Adams is a 25-person steel distributor and fabricator whose counter, office and shop ran on paper that didn't connect. Since May 2026 I've designed the internal tools they run on now, working with the people who use them. AI agents wrote the code from my specs.
Square fit a quarter of the counter, so I built the rest
Most of what Adams sells doesn't fit a register: steel by the pound, gas by the cylinder, fabrication by the job. It all ran on paper tickets, filed by number.
The shop floor.
I sat with the owner, the office and the counter staff, and barcoded about 400 products. The invoice number turned out to connect everything: the paper file, the network drive and the books. The new tools had to keep it.
We compared nine point-of-sale systems and chose Square for payments, its catalog and its API. Then I drew the line between what Square should do and what only Adams software could.
By my estimate, Square fit about a quarter of the counter's sales. Rather than fight its checkout, I started by reading each finished sale and built the rest around it.
Interactive recreations of five interfaces, built from the app's own styles. Demo data.
The office kept its invoice format, and refunds now land on the day they settle. I paused one tool when the office asked.
One counter sale, from the register to the books.
I tested every version at the counter before it shipped, and changed what staff ran into after release.
I threw out my own first version
A phone quote meant a calculator, the price sheet on the wall, an email, a written quote and then the register. I wanted each line priced once.
The website
Adams first hired me in 2020 to explain it to customers, with a new website. The tools above are the inside of the same job, and the site work kept going alongside them.
Gas was a line of plain text on the services page. I gave it its own page and rendered every cylinder family in Blender, all at the same scale.
The oxygen family.
The welding gas page.
Most of the crane work is rooftop HVAC for mechanical contractors. The page leads with what we lift, which truck fits, and a form that asks for weight and address first.
The crane page.
What we lift.
The homepage film: real shop video, a few shop photos animated with AI, and a custom Blender scene. 24 seconds.
Live on adamssteelservice.com.
I rewrote the copy, designed and built the site in Webflow, shot the photos and drew an icon for every process. Today's site still runs on that system.
Before, 2020.
After.
The process icons.
A header composite from my photos.
Setting a beam.
Welding.