AI Development Infrastructure
How we gave a 70-person engineering team AI-powered tooling that cut development time by 70%.
Direct Wines had a 70-person engineering team shipping across multiple platforms with no AI tooling in place. Code review was entirely manual, consuming senior developer hours on repetitive feedback. New hires took weeks to ramp up on the codebase. The team knew AI could help, but had no internal capability to build or integrate it.
We mapped the full development workflow to find the highest-leverage automation points — not the flashiest ones. The answer was not a single tool but an integrated layer across the entire developer experience: from writing code, to reviewing it, to onboarding new people onto the codebase.
How it works
Development workflow audit
Spent two weeks inside the team, shadowing developers and reviewing bottlenecks. Identified three high-impact areas: code review latency, inconsistent coding patterns, and slow onboarding.
IDE rule files across 4 editors
Built AI-powered configuration files for Cursor, VS Code, GitHub Copilot, and Claude Code. Each editor got context-aware rules tuned to the company's codebase, coding standards, and architecture. Every developer gets the same quality of AI assistance regardless of which editor they use.
Automated PR review bot
Built a GitHub Actions-powered bot that reviews every pull request with severity-based feedback. Critical issues block the merge. Style suggestions are flagged but not enforced. This freed senior developers from routine review while maintaining quality standards.
Codebase onboarding system
Created an AI-powered onboarding guide that lets new developers ask questions about the codebase, architecture decisions, and team conventions. New hires can self-serve answers that previously required pulling a senior developer away from their work.
Results
- 70% reduction in development time across the team
- 3x fewer defects reaching code review
- New developer onboarding cut from weeks to days
- Senior developers freed from routine code review
Tech stack
He quickly zeroed in on the highest-leverage opportunities and kept the team focused on what actually moves the business. He brought AI into the team in a way that actually stuck. Daniel moves fast — he goes from insight to production in days, not weeks.
Nicole Romito
VP of Ecommerce & Marketing, Direct Wines
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15 minutes. No sales pitch. We look at your business and tell you honestly where AI helps — and where it does not.
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