I’m Ben Merrill. Senior Business Analyst by day, AI-assisted builder by obsession. This is where I keep the apps, tools, games, and experiments I’m making because I wanted them to exist.
Ghost is the thing I’m most obsessed with right now: a Mac/Linux Python app for local AI, agents, models, voice, file-aware context, desktop horsepower, and eventually an iPhone remote that talks to my own server. It is not close to public release. It is my baby, my lab, and the clearest example of how I like to build.
Selected work
A mix of practical tools, personal experiments, and “I wonder if I can build that” ideas. Some are polished. Some are weird. All of them taught me something.
News, Reddit, weather, deals, and widgets in one place. Add feeds, toggle modules, export your setup. No accounts, everything stays in your browser.
Portable knowledge for AI chats. Build context once, brief any assistant on a fresh thread. Works with ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other assistants.
A searchable library of business-focused prompts. The prompts ask clarifying questions, gather context, then help do the work. No side forms, no login.
In-browser editor with file tree, AI-friendly export modes, snapshots, and a prompts library. Built for collaborating with any LLM without installing a stack.
A searchable knowledge base with AI-assisted answers. Practical guidance for specialized knowledge work, organized for quick lookup.
Classic Euchre in the browser with AI opponents or friends via room codes. Familiar flow, clean UI, standard rules.
Profile
I’m a business analyst who got pulled deep into building once AI made the gap between idea and prototype a hell of a lot smaller.
I spend a lot of time thinking about workflows, friction, user needs, and how to make messy systems easier to deal with. That mindset leaks into everything I build.
I never learned coding the traditional way. AI changed that. Now I use it as a partner to design, test, troubleshoot, and ship tools I actually want to use.
Local-first tools. Prompt systems. Dashboards. Small web apps. Games. Knowledge bases. AI workflows. Stuff that feels obvious once it exists, but was annoying enough that I wanted to make my own version.
Process
It is not glamorous. It is a lot of poking, breaking, fixing, rewriting, and asking why the obvious thing is not obvious yet.