§ faq

Frequently asked questions

Short answers to what people ask before they write: how work is quoted, what I build, custom CRM and ERP work, AI chatbots, the products and the stack.

01 About Fred and APIgoat

Who is behind APIgoat?
Fred, a business analyst and software architect in Quebec City, Canada, with 20+ years of experience. His main work is business analysis and custom automation: finding the biggest money waste in a business and fixing it with technology. APIgoat is his consultancy and product brand.
Is APIgoat an agency?
No — one Architect, one contract, one accountable point of contact. Specialists are brought in when a project needs them, and Fred runs the room.
Where are you located? Do you work remotely?
Quebec City (Eastern Time). Work is done remotely with clients wherever they are; Fred previously worked from Amsterdam.
Which languages do you work in?
English and French.
How much experience do you have?
More than two decades shipping software across 14 industries.
How do I contact you?
hello@apigoat.com, +1 367-608-0608, or the brief form on apigoat.com. Reply within one business day.
Are you available?
Open for new engagements in Q3 / Q4 2026.

02 Services

What do you actually do?
Business analysis and custom automation: Fred finds the biggest problem — the biggest money waste — in your business and fixes it with technology (custom automation, integrations between your existing systems, custom software or AI), then keeps it running.
What is your number-one service?
Business analysis & custom automation — map how work really flows, find the biggest waste in hours and dollars, cost it per month, fix it with technology, then measure it and keep it running. AI integration (RAG assistants, agents that act through your APIs, MCP servers) is one of the tools, not the goal.
What services do you offer?
First, business analysis & custom automation — find where your business loses the most time and money and fix it. The means: API design & integration; enterprise solutions (ERP/CRM/core platform integration); custom development (web apps, internal tools, Shopify, RAG assistants); AI integration; advisory & strategy (architecture, roadmap, due diligence); enterprise hosting; plus online marketing (Google Ads) and Solana blockchain development.
Is the first look really free?
Yes — a 30-minute call, no pitch. You leave knowing where your business loses the most time and money. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 to book it.
What kind of waste do you find?
The usual leaks: re-typing the same data in two systems, chasing approvals and payments by email, copy-paste between tools, reports built by hand every month, quotes and invoices done manually. Each one is costed in hours and dollars per month, so you know what fixing it is worth.
How does it work?
1) Free first look — a 30-minute call where we find where time and money leak; 2) Cost it — hours and dollars lost per month, so you know what the fix is worth; 3) Fix it — custom automation, integrations or AI, scope and price in writing before anything starts; 4) Keep it running — measured, hosted and maintained by the same person.
Can you integrate our ERP or CRM?
Yes — ERP, CRM and core platform integrations, including SAP, are a core service.
Do you build APIs?
Yes: REST, GraphQL, webhooks, event-driven systems, OAuth2 — documented and debuggable.
Do you do Shopify?
Yes, Shopify storefronts and headless commerce are part of custom development.
Do you build WordPress sites?
Yes — the "small website" packaged start (up to 5 pages, mobile-first, SEO baseline, contact form, ~2 weeks) is typically WordPress or static, and apigoat.com itself runs on a custom WordPress theme. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608; you get the scope and price in writing before anything starts.
Do you offer advisory only, without building?
Yes — advisory & strategy engagements: architecture reviews, technology roadmaps, technical due diligence.
Do you manage Google Ads?
Yes — Google Ads (AdWords) management, billed monthly: setup, keyword/ad/audience iteration, weekly tuning, monthly report; ad spend billed separately. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 for the price in writing.
Do you do blockchain work?
Solana: on-chain programs in Rust with Anchor, TypeScript clients and SDKs — token mints, staking, escrow, custom instructions.
Do you do mobile apps?
Fred has shipped Expo / React Native apps (for example Lumio, the voice language tutor for kids). Ask with your brief.

