DEV Community: David Lasoff

The Art of the "AI Silo"—How I'm managing a multi-project migration at age 67 with no coding skills without losing my mind

David Lasoff — Sun, 19 Jul 2026 11:20:27 +0000

Hey DEVs,

Following up on my last post about stepping into the "vibe coding" arena at age 67. The feedback and welcoming energy from all the young guns here has been fantastic!

Right now, as CEO of The Avinoam Group LLC, I am staring down a highly complex technical migration. We are moving our animated video sales and ad engine (Stack 2.0) off a human-design environment and onto a dedicated self-hosted VPS framework in Mumbai using Hostinger VPS, n8n, HubSpot webhooks, and custom media renderers.

When you have zero traditional software engineering background and you're coordinating multiple massive development fronts at the same time, the absolute biggest killer isn’t the syntax—it’s scope creep and context switching.

To survive this, my business partner Eyal and I implemented a core operational principle that I think can help a lot of freelancers and independent contractors here plug the leaks in their own "money buckets": Strict Project Siloing.

Right now, I run my operational infrastructure through two entirely separate, isolated AI Project Managers (using Grok and Gemini in completely segregated environments).

Silo A doesn't know what Silo B is doing.

For example, one handles the heavy backend infrastructure design of freepaycalc, while the other acts as the macro strategic architect mapping out localized payment guardrails and automated human-in-the-loop fail-safes for AnimationDr.

By keeping the AIs and the projects completely blind to each other's sandboxes, I prevent cross-contamination of code, protect our strategic "secret sauce," and force myself to focus on solving one isolated problem at a time. It keeps the architecture clean, the scope tightly bounded, and prevents the dread of getting overwhelmed by the sheer scale of the machine. And, I've just only shared two of the five projects, each with either slightly or greatly different business models and purposes. Some are naturally adjacent but not integrated with others. Some are stand alone projects. But, all of it isn do-able, in-order and not overwhelming based upon this one principle: Don't mix apples and oranges! In other words, silo your projects and silo your AIs.

If you are an independent consultant or indie developer constantly letting clients expand the scope of a project mid-build without paying for it, you need to stop this. We have a calculator-tool on freepaycalc (it's free; no data stored) to help you with this; don't let a difficult client NOT pay a premium for your troubles dealing with her/him! And, help this whole scenario by setting up structural project silos for your own clarity to work effectively and sanity to just feel good enjoying the feeling of being control of the scope for each project.

How are you all structuring your multi-client project boundaries to keep scope creep from eating your margins in 2026? Let’s swap notes in the comments—I’m happy to drop some old-school corporate business experience to help you protect your time and value. Have a good week, Devs!

#Build in Public

David Lasoff — Fri, 17 Jul 2026 15:26:27 +0000

Just getting this concept is like money in the bank! I'm too excited for words! At age 67, I have never coded a thing in my life. All of the sudden in 2026, I find that I've become a "vibe" coder with the help of Grok and Gemini. Both in segregated project silos are acting as my PMs and doing a damn fine job of it. As CEO of a brand new company, I'm taking on the entire scope of development for The Avinoam Group, LLC. My business partner Eyal and I have a very cool vision for what we intend to accomplish. And while it is beyond the scope of this post, only 2 crazy non-dev guys would be this bold, with all due respect to the young guns here on DEV. Our core principles incorporate transparency and authenticity. I can think of no better business idea as 4 separate cornerstones (we have 4 separate projects) than the brilliant concept-commitment to #build in public. So, I'm looking forward to telling everyone what we're doing and how we're doing it. We have nothing to hide except a little "secret sauce" that we can't really talk about without shooting ourselves in the foot. Other than that, I want to "show & tell" just like when I was in kindergarten in 1964 and brought "Meet The Beatles" in to Miss Shreiner's class and all the little kids danced! Right now, I'm reading how to get the most out of DEV and being here. At my age, I like to give back. What can an old geezer whose never coded before offer? My life experience and business knowledge. For example, we are developing a free suite of utility tools called freepaycalc to help devs, makers and freelancers plug the leaks in their "money buckets." and how to kill off that dreaded "scope creep" that so many independent consultants and contractors get trapped in. I don't want this post to be too long. I just wanted to reinforce the value of building in public. If you want to punch through each and every challenge of a complex project, then why not tell brilliant dev colleagues what you're up to? Whatever problem you're facing has a solution in 2026. This is really what AI is all about if you think this through: there's no more excuses for why you can't succeed when it now costs you nothing to hire a PM with infinite knowledge who will work 24 hours/day without pay, never complaining nor gets tired. I'll let you know how I'm doing on a regular basis. And I'm a guy who never quits until he succeeds. If I can help in anyway just let me know.

It's not just tech; it's people

David Lasoff — Tue, 14 Jul 2026 18:10:14 +0000

What Devs do it's ultimately about people. The tech is the means whereby we can help people if our tech is good enough and not just some rehash of slop. And if it's ultimately about people, and it is, get this: people are sick of being seen as something to exploit, something like a commodity, something like click counts on a website. Think about it. You're a human being. Don't you want people to treat you with respect and to do so honestly and to not always feel like all they want is to make money off your back? That's why my business partner Eyal and I created freepaycalc, a FREE suite of 10 calculator-tools to help freelancers keep more of the money they make and to better avoid losing money through different kinds of "leakage" when you're not in control of the "container" of your money. For example, devs and makers are constantly plagued by scope creep. Wouldn't you like to kill that off? We have a tool for that and a free mini-library of workflow and payments articles to get your thinking straight on a variety of issues. These brief reads will orient you to better business problem solving. Look, go ahead and Google freepaycalc when you have a minute. See if I'm telling you the truth or not. No catch, no email required, no data collected from our database-free utility site. It's not in our model to exploit you. In our business model we help freelancers. See for yourself if any of this resonates. If not, thanks for reading this anyway...your time is a valuable thing to you and for the record, I have not wasted it.