Vol. 01 · 2026
No. 01 · For Hire
From Kitsap, WA
The AI feature has been on the roadmap for two quarters. We get in your repo and ship it.
Wolf Peach Labs is the studio of Shimin Zhang — two to four engagements a year, written in your editor by the same person who answers your email. No subcontracting, no slide deck, no “discovery call.” You get working code your team can keep shipping.
Currently
- 01Booking AI engagements for Q3 2026.
- 02Building one product. In stealth.
- 03Replies sent within a day or two.
§ II · Services
Four kinds of work, named honestly. Pick the closest.
No. 01 Cycle 6–12 wk
Ship the AI feature.
What it actually is
Six to twelve weeks. We sit down with the engineers who own the feature and ship it — evals, pipelines, the integration into your existing surface. You get working code in your repo and the writeup of why it works.
What it isn’t
A strategy slide, a rebuilt platform, or a pilot you have to operationalize later. We write the code that ships to customers, not the deck that explains why we should write it.
No. 02 Cycle 2–3 wk
Second opinion before the rebuild.
What it actually is
Two to three weeks. Architecture review, eval design, a rough cost-of-quality model. Read of where the AI feature is brittle and what to spend the next quarter on. Written, not slid.
What it isn’t
Generic best-practice slides. We won’t tell you to add observability without saying which spans, which evals, and what the on-call should do at 2am when one of them flips.
No. 03 Cycle 8–16 wk
Greenfield v1 for founders.
What it actually is
Eight to sixteen weeks. From sketch to deploy. Web app, agent system, internal tool, the cloud and data plumbing under it. Designed to be picked up by a junior team on day one of handoff.
What it isn’t
A throwaway prototype that demos well and doesn’t deploy. We’re building the thing your customers will use, not the thing you’ll show your investors.
No. 04 Cycle 1–2 wk
Technical due diligence.
What it actually is
One to two weeks. For investors and acquirers. Honest read of the codebase, the team, the actual AI work versus the wrapper. A memo, not a checklist.
What it isn’t
A diligence template filled out by an associate. We read the code, we run the evals, we tell you what we’d worry about if we were writing the term sheet.
§ III · Imprint · A Catalog of One Wolf Peach · 2026 Stealth
§ III · Products
The studio also ships under its own name.
Imprint
Wolf Peach Labs
Series
One title, in stealth
Format
Software, shipping 2026
A product for teams who train, evaluate, and ship language-model features in production — written by someone who’s been on the on-call rotation for one.
We’ll say more when there’s a working build to look at, not a screenshot to show. If you want a peek before that — drop a line.
No. 01 Untitled, in stealth 2026
End of catalog
Building now ·drop a line for a peek. Cat. WPL-2026-01
§ IV · About
The studio of Shimin Zhang.
Shimin has been shipping software professionally since 2012 — web applications, AI products, the unglamorous infrastructure that turns a model demo into a feature your customers actually use. Most recently leading Variance AI Explanation at FloQast from prototype to production, and writing the MCP server at Charter that lets AI coding assistants use the Kite Design System the same way the engineers do. He also co-hosts Artificial Developer Intelligence — a weekly podcast on AI-assisted development for engineers who have to ship features, not fine-tune models.
Wolf Peach Labs is what came after. A small number of engagements per year, by design — so the work stays honest and the relationships stay direct. No account managers, no juniors on the ticket, no rebadged subcontractors. Why two and not ten. One project at a time, in your repo, written by the same person who replies to your email. A week of close reading before any architecture decision; days of on-call when the eval flips at 2am. Calendar holds two of those comfortably and four with care; ten would mean junior backfill and the kind of "we'll get back to you" that this whole studio exists to avoid.
Replies come from the same address that writes the code.
The name is a footnote. wolf peach was the old European word for the tomato, back when it was suspected of being poisonous. Ordinary now. It took someone to be the first to eat one. We like that. Lat. lycopersicon, “wolf-peach.” Linnaeus, 1753. The tomato was widely held in northern Europe to be poisonous; it was eaten in southern Europe a century earlier. Common about 1820.
§ V · Get in touch
Email is the medium.
Tell me what you’re building, what you’re stuck on, and roughly when you’d like to start. I read everything; I reply to everyone, usually within a day or two. If we’re a fit we’ll get on a call. If we’re not I’ll say so and point you somewhere better when I can.
shimin No forms. No funnel. No discovery call. Replies sent from the same address.