03 Custom CRM, ERP and Shopify work

Have you built custom CRMs or ERPs before?
Yes — multiple, over more than 15 years, each built around the company's own workflow rather than the other way around. The LL-TEQ CRM (quotes, invoices, payments, Google Drive documents) and the GoatCheese accounting app are recent examples; older ones ran production, sales and back-office for SMEs in several industries.
Why a custom CRM/ERP instead of an off-the-shelf one?
When the packaged product forces the business to change how it works, or when the licence and customisation costs outrun a tailored build. Custom means your fields, your process, your reports, your integrations — and no per-seat fees. Fred will say so when an existing product is the better fit.
What ERP connectors and integrations have you done?
Accounting ↔ production, sales ↔ inventory, quoting ↔ invoicing, e-commerce ↔ fulfilment and shipping, payroll and banking feeds, CRM ↔ marketing, plus SAP and other core-platform integrations. REST, GraphQL, webhooks, file/EDI exchanges and scheduled syncs, with monitoring so a broken feed is noticed before the month-end.
Can you connect our accounting system to production or to our online store?
Yes — that is the typical connector job: orders, invoices, payments, stock levels and costs flow between systems automatically instead of being re-typed.
Do you build planning or scheduling tools?
Yes — planning and scheduling platforms for jobs, crews, resources and calendars, usually integrated with the CRM/ERP and the calendar the team already uses.
How is a custom CRM or ERP built and delivered?
Discovery to map the workflow and the systems around it, then a fixed-scope quote invoiced in three milestones (30 % kickoff, 40 % first deliverable, 30 % handover). Built on the GoatCheese engine (schema-driven PHP back end, admin UI, role-based access, REST API, audit log, MCP server) so the first working version arrives in weeks, with documentation and optional managed hosting afterwards.
Do you do Shopify?
Yes — custom Shopify themes, Shopify apps and plugins, headless storefronts, and integrations between Shopify and the rest of the business (ERP, accounting, fulfilment, marketing).
Can you customise an existing Shopify theme or build one from scratch?
Both. Theme work (sections, templates, performance, checkout extensions) or a fully custom theme; Shopify apps when the store needs logic a theme cannot do — pricing rules, B2B flows, custom fulfilment, synced catalogues.
Can an AI assistant sit on top of my CRM or ERP?
Yes — that is the "API-connected agent" flavour of APIchatbot, or an MCP connection so an assistant like Claude can read and act on your business data on rails.
What does custom CRM/ERP work cost?
It depends on the scope: billed hourly, against a prepaid hour bank (about 6 / 10 / 15 % off for 10 / 25 / 50 h), or as a fixed scope for projects over 40 hours. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 and we talk about your project; you get the scope and price in writing before anything starts.

04 Rates and billing

What is your hourly rate?
One rate across every service, given in writing after the first call. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 to start; prepaid hour banks save about 6 / 10 / 15 % (10 / 25 / 50 h).
Do you offer discounts?
Yes, through prepaid hour banks: 10 h (~6 % off the hourly rate), 25 h (10 % off), 50 h (15 % off).
Do hour banks expire?
Yes, they are valid 12 months from purchase. Unused hours roll into the next project. Usage is tracked weekly.
How are larger projects billed?
Over 40 hours: a fixed scope invoiced in three milestones — 30 % at kickoff, 40 % at first deliverable, 30 % at handover.
How much does a small website cost?
Up to 5 pages, mobile-first, your branding, SEO baseline, contact form; typically 2 weeks. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 and we talk about your project; you get the scope and price in writing before anything starts.
How much does an AI chatbot cost?
It is a packaged build trained on your own content (website widget, internal assistant or API-connected agent). Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 to talk about your project; scope and price come in writing before anything starts.
What does hosting cost?
Fully managed hosting for apps built with GoatCheese, up to 25,000 visits a month, starts at $50 CAD/month: server and runtime patches, monitoring, encrypted off-site backup with versions nobody can delete, scheduled restore tests, and dependency security patches for your app — upkeep included. Add $50/month for a 1-hour recovery point (lose at most an hour of data instead of a day) or $100/month for a standby server that takes over in minutes. New features are billed separately. Built elsewhere? Upkeep depends on the code, so we look at it together first — send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608.
What other monthly services are there?
Besides the hosting plans: domains, DNS, SSL and email authentication (SPF/DKIM/DMARC); MCP server hosting (your MCP server behind HTTPS and OAuth 2.1, client registration, token rotation, tool-call logging); vector database hosting (managed pgvector or Qdrant for RAG, embedding pipelines, index tuning, per-tenant isolation); an LLM gateway (one endpoint for your model calls, key management, per-key spend caps, model routing and fallback, monthly cost report); Google Ads management. Enterprise high availability on AWS, Azure or GCP is also available. Send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 and you get the price in writing before anything starts.
Are prices in USD or CAD?
Canadian dollars (CAD). Taxes extra where applicable.
Do you require a deposit?
For fixed-scope projects over 40 hours, 30 % is invoiced at kickoff. Hour banks are prepaid.
How fast do I get a quote?
Quote and timeline within one business day of your brief.
Is the discovery call free?
Yes — the first look is a free 30-minute call, no pitch, where we find where your time and money leak.
Will you sign an NDA?
Yes, on request — mutual.

