AI Consultancy · Bay Area & Remote

Harness AI Power
Without the Hype

Practical AI guidance, smart automation, and lightweight tools that make LLMs actually useful — from education to full-stack development.

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Ernie Hsiung

About

Developer. Educator.
Explainer of Complicated Things.

I'm Ernie Hsiung — my career has taken me from coding at startups and civic tech projects to teaching hundreds of new developers how to build their first web apps, and now helping people understand and actually use AI without needing a PhD or a VC check.

I've built voice agents powered by ElevenLabs and Twilio, created custom GPT workflows, and trained everyone from individual entrepreneurs to nonprofit operations teams on practical AI implementation. I combine full-stack development skills with UX design intuition, plus extensive experience explaining complex concepts in plain English.

People say I'm especially good at translating technical ideas for non-technical people. I say I'm just obsessed with making sure things make sense and work well. I'm based in the Bay Area, but work remotely with clients everywhere.

Client Work

The Theater That Stopped Ringing

O Cinema · Miami, FL · Arts Nonprofit

A 24/7 bilingual voice agent
for $35/month

O Cinema had no working phone system for three years. Tourists couldn't call ahead. Spanish-speaking patrons were shut out. Staff drowned in repetitive email inquiries. Three weeks later, that was fixed.

The Problem

  • No working phone for 3 years — callers got silence, not voicemail
  • Email-only contact in a city where 70% of households speak Spanish at home
  • Lost revenue from tourists who just wanted to know showtimes and parking
  • Staff time consumed by the same five questions, over and over

The Solution

  • Voice agent answers calls 24/7 in English and Spanish
  • Pulls live showtime data from their ticketing system every 30 minutes
  • Takes voicemails, transcribes them, emails them to staff automatically
  • Web dashboard staff can manage without a CS degree
  • Deployed and live in 3 weeks, including bug fixes
3 wks
First conversation to live deployment
$35/mo
vs. ~$2,400/mo for a part-time receptionist
<100ms
Response time after Redis caching layer
"Ernie didn't just fix the problem — he gave us something better. Now we have a voice agent that answers calls 24/7 in English and Spanish, tells people what's playing, and even takes voicemails with automatic transcription. It costs us about $35 a month and runs itself."
— Vivian Marthell, CEO & Co-Founder, O Cinema
Vercel Serverless ElevenLabs Twilio Upstash Redis AgileTix API TypeScript
Full technical writeup with system diagrams → Open-source repo on GitHub →

Services

Tailored to Your AI Journey

🎓

AI Literacy & Advisory

Perfect for: AI beginners, leaders, and educators

Demystify AI for your team or organization — no hype, no fluff, just clarity.

  • Live sessions explaining how LLMs work
  • Team-wide Q&A and tool context
  • Clear explanations without jargon

When friends or former students ask "What even is AI?" I've learned that analogies and real-world demos work better than technical definitions. That's the spirit here.

🛠️

AI Training & Enablement

Ideal for: Ops teams, marketers, educators, curious individuals

Hands-on upskilling in real tools and workflows — not hypothetical ones.

  • Prompting and AI tool best practices
  • Role-based workflow training
  • Live or async formats available

What unlocked it for dozens of students? Prompt templates built around their actual workflows. That insight now powers my workshops.

⚡

AI Workflow Automation

Ideal for: Solopreneurs, ops leads, and busy teams

Save time by automating repetitive work with LLMs. Practical setups focused on reducing friction.

  • Automate content, tagging, reports, and more
  • n8n, GPT APIs, and no-code flows
  • Integrate without replacing what already works

I once helped a web team whose onboarding spanned Slack, email, and Trello. We used GPT to auto-fill checklists and cut handoffs by half. The bottleneck wasn't tech — it was friction.

🔗

AI Tool & Platform Integration

Ideal for: Teams using Airtable, Obsidian, Notion, CRMs

Add LLM power to the tools you already use — without replacing them.

  • Embed GPT into Airtable, Obsidian, Notion, CRMs
  • API-based integrations + light custom code
  • Enhance without disrupting existing systems

For my own Obsidian setup, I built a plugin that summarizes daily reflections and surfaces recurring themes via GPT-4. The same architecture works for teams on Notion, Airtable, or spreadsheets.

🗺️

AI Readiness & Roadmapping

Ideal for: Team leads, founders, department heads

Find the high-impact, low-risk AI opportunities in your org before committing to anything.

  • Workflow audit + stakeholder interviews
  • Use case discovery + phased rollout plan
  • Clear, strategic, LLM-first recommendations

"I know I should use AI, I just don't want to waste time on the wrong thing." That's what this is for: mapping real workflows, finding low-risk wins, and building a plan based on what's actually useful.

🚀

Custom AI Solution Development

Ideal for: Startups, innovation teams, internal tools

Prototype and build AI-powered tools from scratch — from PoC to production-ready.

  • Apps, copilots, chatbots, voice agents, summarizers
  • Full-stack builds with OpenAI, LangChain, TypeScript
  • Start simple, scale based on real usage

Most clients don't need a giant AI system — they need a prototype they can test in real workflows. That's what I built for O Cinema: a voice agent live in three weeks for $35/month.

🔍

AI Process Audits & Optimization

Ideal for: Time-strapped teams and ops managers

Identify inefficiencies and improve them with AI. Focus on reducing friction, not just adding tech.

  • Process review and automation opportunity mapping
  • Implementation roadmap and follow-up options
  • Measured against real time and cost savings

The gap between "this seems impossible" and "we can build this for $40/month" is often just someone willing to bridge technical solutions with real-world problems.

🛡️

AI Ethics & Responsible Use Consulting

Ideal for: Education, healthcare, nonprofits, mission-driven orgs

Make sure your AI usage is safe, transparent, and values-aligned.

  • Privacy, fairness, human-in-the-loop design
  • Support for sensitive sectors and compliance concerns
  • What not to automate matters as much as what to automate

Working in civic tech and education taught me how easy it is to "move fast and break trust." With AI, that risk multiplies. I help clients think through the places where speed isn't actually an asset.

Contact

Not Sure Where to Start?
Let's Talk.

I offer free 30-minute consultations to help you figure out if AI is a fit — and if I'm the right person to help. No sales pitch. Just practical advice.

📅 Book a Free 30-Min Call ✉️ e@erniehsiung.com