Charleston, SC · Consulting · Software + AI
Most teams do not need an AI strategy deck. They need someone to look at how work actually moves, find the waste, and build the system that removes it. That is the work I do. Best fit: founder-led companies, lean service businesses, and technical teams with real workflow pain.
Most projects start with a workflow audit, a short build sprint, or a scoped conversation. Small-business work usually starts around $750. Research-heavy work is quoted separately.
I run Blaine Heffron Consulting. I work with businesses and technical teams that know something is clunky, manual, or slower than it should be, but do not want to hire a big shop just to hear obvious things back from a slide deck.
My background is a little unusual for this kind of work. I earned a PhD in physics from the University of Tennessee, where I worked on the PROSPECT neutrino experiment at Oak Ridge. A lot of that job was extracting signal from noise, building analysis tooling, and getting reliable answers out of messy systems.
That carries over well to consulting. I look at how a system behaves, where it breaks down, and what can be simplified, automated, or rebuilt. Sometimes that means internal AI workflows. Sometimes it means custom software. Sometimes it means a better process with less ceremony around it.
Recent work includes StockForge, Songcraft, Stellar developer tooling, MCP servers for scientific and mathematical workflows, and machine learning for neutrino detector analysis.
I am usually most useful to founder-led companies, operations-heavy teams, and technical groups that have outgrown duct-tape workflows but are not looking for a 10-person consultancy.
I work in two lanes. One is for founders and small teams who need a workflow fixed. The other is for research and technical work that needs deeper analysis, modeling, or software.
I usually start small. One call, one audit, or one build sprint. That keeps things concrete and makes it obvious pretty quickly whether I can help.
If you run a small business, the offers below are meant to be clear and manageable. If you are dealing with detector analysis, scientific software, custom AI workflows, or hard modeling work, that is a different conversation and I scope it separately.
For founder-led companies, agencies, and local businesses that need one problem taken off their plate without turning it into a giant project.
I look at how work actually moves through your business, where people are getting stuck, and what is worth fixing now. You leave with a practical plan.
$750 to $1,500
A good starting point if the work feels clunky or too manual, but you do not yet know what should change.
A short build engagement for one painful workflow. Lead intake, reporting, onboarding, internal tools, CRM cleanup, document handling, or whatever keeps eating time every week.
$2,000 to $5,000
For teams that already know the bottleneck and want a bounded fix with a clean handoff.
For labs, research teams, and technical groups dealing with modeling, analysis pipelines, scientific tooling, or AI work that goes well past off-the-shelf automation.
Focused consulting for analysis strategy, system design, experiment software, ML workflows, or debugging technical problems before a larger build starts.
Custom quote or premium hourly
Best when the work still needs diagnosis, design review, or a senior technical read before anyone should start building.
For harder problems: scientific analysis pipelines, AI-assisted research tooling, custom software, advanced data systems, or bespoke workflows where reliability matters.
Typically $15,000+
A fit when generic tools run out of road and the work needs real software, careful analysis, or both.
If the work touches operations, client intake, reporting, or internal admin drag, start with the small-business lane. If it looks more like modeling, scientific software, or research infrastructure, send that directly and I will scope it separately.
A few examples of what I have actually built. Different domains, same basic pattern: understand the system, remove friction, ship the thing.
Rust proc macros and test utilities for Soroban contracts: typed storage handles, flattened contract errors, stronger contract imports, and auth helpers for tests. The project was funded through an SCF #39 Developer Tooling grant.
A music reading game where kids play along with sheet music in real time. Teachers can run classroom sessions, parents can track progress. Built on MusicXML with live note matching via WebSockets.
Manufacturing inventory and MRP software for small to mid-size shops. Bill of materials, barcode scanning, predictive reordering, and supply chain automation in one system.
MCP server for searching and indexing scientific papers across arXiv, Semantic Scholar, OpenAlex, and other sources. Local hybrid search with BM25 and SPECTER2 embeddings.
MCP server for symbolic mathematics and tensor algebra. SymPy-powered CAS with Christoffel symbols, Riemann and Einstein tensors, gamma algebra, and related operations.
CNN and GCN-based event reconstruction for the PROSPECT neutrino detector. Achieved a 3.3% improvement in usable signal statistics for the short-baseline oscillation search.
Contracting work on the Stellar stack: contributions to stellar-cli and stellar-js-sdk, developer experience work on Scaffold Stellar, and smart contract development for EquitX.
Selected published work from the PROSPECT neutrino experiment, LEGEND, and related collaborations.
If you have a workflow that is wasting time, a software problem that needs a senior hand, or a technical project that keeps getting deferred, send me a note. A short description is enough to start.
The easiest way to begin is to send three things: what is broken, what tools are involved, and whether this is a small-business workflow problem or a more technical R&D-style project. If it looks like a fit, I will suggest the smallest useful starting point.
If you want a faster response, include your rough timeline and budget range. That saves both of us a round trip.