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About Applied AI

Founders

Ryan McQuillan, co-founder of Applied AI.

AI
AI toolsCoding agentsAgent systemsWorkflow design
Business systems
ERP softwareCRM designKnowledge systems
Engagements
Technology auditsAI assessmentsDiscovery & solution design

I co-founded Applied AI Systems because nothing irritates me more than systems that don't work as well as they should. Bad UI and design, missing features, being forced to change how you work to fit the software instead of the other way around. That's the bane of my existence. And with how good AI has gotten, I believe there's no problem too big or too small to fix the right way. My frustration with that friction is your benefit: I get the satisfaction of making things work as they should, and your company stops losing time and money. Before AI, most of a decade in ERP and enterprise software, long enough to learn that most companies aren't short on tools. They're short on someone who understands how the work moves between them. If a system doesn't save real hours or real spend, I don't build it.

Experience

  • Founding: positioning, brand and identity, the website, service design, outbound and pipeline, and the internal systems the practice runs on
  • Discovery and solution design: sitting inside the inbox, the spreadsheet, the meetings, then delivering a short ranked plan of what's worth fixing and what isn't
  • Building: full-stack applications, agent systems, RAG and document extraction, automations and workflow design. Next.js, React, TypeScript, Supabase, Vercel, Electron, Claude, Claude Code, Codex, ChatGPT
  • Design: interfaces, design systems, and the brand they sit inside. How a thing feels decides whether anyone uses it
  • Co-founded Applied AI Systems and PlexiiDesk, Inc.
Caleb Wilton, co-founder of Applied AI.

AI
AI toolsCoding agentsAgent systemsAgentic loopsRetrieval and RAGModel evaluationFine-tuning
Build
Web applicationsCloud infrastructureDatabasesData pipelines
Craft
Interface designFront-end experienceSystem architecture

I grew up in Ohio and studied communication studies, then spent years in sales before I wrote any software. I hated data. Then I noticed the people beating me were not working harder, they were just looking at better numbers. Once I started pulling my own targets apart I could see what to do next, and it stopped feeling like a chore. That is what I have built ever since: the numbers somewhere people can actually see them, the next move obvious, and nobody needing to be talked into opening it. Every idea I ever parked is back on the table now. AI moved the ceiling on what one person can build, and I have been working through the backlog since.

Experience

  • Production software for clients: internal tools, customer-facing applications, and the systems underneath them
  • AI systems and automation applied to document work and research
  • Software for regulated and government contexts
  • Interface and front-end design, end to end
  • Builds the internal knowledge system this practice runs on
  • Co-founded Applied AI Systems and PlexiiDesk, Inc.

The colour

Aphotine.

Every colour on this site comes from one that Ryan computed rather than picked.

Aphotine is the darkest teal that still reads as a colour before it becomes black. Ryan named it: the last colour before the light runs out. Its lightness and its hue are numbers he chose, and every other colour here is a step of the same hue at a different depth, computed from it.

In the light theme it is the ink of the particles on a sand ground. In the dark theme it is the ground itself, with Mist for type and one bright accent, Biolume, kept for a single moment per view. The mark is always drawn in it.

We mention it because it is how we work on everything: one decision, made properly, and everything else derived from it.

  1. Aphotine

    #012520

  2. Trench

    #023735

  3. Deep Teal

    #064e52

  4. Thermocline

    #21686b

  5. Current

    #3b8788

  6. Teal

    #63b9b5

  7. Shoal

    #acd4d0

  8. Mist

    #eef7f6

  1. Biolume

    one moment per view, on dark grounds

  2. Ember

    the friction signal

An extension of your team.

Applied AI embeds in your business. We learn how it actually runs, live the problems alongside your people, and build the systems that fix them.

  1. Start with the small pains. Work toward the ones underneath.
  2. Connect what your company already knows: the expertise in people's heads, the documentation, the SOPs, the processes nobody wrote down.
  3. End with one system that knows what your company knows. Yours to keep.

How we work, from the first call to the handoff

Now you know who we are. What would you point us at?

Curious what this looks like in practice? See our work or see what we do. Or get in touch directly.