I've built a software platform that insurance agencies use to document workflows, train staff, and answer process questions with AI. It has a marketing site, a web app, a browser extension, analytics, and a learning management system. And I haven't written a single line of its code.
Claude wrote it. I'm a former agency partner with 20 years in insurance operations and a head full of ideas. For months, one question has followed me around: am I a developer, or am I an imposter who got lucky with a very good tool? I've landed on an answer, and it isn't either one.
The Moment I Felt Like a Fraud
EpOpti started as a website built from static HTML pages. A developer helped me convert it into a real web app and set up the skeleton for courses and catalogs. From there, I built it out: the marketing site, the colors, the fonts, the first process guides, and the hubs that tie guides back to resources. Then came the AI piece, a system that reads one agency's own guides and returns accurate answers specific to that agency.
That was the first time I thought, this thing has legs. It was also when the voice in my head got loudest. A real developer laid the foundation. AI wrote the code. So what exactly did you do?
What the Autopilot Can't Know
Before insurance, I was Director of Flight Operations at Sierra Academy of Aeronautics. Aviation has a concept called pilot in command. On a modern airliner, the autopilot flies most of the route, and it flies more precisely than any human hand. Nobody calls the captain an imposter for that.
The captain's job was never moving the controls. It's knowing where the flight is going, knowing what can go wrong, catching the automation when it does something it shouldn't, and owning the outcome when the wheels touch down. The autopilot executes. The pilot decides.
Two Decisions No AI Would Have Made
I stopped feeling like a fraud when I looked at the two features that make EpOpti actually work. Neither came from a prompt. Both came from years of watching agencies struggle.
- The browser extension — I learned the hard way that people won't use a guide if they have to leave their work to find it. So the guides had to come to them, right in the browser, next to Applied Epic.
- Analytics and quizzing — A guide nobody reads is just a nicer-looking version of tribal knowledge. By tracking who views guides and testing staff on competency through a learning management system, I closed the gap between "we documented it" and "our team knows it."
Put those together with the guides themselves and you get a round trip. The knowledge is documented, it's available where the work happens, you can see it being used, and you can prove it was learned.
No AI suggested that. It came from 20 years of watching the same scene play out. A new hire gets stuck on a process. A tenured employee stops their own work to answer the question. A manager pushes both of them to get more done. Everyone is frustrated, productivity drains away, and nobody can fix it because the answers live in people's heads.
What I'm Not
I want to be honest here, because it matters. I'm not a software engineer. Experienced engineers know things I don't: how systems behave under heavy load, where security gaps hide, and how to keep code maintainable for years. When the foundation needed a real developer, I brought one in. When it matters, I still do.
Pretending otherwise would make me an actual imposter. Knowing your limits is part of being pilot in command too.
The Same Skill EpOpti Sells
Here's what surprised me most. Building with AI forced me to do exactly what I tell agencies to do.
Claude can only build what you can clearly explain. When my ideas were vague, the software was vague. When I knew a process cold but hadn't written it down, the tool couldn't use it, just like a new CSR on day three can't. Every good feature started with me turning what I knew into instructions someone else could follow.
That's the whole problem with tribal knowledge. It doesn't matter how much your best people know if nobody else, human or AI, can act on it.
What the Interruptions Cost
New hires pulling tenured staff away from their work is more than frustrating. It has a real price, and most agencies have never calculated it.
Imposter or Developer? Neither.
So am I a developer? No. Am I an imposter? Not anymore. I'm pilot in command. I knew where this needed to go, I knew what the industry was missing, and I knew when the output was wrong. The tool flew the plane. I decided where it landed.
If you've spent years inside an industry and you're sitting on ideas because you "can't code," that excuse is gone. The expertise you already have is the hard part. And if your agency's expertise is still trapped in people's heads, that's exactly what EpOpti was built to fix.