Tery Emilson's profile on Product Hunt

About

I've been writing software since I got my first Tandy Color computer (16k!) back in 1981. Eventually I built my first sales-and-inventory system in dBase to run my own distribution company — then sold that company. I started the first cellular store in eastern Saskatchewan in Canada and sold that too. Along the way I built abcDB, a mobile PocketPC database that ended up used in more than 110 countries, was localized into Spanish and Japanese, and that got me invited to Microsoft's headquarters in 2004 as one of a handful of developers worldwide. Since then I've spent fifteen-plus years as a full-stack developer — CRM systems running more than a dozen dealerships, e-commerce platforms serving customers across North America.

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Tastemaker

Gone streaking 10

Gone streaking

Gone streaking 5

Forums

p/my-handler-ai

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14d ago

MyHandler.AI - If Littlebird, Granola and Wispr-Flow had a baby ....

Hey everyone Tery here, founder of MyHandler.

Quick TL;DR on what MyHandler is: a local-first AI assistant for Windows that watches your screen, meetings, emails, files, and cloud channels (ie. Slack, Teams, etc..) and keeps all your data on YOUR machine instead of someone else's cloud. Think if LittleBird, Granola and Wispr-Flow had a baby. But unlike the parents, the baby never leaves home. ;-)

The actual story:

A few months ago I had this same product working as a CLOUD AI assistant. It worked great. But then I caught myself thinking: if some other company asked me to upload my entire digital life to their servers... like I was expecting MY customers to do ...I'd say no without thinking. Lol. I was building the exact product I personally would NEVER use.
So I pivoted. Deleted a ridiculous amount of working code and rebuilt it as a local-first Windows app. Hybrid approach: cloud model default for speed (Zero Data Retention, only the minimal context for the current question ever leaves), with a one-click switch to a fully on-device LLM (Qwen 3.5 4B via llama.cpp). Classification and storage always happen locally either way.

p/rankfender

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14d ago

Just "AI" is no longer enough. Here is what Product Hunt is telling us.

I have been looking at what is actually getting traction on Product Hunt right now. The pattern is clear.

In March, OpenClaw products dominated the leaderboard. Anything with "Claw" in the name got votes. That was a land grab new space, everyone rushing in to claim a spot .

In April, that stopped. The "just build an agent" strategy stopped working. What replaced it? Products that do specific tasks inside workflows you already have .

Here is what the data shows.

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16d ago

From a Tandy 16k in '81 to a local-first AI assistant in '26. Hi PH.

Hey all,

I'm Tery. I've been writing code since 1981 when my dad bought me a Tandy Color computer with a whopping 4k of RAM (I eventually spent a couple hundred dollars and upgraded to 16k!) I've never looked back. (I also 'adored my Commodore 64!')
Spent the 80s mostly playing and learning... then around 1990 I built my first real production thing: sales order/invoicing program in dBase that ran my own distribution company. (It worked. Mostly.)

In 1999 I shipped abcDB, a mobile database (think MS Access) for Windows PocketPC that ended up in 110+ countries and localized into Spanish and Japanese. That weird little achievement got me a flight to Microsoft HQ in 2004 as one of a handful of devs worldwide they wanted to talk to. Still one of the more surreal weeks of my career.

Since then I've been doing full-stack CRM and e-commerce work for customers across North America. Steady, solid, not flashy.