05 AI chatbots and APIchatbot

What is APIchatbot?
APIgoat's multi-tenant RAG chatbot platform: it answers only from the documents you upload, can cite its sources, refuses when the answer isn't there, and tracks usage per key.
What does RAG mean?
Retrieval-augmented generation: the assistant first retrieves the relevant passages from your own documents, then writes an answer grounded in them — instead of improvising from the open web.
Will the chatbot make things up?
It is designed not to: answers come only from your corpus (citations optional), and out-of-scope questions are declined in the language they were asked.
What content can I feed it?
Text, Markdown, HTML and PDFs (including tables and charts, converted with a vision model). Price lists, FAQs, manuals, policies, procedures.
Does it speak French?
Yes — it follows the language of the question by default, or can be pinned to one language per channel; retrieval works across French and English content.
Can it connect to my CRM or calendar?
Yes, as an API-connected agent: wired into your calendar, CRM or billing through APIs so it can look things up and take action, on rails with limits you set. Scoped per project.
Can it draft quotes from incoming requests?
That is the "same-day quotes" scenario: a request arrives, the agent reads it, pulls your price list and drafts the quote for you to review and send.
How long does a chatbot build take?
From your content to a working assistant typically in weeks, not months.
Where does it run?
On APIgoat's managed hosting (see the hosting plans in the offer) or your own infrastructure; the public API drops into any website, intranet or mobile app; there is a WordPress plugin.
Which AI models does it use?
OpenAI embeddings (text-embedding-3-large) for retrieval; OpenAI or Anthropic chat models, selectable per key — you can start economical and upgrade later.
Is my data isolated from other clients?
Yes: separate library, users, credentials and invoices per organisation, with keys hashed and shown once, per-key document deny-lists and usage caps.
Can my team have an internal assistant and my website a public one on the same content?
Yes — one corpus, different keys with different rules, tone and document access.
Can you connect an AI assistant like Claude to my systems?
Yes — GoatCheese applications ship an MCP server, and Fred builds MCP/agent integrations on rails.
Can you build a custom MCP server for our ERP, CRM or accounting system?
Yes — that is where MCP matters most and it is built like an enterprise front door: OAuth 2.1 login as a named user, role-based access down to entity and field, read tools separate from write tools, writes that validate required fields and run only after explicit confirmation, gated deletes, per-tenant scoping, rate limits and a full audit log. Tools expose business operations (create a quote, book a crew, reprice from a date) rather than raw tables.
Is it safe to let an AI assistant touch our business data?
With a gated MCP server, the assistant can only do what the tools allow, as the user who logged in, with every write confirmed and every action logged — the risky paths don't exist. Fred also builds the reference tests that replay typical requests and prove the guards hold after each change.
Where does an enterprise MCP server run?
On your infrastructure or on APIgoat's managed hosting, behind HTTPS and OAuth 2.1; it connects to Claude (web, desktop or Claude Code) and any other MCP-capable client. MCP server hosting is also available as a monthly service — send a brief or call +1 367-608-0608 for the price.

06 Products

What is Smarties?
An AI agent orchestrator for Quebec SMEs — one gateway in front of every AI agent: triage and routing of incoming emails, documents and forms; per-agent permissions, one-click approvals and an audit trail; reports and rollback; recurring business tasks (supplier payments, DAS, GST/QST, month-end) that propose with evidence and run once approved. Hosted in Quebec, local AI as an option. Plans and prices: smarties.apigoat.com/tarifs. Live at smarties.apigoat.com; hub page apigoat.com/products/smarties.
What is apiConstruct?
A construction and roofing estimator built on GoatCheese: price book and task recipes, a quote builder that runs on a phone with cost snapshots and margin per line, bill of materials, then project, purchase orders per supplier and progress invoices with GST/QST. Web, iOS, Android, API and MCP server; French and English. Tailored per contractor, priced on quote — book a demo. Product page: apigoat.com/products/apiconstruct.
What is GoatCheese?
APIgoat's in-house, schema-driven build engine (v1.7; not open source, clients get what it builds): describe your data model in HJSON and generate the database, PHP/Slim/Propel back end, admin UI, REST API with RBAC, auth, optional OAuth 2.1 + MCP server, deploy tooling and docs.
What is BillBoy?
Lightweight billing, time tracking and invoicing for freelancers and small agencies — live at billboy.apigoat.com.
What is CryptoBBoy?
A crypto portfolio tracker and companion (read-only exchange APIs, Binance first) — live at cryptobboy.apigoat.com.
What is apigtbot?
A self-hosted paper-trading crypto bot platform with grid and trend strategies, risk profiles and an MCP server.

07 Technology

What is your stack?
React 18/19, TypeScript, Vite, Tailwind; PHP 8 / Laravel, Node 20+, Bash, Postgres (also MySQL/MariaDB, Slim 4, Propel); AWS (primary), Azure, GCP, Docker; RAG, embeddings, OpenAI/Anthropic, pgvector; Rust/Anchor for Solana.
Why "boring tools"?
The bias is toward technology that's still around in five years — modern enough to be productive, mature enough to be quiet at 3 am.
Which cloud do you prefer?
AWS as primary; Azure for enterprise contexts; GCP for data workloads.
Do you use AI coding tools?
Yes — Fred works with AI coding assistants and builds with MCP so assistants can operate the systems he ships.