For Immediate Release

Mount Pleasant, SC · October 21, 2026

Mount Pleasant Man Builds a Software Company Run by an AI Crew — and Keeps the Receipts

MOUNT PLEASANT, S.C. — October 21, 2026 — Chris Hale didn’t make AI. He made AI work like a company.

Since September, Hale — an Automated Systems Engineer — and his wife Ashley, who owns CRTC (Cooper River Trading Co.), have been running an experiment out of their home: a real software company where the staff is a crew of AI systems, directed entirely in plain English, and every claim the company makes has to come with a receipt.

Not a demo. Not a pitch deck. Receipts.

What exists today, verifiable by anyone

  • Appraze — a pricing-intelligence app for resellers — is live in the Microsoft Store right now: https://apps.microsoft.com/detail/9P49G1C4S3RK
  • Five more CRTC apps are in Microsoft Store certification tonight, with four more built and prepared to submit.
  • Six Android apps in preparation for Google Play. Google’s review sets the live date — when it lands, it lands with a receipt.
  • 686 research papers — written, dated, and indexed since mid-September. Every decision the company makes is researched first, written down, and checked by a different AI than the one that wrote it. This is the company’s lab notebook, and it is why the word “experiment” is not a metaphor.
  • Local coverage: Holy City Sinner wrote up Appraze on September 30.

The idea, in plain words: Most companies feed their AI systems through computer code. This one is fed English. The company’s rulebook is written in English. Its AI crew takes orders in English, reports in English, and proves its work with receipts anyone can read — no programming knowledge required between the owner and the machine. Hale’s bet: that is how every small company will run eventually. He intends to be able to prove he ran his that way first.

The honest part, because this family raised him that way: the company has not made its first dollar of app revenue yet. That is what the store launches are for, and it is why a real computer matters — the next step is a company-owned AI system running in the company’s own shop, trained on the company’s own 686 papers, instead of rented AI that disappears when a subscription lapses.

“We’re a moral company first, before anything else. God first,” Hale says. “This is a research and development experiment. The money is a bonus. What matters is that the record is true — every number in this release can be checked — and that what we build does good and lasts.” — Chris Hale, Automated Systems Engineer, CRTC

What’s next: the Google Play launch, the remaining store certifications, and the company’s own AI seat coming online. Every step gets written down. That part is not optional; it’s the whole point.

The numbers

  • 686 research papers written and indexed since Sept 16
  • 13+ apps built
  • 6 apps in the Microsoft Store tonight — 1 live (Appraze), 5 in certification, 4 more prepared to submit
  • 6 Android apps in preparation for Google Play
  • 1 company brain — every paper, result, and correction in one place, owned outright
  • 2 owners. 0 outside investors. $0 app revenue so far — stated plainly, because the record is the product

About CRTC

CRTC (Cooper River Trading Co., CRTC LLC) is a Mount Pleasant, South Carolina software company created and founded by Chris Hale, Automated Systems Engineer, and run together with Ashley Hale, the company's Business Manager. CRTC builds practical software — including Appraze, a pricing-intelligence app for resellers, and trained AI employees for small businesses — with a crew of AI systems directed entirely in plain English, under a standing rule that every public claim carries a checkable receipt. No outside investors. The company documents its experiment in the open, including its misses.

Media contact

Chris Hale, CRTC LLC — [email protected] · Mount Pleasant, SC · cooperrivertrading.com

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Earlier release

Mount Pleasant, SC · October 2026

One builder, an AI crew, ~50 projects in ten weeks: CRTC introduces “D³”

Director-Driven Development — a solo founder directs a crew of AI builders, reviews every change, and ships. No team, no outside funding.

Cooper River Trading Co. (CRTC LLC), a one-person software studio led by founder Chris Hale in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina, today put a name to the method behind an unusual run of output: D³, or Director-Driven Development. In D³, a single person sets the direction and acts as the final gate while AI builders do the construction — and nothing ships without the founder’s explicit approval.

The approach grew out of frustration with building software the conventional way. Starting in the summer of 2026 with a first app, Flip Funner, and then Appraze, CRTC has since started roughly 50 repositories (apps, tools, kits and plans), a portfolio built by one person in about ten weeks.

“I started coding the normal way, then realized I could direct the machines to do the heavy lifting and just approve what’s right. One person can run like a whole shop. That’s D³.” — Chris Hale, Founder, CRTC LLC

How D³ works

The founder directs; the AI crew builds; the founder reviews and approves. A hard rule sits at the center of the system: state-changing actions — anything that sends, spends, deploys, or signs — pause for a human’s explicit approval before they run. The speed comes from delegation; the safety comes from keeping a person in command.

A recent proof point

  • CRTC’s current flagship repository logged 329 commits and ~96,000 lines of code and documentation in a 14-day span, with its automated test suites passing.
  • The broader portfolio spans about 50 private repositories of apps and tooling.
  • Appraze, CRTC’s first product, was built end to end the D³ way.

About Cooper River Trading Co.

Cooper River Trading Co. (CRTC LLC) is an independent software studio founded and run by Chris Hale in Mount Pleasant, South Carolina. It builds Windows apps, websites and AI automations using Director-Driven Development (D³), a human-directed, AI-built workflow designed to let one person operate at the scale of a small team while keeping a person’s approval on every consequential action.

Media contact

Chris Hale, CRTC LLC — [email protected] · Mount Pleasant, SC

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