// About · xCraft AI
An engineering practice for AI, run by one engineer
xCraft AI is an independent AI consulting practice and content studio based in San Diego, California, operated by Alex Chen. It puts nearly two decades of hardware engineering discipline to work on one question for small and mid-sized businesses: where does AI genuinely pay for itself in the work you already do, and how do we build it so it keeps working?
Independent · founded 2026 · San Diego, CA
// What the practice does
Two kinds of work, one standard
Every engagement is specified in writing, tested against that specification on your real documents, and shipped into the daily workflow you already run. Nothing is for sale until it has shipped for real users.
AI systems audit
A map of where AI fits your operation, what is safe to automate, and what will break. You leave with a written plan and a priority order.
Custom assistants and agents
Assistants and scoped agents wired to your tools and data, with human-in-the-loop guardrails and acceptance checks agreed up front.
// How an engagement runs
The way I ran hardware programs
Understand the operation, find the pain, propose the fix, then build and implement it. Each step produces a written artifact you keep, whether or not the next step happens.
1 · Understand
A working session on the workflow that eats your week. What happens, who touches it, where it stalls.
2 · Diagnose
Every idea screened four ways: legally allowed, technically possible, worth the cost, and the best use of the first build.
3 · Propose
A written specification: inputs, outputs, acceptance checks, and what stays human. You approve it before anything is built.
4 · Implement
Built to the spec, run against the checks on your real documents, then installed in the SOP you already follow.
// Who runs it
Alex Chen
Staff Engineer Electromechanical and AI Generalist. Nearly two decades in mechanical design, failure investigation, and supplier engineering, the last decade in defense-aerospace avionics, on hardware where specifications do not negotiate. M.S. and B.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering from UC San Diego; Systems Engineering certificate from Caltech CTME. English and Mandarin; originally from Taiwan.
Every engagement is delivered by me personally. There is no agency behind this page and no hand-off to someone you have not met.
// The studio
Built in public
The second line of the practice is a content studio: this site, a dated Lab Log of what worked and what broke while building AI systems, and a video pipeline in production. The Engine Room is the technical view; the Showroom is the client view. Both are the same practice, described honestly.
// At a glance
- NAME:
- xCraft AI
- OPERATOR:
- Alex Chen, independent consultant
- BASED:
- San Diego, California, United States
- SERVES:
- Remote-first, US Pacific time zone
- LANG:
- English · Mandarin
- EMAIL:
- contact@xcraftai.com