The brief
Most chatbots on small sites either know nothing or make things up. A small company needs one that answers the real questions from its own data, says plainly what it can't do, and can't run up a bill.
What I built
Ask the Harbour Office, the help line of the Port Aven Ferry Co., in the harbour town Night Ferry comes from.
- Departure times, and whether a boat is running, come from code: the timetable, and a fixed weather rule on a live sea forecast. The model reports them; it never guesses.
- Every call reserves its worst case against a hard monthly cap before it is made, and each visitor is paced. Past the cap, the line says so instead of spending.
- It stays on the harbour, declines bookings and payment, keeps no record of what anyone types, and answers someone in distress with real help-line numbers instead of ferry times.
- You can ask out loud: hold the button and speak. The clip is transcribed once and thrown away, and the words go through the same checks as typed ones.
How it works
A static Astro page with a Svelte chat, and one Hono route on Cloudflare Workers that streams the reply. The prompt is built from labelled, versioned layers with the company's knowledge first, so it caches. A Durable Object keeps the spend ledger, and a graded set of thirty questions, from fares to prompt-injection attempts, runs against the live line.
What came of it
A working help line for a company that doesn't exist, costing well under a cent an answer. The same build would answer for a clinic's front desk, a venue's box office or a shop's order questions.
Want something like this?
I build things like this for people with an idea and not enough hours. Tell me what you’re making.
Open to a few small projects: websites, apps and automation.
Email me at
If you can, mention
- What you needa few lines is plenty
- When you need ita date, or no rush
- A rough budgeta range is fine
No fixed prices. Tell me the budget and I’ll say what fits.
What happens after you email
- You email what you need; I reply by email with questions.
- A written, fixed-scope proposal.
- I build it, and hand it over with everything you need to run it.