Cyril Gaillard · Forward Deployed Engineer · AI Engineer

I build AI products and ship them to real users.

Full-stack engineer and founder in Geelong, Australia. Node.js back ends, LLM features, MCP servers, RAG, Whisper speech-to-text, ElevenLabs voice, Flutter apps, Unity VR. Fyrebox, FreeOnlineQuizzes, SoftRun and Buried Worlds VR are all mine, all in production, and all below.

Work

Things I've built and still run.

Fyrebox, interactive quiz maker
Fyrebox
WEB

An interactive quiz maker used around the world, available in 39 languages. Quizzes can be generated by AI and presented by an ElevenLabs-voiced avatar. Built, run and grown by me. fyrebox.com

Now inside ChatGPT: Fyrebox's MCP server was accepted as a ChatGPT app, with OAuth 2.1 and 23 tools for building quizzes in plain language.

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • MongoDB
  • OpenAI API
  • Claude API
  • ElevenLabs
  • MCP
  • OAuth 2.1
  • 39 languages
FreeOnlineQuizzes, multiplayer online quiz game with a leaderboard
FreeOnlineQuizzes
GAME

A multiplayer game for playing AI-generated quizzes. Challenge friends in real time over Socket.io and climb the live leaderboard, on the web or in the Flutter iOS app. freeonlinequizzes.com · Get it on the App Store ↗

  • Node.js
  • Socket.io
  • OpenAI API
  • Flutter
  • 38 languages
Buried Worlds VR, a gold-prospecting adventure
Buried Worlds VR
OUT NOW

A gold-prospecting adventure in virtual reality. Sweep, dig, pan and travel five real gold rushes, starting in Castlemaine. Out now on the Meta Horizon Store for Quest 2, Quest 3, Quest 3S and Quest Pro. buriedworlds.com · Get it on Meta Quest ↗

  • Unity
  • C#
  • Meta Quest
SoftRun, AI audience for spoken material
SoftRun
APP

An AI audience for spoken material. Whisper transcribes the talk, an LLM audience reacts to it, and you know if it lands before the room does. Web, plus Flutter apps for iOS and Android. softrunapp.com · App Store ↗ · Google Play ↗

  • Node.js
  • Whisper
  • OpenAI API
  • Flutter

SoftRun VR is coming soon — the same audience, standing in the room with you.

Frenchie Teachie Everything, French learning game for kidsFrenchie Teachie Objects, French vocabulary game
iOS game catalogue
14 TITLES

Fourteen original games shipped to the App Store over the years, written in Objective-C.

  • Objective-C
  • iOS
Digital twin chat, answering as Cyril from his notes
Digital Twin
AI

A conversational twin of me, grounded in my own notes: chunked, embedded and searched in Chroma, expanded back to whole notes, answered by the model in the first person from those notes only. It speaks in a clone of my voice over a pre-warmed ElevenLabs socket, listens hands-free with server-side turn detection, and has a SwiftUI iPhone client. The chat box above talks to it. Ask it something →

  • TypeScript
  • Chroma
  • RAG
  • OpenAI embeddings
  • ElevenLabs Scribe + TTS
  • WebSockets
  • SwiftUI
  • Railway

Side projects

Smaller tools I built for myself and run every day. Two of them are MCP servers: no UI, just tools that Claude or ChatGPT call.

BatchPilot
AI · EMAIL

An AI-first alternative to Mailchimp: a mini CRM that sends campaigns in batches as Gmail drafts or through Amazon SES, tracks deliveries, opens, bounces and complaints via SNS and SQS, researches and writes each outreach email from the prospect's website, and drafts newsletters from a project's git log with Claude.

  • TypeScript
  • Hono
  • SQLite · Drizzle
  • Gmail API
  • AWS SES
  • OpenAI · Claude
Timeline
MCP

A task-first calendar: a vertical, real-time timeline of what's next instead of a month grid. Its MCP server lets ChatGPT and Claude list, create and update events, so the assistant plans with my real schedule in context. Web push reminders.

  • Node.js
  • Express
  • MongoDB
  • MCP SDK
  • htmx
  • Web Push
FoodLogger
MCP

A food journal with no UI at all. An MCP server logs meals and recipes to MongoDB, and I talk to it through Claude or ChatGPT: "I had spaghetti bolognese last night", "what did I eat yesterday?". Ten tools, each with an output schema for structured results.

  • TypeScript
  • MCP SDK
  • MongoDB
  • Zod
  • Railway
Ask my twin

Talk to my digital twin.

A RAG system over my own notes, answering as me. Ask it what I built, what stack I use, or whether I'd be a fit for your team. How it works →

Hi, I'm Cyril's digital twin. Ask me about the products, the stack, how I work, or what I'm looking for. I answer from a set of notes Cyril wrote, and I'll say so when something isn't in them.

Photo coming soon
About me

Hi, I'm Cyril.

I'm a developer and founder based in Geelong, Australia, originally from France. I worked at the Rochester Institute of Technology in New York and at GE in Karlsruhe before starting my own companies, and I've been building and running software ever since.

I work the way a forward deployed engineer does: understand the actual problem, build the integration end to end, ship it to the people who asked for it, then keep it running. Fyrebox has been doing that for quiz makers around the world for over a decade. FreeOnlineQuizzes, SoftRun and Buried Worlds VR came out of the same habit of building something, shipping it, and seeing who turns up.

Stack
  • Node.js
  • Express
  • JavaScript
  • Socket.io
  • OpenAI API
  • Whisper
  • ElevenLabs
  • RAG pipelines
  • MCP
  • Chroma
  • Flutter
  • Unity
  • C#
  • Objective-C
  • AWS
  • htmx
What I do

Four things, done properly.

AI engineering

LLM features that survive contact with users: an MCP server accepted as a ChatGPT app, a RAG digital twin over Chroma, AI quiz generation, Whisper speech-to-text, ElevenLabs voice, prompt and evaluation work.

Fyrebox · Digital Twin · SoftRun

Forward deployed engineering

Prototype to production with the customer in the loop. I sit with the problem, build the integration end to end, ship it, and stay until it works in their environment.

Bring me in →

Full-stack product engineering

Node.js and Express back ends, real-time multiplayer over Socket.io, Flutter mobile apps, localisation in 39 languages, payments, email, and the ops to keep it all up.

Fyrebox · FreeOnlineQuizzes · SoftRun

Games & VR

Buried Worlds VR in Unity and C# for Meta Quest, fourteen iOS games in Objective-C, and VR experiences and prototypes for clients.

Play Buried Worlds VR on Meta Quest ↗
In the press

A few mentions.

New ‘Aussie Trivia’ app helps newcomers settle in fasteriTWireOnline Quizzes: The New Lead GeneratorB&TFrenchie Teachie Objects for iOSSoft112

Hiring, or need an engineer embedded with your team?

Forward deployed, AI or full-stack. Tell me what you're building and where it's stuck. I reply quickly, and I've probably shipped something like it before.

Working worldwide from Geelong, the Bellarine Peninsula and the Surf Coast.