The week started with a weird sense of time. I was building for 2026 while still technically in 2025. The calendar said Monday, December 29, but the code felt like it was already sprinting into the new year. The goal was simple: stop hiding behind stock photos and start building systems that actually do work.
Monday was about truth. I spent the day filling in the blanks on the Lavora remodeling site. A clean site is fine, but a generic one is useless. I uploaded real photos for the bathroom, exterior, and interior projects. I added the Downtown Charleston series, which covers three distinct projects. One was the hexagon tile job from July 2021. Another was the marble work from September and October 2021. The last was a luxury install from March 2022. I also uploaded the Johns Island bathroom photos, including before, during, and after shots. That is 11 images total. The exterior section got 30 photos for the carport conversion, garage door, siding, roofing, and porch work. The interior section got 20 images for the custom window seat and structural addition. Concrete repair got 10 photos. It is a lot of visual proof. I replaced the old team headshots with edited PNGs and JPGs from Kyle. I added a casual social media version and a professional hero shot. The navbar got a tweak to link directly to specific projects. The calendar module needed a fix for timezone handling in the TimeSlotPicker component. If the times are wrong, the booking is wrong. I cleaned that up. By the end of the day, the site felt like it was run by actual people.
Tuesday was about infrastructure. Three fresh codebases landed. I kicked off the CA Retirement Plan Leads Generator from scratch. It was a backend project scaffolded across 91 files with 468,305 lines added in a single initial commit. The structure covers Docker, config, database, models, and routers. The same commit hash showed up mirrored in multistate-retirement-leads. I will sort out the fork situation later. The Retirement Mandate Leads Dashboard also got its initial commit. It is a React frontend with Vite, a US map component, and theme switching. That is 25 files totaling 8,633 lines. I also fixed a real OAuth2 issue in the Lavora booking flow. The calendar, email, booking, and contact handlers needed fixes. It was 69 additions and 32 deletions across four files. I wrote a proper README and added the Magic Unicorn footer credit. The day added up to building what was needed and cleaning up what was visible.
I spent the day filling in the blanks on the Lavora remodeling site.
Wednesday was the peak of complexity. I spent the morning wiring up the multistate-retirement-leads data ingestion services. This was not just about pulling data. It was about handling the specific quirks of New Jersey and Socrata sources. I added ingestion routers and service modules for those states. That was over 893 lines of new code. The real shift was in how the application handles state filtering. I built an all-states mode with a dropdown for user selection. This required changes across the board, from the backend configuration to the frontend API client. I updated the models, database schema, and Vite config. It was a structural change touching almost every file. Parallel to that, I pushed the LLM enrichment service into the multistate and CA retirement repos. I added the enrichment module and updated the scheduler to handle async tasks. The retirement-mandate-leads repo got a lighter touch with metadata cleanup and a CLAUDE.md file. The year ended with a system that was more flexible and intelligent.
Thursday was about control. I backed up the enrichment pipeline in ca-retirement-leads. The commit touched 29 files and swapped nearly a million lines of data. The goal was to lock the state before rewiring enrichment. With the backup in place, I built viewer mode and applied Human Interest branding across the frontend. I adjusted layouts, CSS, config, and routing stubs so a read-only surface could be shipped without letting anyone touch ingestion. Then I added demo mode. That involved a banner component, contact stats, and an enrichment data export hook. The demo flag and viewer flag lived side by side in config. It was a quiet day by calendar standards, but the commits told a different story. The data layer got a hard checkpoint. The UI got a branded viewer shell. The day added up to a product that can be shown without being touched.
Friday was the heavy lift. I replaced the partial export in ca-retirement-leads with a full database dump, including Form 5500 filers. The old approach was cutting corners. I also uploaded the caqr_app_icon.png. But the real work was in multistate-retirement-leads. We shipped local AI enrichment using MLX and the Granite 3.3 2B model. That was over 4,000 lines across 28 files. It changes how the whole enrichment pipeline works. Instead of leaning on external LLM providers, we can now run enrichment locally. It is faster, cheaper, and gives us control. I rewrote the main router, updated models, added routers for benchmarking and ingestion, and built out the service layer. The scheduler that ties it all together got a thorough pass. This was one coherent arc, moving enrichment from external dependency to local capability.
Saturday was about utility. I shipped email campaigns with lead scoring and service provider display in ca-retirement-leads. That was over 3,400 lines added across 14 files. The backend got email campaign tables via an alembic migration, new models, a company scoring service, and a campaigns router. The frontend got a new Campaigns page. I also fixed the Scheduler page API response handling. Then I tackled email verification and company-contact linking. That was the heavy lift: 82,000 lines across 29 files. I won't pretend that number is elegant. It includes scaffolding, configuration, and docs. I wrote up EMAIL_VERIFICATION.md, IMPLEMENTATION_SUMMARY.md, and QUICK_START.md. On multistate-retirement-leads, I added multistate support, Human Interest theming, and comprehensive docs. That was 619 lines across 13 files. The pattern is the same as the last few weeks: build the feature, then deal with the stuff around it that makes it actually usable.
Sunday was cleanup and foundation. I overhauled the unicorn commander website to drop the cheesy branding and lean into the open source model. The commit deleted nearly 97,000 lines of legacy code and assets while adding just over 1,200 lines of new structure. I removed the cheesy branding and added the new Magic Unicorn logo. It feels lighter and more honest. On the multistate side, I wrapped up the tiered enrichment feature. The backend now supports multi-provider search, and the frontend has a settings page for those providers. I added tier filtering to data exports. The remodeling project got spam protection on the booking form. It was a straightforward addition. The week added up to a lot of cleanup and foundation laying. The website looks better. The leads tool is more powerful. The remodeling site is harder to spam.
The week ended with a sense of solidity. I stopped building demos and started building systems that can handle real data, real users, and real complexity. The code is dense, but it is solid. The year started right.
Real product captures — click any to enlarge.