Personnel file · Sherlock, J.

One guy. Actually named Sherlock.

Illustrated portrait of Jim Sherlock in a bowler hat and glasses, holding a magnifying glass, in a brass frame — Commissioned portrait.

I build AI systems for small businesses from Iowa. When your last name is Sherlock and your job is figuring out why the chatbot said that, the detective theme isn't branding — it's destiny.

The credentials, if you're the type who checks: VP of AI & Cybersecurity R&D at a cybersecurity firm, co-founder & CTO of a security-training startup, two US patents, and twenty-plus years running from DoD network forensics to safeguarding 400+ million student records. The full paper trail is in resume.pdf.

SherTechAI LLC sounds like a team. It's Jim. That's the feature: the person you explain your problem to is the person who builds the fix. I'm engineering — also sales, support, and the guy who picked this exact shade of cream.

Iowa turns out to be a great place to build software: the internet is the same speed everywhere, the overhead is low, and nobody interrupts deep work with a networking brunch.

What I actually do all day

Build AI agents that do real work — pull data, draft the follow-up, update the system of record — not agents that demo well and retire.
Wire guardrails around LLMs so a chatbot can answer customer questions without inventing discounts.
Red-team chatbots with promptfoo: break them on purpose before a customer breaks them in public.
Build voice assistants that answer small-business phones (RetellAI), plus the portals that let owners control them.
Automate intake, scheduling, follow-ups — the work nobody was hired to do but everybody does.
Ship the web apps that hold it together: React, TypeScript, Next.js, Tailwind — including this one.

Browse the case files Talk to the whole company

* My flagship security-training project is a game where employees practice lying to a chatbot until it leaks a secret. I built the defenses and the attacks, so both sides of that arms race bill to the same guy.