VFX Pipeline Consolidation.

The problem

Every VFX studio runs on some version of the same broken stack. ShotGrid for shot tracking. A spreadsheet for bids. Email for client comms. Slack for internal. One rogue whiteboard with outdated thumbnail printouts. None of it connected. Coordinators were the glue.

The visible cost was the two weeks it took every new coordinator to ramp. The hidden cost was every shot that fell through the gaps because the system couldn't see itself end-to-end.

The approach

One unified pipeline view. An AI onboarding agent that lives in Slack and answers the same fifty questions every new hire asks in their first two weeks. The institutional knowledge stops being a tax on senior coordinators and starts being a system anyone can query.

The build

Four-week engagement. Heavier on integration than build because the source data lived in mature, established tools. The work was making them visible together for the first time.

Highlights:

• Custom integration layer pulling from ShotGrid API, Google Sheets, Gmail, and Slack into a unified Postgres view
• Coordinator dashboard surfacing every shot's status across all four sources in one place
• AI onboarding agent in Slack trained on the studio's own documentation, naming conventions, and historical project decisions
• Weekly pattern surfacing identifying shots at risk before they slip the schedule
• Full handover documentation so the studio's lead coordinator could maintain and extend the system after launch

The outcome

New-hire ramp cut from 14 days to 3. Coordinators got hours back every week. The institutional knowledge that used to live in three senior people's heads now lives in a queryable system every new coordinator has on day one. The studio isn't running on memory anymore.

Tech stack

ShotGrid API, Google Sheets API, Gmail API, Slack Bolt, PostgreSQL, Claude API (onboarding agent), Python, Next.js (coordinator dashboard). Four weeks. Built solo.