needs, formatted so they can find it in 10 seconds.