§ 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 solo software architect and solutions consultant in Quebec City, Canada, with 20+ years of experience. 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 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 services do you offer?
API design & integration; enterprise solutions (ERP/CRM/core platform integration); custom development (web apps, internal tools, Shopify, RAG assistants); advisory & strategy (architecture, roadmap, due diligence); enterprise hosting; plus online marketing (Google Ads), AI integration and Solana blockchain development.
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 (on quote, 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.
Do you offer advisory only, without building?
Yes — advisory & strategy engagements: architecture reviews, technology roadmaps, technical due diligence.
Do you manage Google Ads?
Yes — AdWords management, on quote, billed monthly: setup, keyword/ad/audience iteration, weekly tuning, monthly report; ad spend billed separately.
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?
There is no published rate — it is billed hourly, against a prepaid hour bank (up to 15 % off), or as a fixed quote for scopes over 40 hours. Every quote follows a short scoping call; ask with your brief.

04 Rates and billing

What is your hourly rate?
Rates are not published. There is one rate across every service, confirmed in writing after a short scoping call.
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, 12 months after purchase. Unused hours roll into the next project. Usage is tracked weekly.
How are larger projects billed?
Over 40 hours: fixed-scope quote invoiced in three milestones — 30 % at kickoff, 40 % at first deliverable, 30 % at handover.
How much does a small website cost?
On quote — up to 5 pages, mobile-first, your branding, SEO baseline, contact form; typically 2 weeks. Send a brief and the number comes back within one business day.
How much does an AI chatbot cost?
On quote — a packaged build trained on your own content (website widget, internal assistant or API-connected agent), priced after a short scoping call.
What does hosting cost?
On quote, billed monthly. Website hosting: WordPress or static; SSL, weekly off-site backup, minor updates, uptime monitoring. Application hosting: Node, PHP or Python; plus runtime updates and log retention.
What other monthly services are there?
On quote, billed monthly: encrypted backup and disaster recovery (off-site, encrypted before it leaves your server, daily snapshots, versioned retention, scheduled restore drills with a written RTO/RPO report); vector database hosting (managed pgvector or Qdrant for RAG, embedding pipelines, index tuning, per-tenant isolation); distributed block storage (volumes replicated across nodes, snapshots, live resize, failover without data loss); high-security distributed archive storage (geo-distributed cold archive, erasure-coded and encrypted at rest, immutable retention for long-term compliance); managed MCP server hosting (your MCP server behind HTTPS and OAuth 2.1, client registration, token rotation, tool-call logging); LLM gateway and usage metering (one endpoint for your model calls, key management, per-key spend caps, model routing and fallback, monthly cost report); security patching and dependency updates (CVE watch, patches staged before production, monthly patch report, emergency patching); SSL, domain and DNS management (certificate issuance and renewal, domain registration and transfers, DNS records, SPF/DKIM/DMARC).
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?
A 30-minute discovery call is offered, no pitch.
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, cites 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, with citations, 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 application hosting (monthly, on quote) 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 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.
What is your number-one service?
AI integration — putting AI to work inside a business: RAG assistants on your own content, agents that act through your APIs, and MCP servers that let assistants like Claude read and act on your live business data, 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. Managed MCP server hosting is also available as a monthly service, on quote.

06 Products

What is GoatCheese?
APIgoat's in-house, schema-driven build engine (v0.9; 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.