AI-first consulting,
built on real work.
Goondocks Consulting is an independent technology consultancy founded in 2024 by Chris Kirby, an engineering leader and open-source maintainer with over twenty years of shipping production software. The firm operates AI-first: every engagement uses agent-native workflows internally and helps clients adopt them in production — from Claude Code rollouts to Kubernetes platforms to UniFi-and-Cloudflare network architectures. Chris is also available for fractional engineering leadership through Fractional.
Why "Goondocks."
The goondocks are the edges — the parts of the harbor where the maps get thin and the work gets real. That's where this firm operates: at the boundary between what teams know and what AI agents are about to make possible, between strategy and the actual command line, between the pitch deck and the production deploy.
Founded in 2024, Goondocks Consulting was built around one thesis: the SDLC of the last twenty years is being replaced by the AI-DLC, and the teams that get there first — with the right harnesses, the right protocols, and the right infrastructure underneath — will compound years of leverage over the teams that don't. Our job is to get clients across that gap, hands-on, without losing the discipline that ships code that actually runs.
Chris Kirby.
Chris is an engineering leader, open-source maintainer, and the founder of Goondocks Consulting. Over twenty years he's shipped production software across early-stage startups, scale-ups, and enterprise platforms — most recently focused on AI agents, developer tooling, and the infrastructure that lets agents safely touch real systems.
He maintains Myco (project and team intelligence for AI agents), UniFi MCP (an MCP server for the full UniFi stack), and Open Agent Kit (an architecture toolkit for AI-driven development). He also stewards the Collagen Advocacy Network, a donated platform for rare-disease advocacy.
Beyond client engagements through Goondocks, Chris is available as a fractional CTO and engineering leader via Fractional for teams that need senior leadership without a full-time hire.
More at chriskirby.net.
Engagement model.
Goondocks takes engagements from one-week diagnostic sprints to multi-quarter platform builds. We work as embedded senior engineers — pairing with your team, writing code in your repos, opening real PRs — not as a vendor on the outside.
- Discovery sprint — one to two weeks. Audit current state, identify the highest-leverage interventions, deliver a written plan.
- Embedded build — four to twelve weeks. Hands-on implementation of agent platforms, developer infrastructure, or network architecture.
- Fractional leadership — ongoing. Senior engineering leadership at the cadence you need; via Goondocks or via Fractional.
Based in Detroit, Michigan (Eastern Time). Remote-first, working with clients worldwide — comfortable with EU mornings, North American business hours, and async-first collaboration in between.
Ready to put agents to work?
Whether it's an AI integration, a platform rebuild, or a new secure network, we show up and ship.
[email protected]