Private beta

From concept to a production encrypted platform. Designed, delivered, and operated in-house.

Relay is a self-hosted, end-to-end-encrypted communications platform I designed, built, and operate end to end, in the hours around full-time enterprise delivery. It's also a demonstration of the delivery system behind it: governed, AI-assisted engineering turning part-time hours into team-level output.

SystemRelay · private, self-hosted communication for technical teams
RoleFounder · product owner · architect · delivery lead
StageActive private beta · operated in production
DeliveredWeb + desktop apps · chat · voice · screen share · E2EE · CI/CD
SourceRepository statistics as of July 2026
relay.hologramhacks.com
Relay: main chat with channels, conversation, and member list
393
Merge requests merged in ~5 months
~78/mo
Reviewed MRs merged, monthly average
318
Issues tracked & closed
E2E
Encrypted · zero-downtime deploys
The method

Instead of writing Relay line by line, I built agentic pipelines that plan, write, and review code under guardrails I design, every change human-reviewed before it merges.

A working private beta was in testers' hands on day one. The five months since turned that prototype into a production-operated platform through 390+ reviewed changes, with security, review, and testing built in from the start, not bolted on after.
Why merge requests, not commits? Every number here is a reviewed, merged change on Relay's production branch, work that actually shipped, straight from the project's own history.
What I owned
  • Product strategy and scope
  • Architecture and technical direction
  • Backlog and release planning
  • Security model and threat remediation
  • Infrastructure and deployment
  • Beta feedback and iteration
  • Production operations
What I built
Frontend
A React / TypeScript web client and an Electron desktop app with auto-update.
ReactTypeScriptElectron
Backend
Real-time messaging and presence over a typed, persistent data layer.
Node.jsPrismaPostgreSQLSocket.io
Real-time media
Voice and screen-share on LiveKit, configured for production WebRTC.
LiveKitWebRTCDTLS/SRTP
Infrastructure
A five-service Docker stack on Azure with CI/CD and health-checked, zero-downtime deploys.
AzureDocker ComposeNGINXCI/CD
Security
End-to-end encryption, a hardened CSP, and a deliberate move toward zero telemetry, hardened through full security audits with penetration and vulnerability testing.
E2E encryptionHardened CSPZero telemetryPen / vuln tested
Beyond side projects
The method scales. The same governed delivery approach runs on a business-critical enterprise ERP: ~250K lines of production code (~500K with tests), ~95% generated by pipelines I built and directed, measured from the production repository. Delivered with a small dev team under external security audits with GDPR and PII controls. Client details confidential.
What this demonstrates

High volume and high quality are usually a trade-off. Designed and governed well, agentic systems let you have both: 390+ reviewed changes shipped from spare hours, with the merged history to back it.

Let's talk

Building agentic capability or secure platforms?

If you're working on agentic engineering or software that has to be trusted in production, I'd be glad to compare notes.

brian@hologramhacks.com
Explore Relay →
Brian Jones · Founder, Hologram Hacks · Pittsburgh, PA