JTC — Josh T. Cruz

Josh T. Cruz — Independent Developer

I build web platforms, AI systems, and 3D experiences.

I work end to end and alone: database schema through backend, frontend, 3D asset pipeline, and the deploy script that puts it on a live server. Four years running my own web studio, five at Apple, and five of the platforms below are in production right now.

See the work Start a conversation
Available for freelance & full-time Long Island, New York info@joshtcruz.com · Client portal

Selected work

Things I designed, built, and shipped myself.

01

The Bartr Market Live

Solo build — data layer, marketplace, deployment · 2026

A used-car marketplace for private sellers only, built around a rule most sites break: never show a number you cannot stand behind. Specifications come from the federal VIN database rather than from whatever the seller typed.

  • Every listing is decoded from its VIN via NHTSA — engine, transmission, drivetrain and build plant are facts, not seller claims
  • The VIN check digit is validated locally, so a typo is caught before any API call is made
  • Open safety recalls pulled live for each year, make and model — the buyer protection no classifieds site bothers with
  • Price comparison uses the median of comparable listings, refuses to answer below three comps, and always shows the sample size
  • It will not scrape competitors for prices: their terms forbid it, and a blocked shared IP would take five other sites down with it
  • AI photo analysis is framed as reading photographs, never as an inspection — it reports what the photos fail to show as well as what they do
  • Anti-dealer enforcement via a listings-per-year cap set to the threshold most states use for unlicensed dealing
The Bartr Market homepage — private-seller used car listings with VIN-verified specifications
PHPNHTSA vPICFacebook OAuthClaude visionWikimedia API
Visit site →
02

RHR Junk Removal Live

Solo build — booking engine, brand site, deployment · 2026

A Tampa Bay junk-removal and dumpster-rental business with no website at all. The hard part was not the site: it was a calendar that books one physical trailer against three services that consume it very differently.

  • A resource calendar, not a slot picker — an hourly haul-away takes one hour, but a week-long dumpster rental takes the trailer off the road for seven days and blocks every hour inside that range
  • Overlap is settled under an exclusive file lock: six simultaneous claims on the same week produced exactly one booking
  • Google Places integration that shows real reviews or none at all — with no API key it degrades to the verified rating rather than inventing quotes
  • Brand palette sampled from the logo artwork — the deep crimson and chrome ramp are taken from the actual pixels, not eyeballed
  • Deliberately no prices anywhere; the deploy script fails if a dollar figure appears, because the business quotes every job on site
  • Customer addresses and phone numbers return HTTP 403, asserted on every deploy
RHR Junk Removal homepage — dark brand site with online booking
PHPResource calendarFile lockingGoogle Places APIImage pipeline
Visit site →
03

ADJ Services Live

Solo build — booking engine, site, deployment · 2026

A booking site for a veteran-owned water heater flushing business. Customers pick a real one-hour slot and the calendar only ever offers time that is genuinely free — no back-and-forth, no double bookings.

  • A live booking calendar — one-hour slots, Mon–Fri 9–4, with each slot disappearing the moment it is taken
  • Double-booking made impossible by an exclusive file lock that re-checks availability while held — proven with six simultaneous claims on one slot, of which exactly one won
  • The booking is written to disk before any email is attempted, so a mail outage can never silently lose a customer
  • Owner console for viewing and cancelling bookings and blocking off unavailable hours
  • Customer data returns HTTP 403 — asserted on every single deploy, not just once at launch
  • Forced HTTPS, CSRF tokens, a honeypot, and per-IP login throttling
ADJ Services homepage — water heater flushing, pricing, and online booking
PHPBooking engineFile lockingJSON storageApache / .htaccess
Visit site →
04

Raiders Trade Live

Solo build — architecture, backend, frontend, moderation tooling · 2026

A community trading platform for ARC Raiders players, built from scratch on PHP and MySQL. Players post item-for-item listings, get matched automatically against compatible offers, coordinate in-site, and complete the swap in-game.

  • A match engine that surfaces true two-way swaps, instead of making players scroll hundreds of listings
  • Escrow and safety-deposit flows through community-vetted Trusted Holders, so neither side can run with the other’s item
  • Reputation scoring, review history, and a report-and-strike moderation pipeline feeding admin review
  • In-site direct messaging, leaderboards, giveaways, and a referral system
  • A 52 KB admin console over a 28-endpoint internal API layer
  • JSON-LD structured data, canonical URLs, and breadcrumbs on every page
Raiders Trade homepage — live trade ticker, stats, and how-it-works section
PHPMySQLAuth & sessionsREST APIJSON-LD SEOApache / cPanel
Visit site →
05

Boobies Earth Live

Solo build — 3D frontend, custom CMS, asset pipeline, deploy · 2026

An interactive storefront for a custom beauty and goods business. The homepage is a navigable solar system: each service — nails, wigs, color, custom logos, permanent bouquets, fashion — orbits as a moon you can spin and open.

  • Real-time glTF/GLB models in-browser through <model-viewer>, with poster stills that paint before the geometry arrives
  • An asset pipeline cutting a raw 43 MB photogrammetry export to 1.44 MB — 24× smaller — via Draco and WebP
  • Homepage weight taken from 6.2 MB to 1.5 MB, which is what matters on 100–200 KB/s shared hosting
  • Mobile slowness diagnosed as GPU fill-rate, not download — fixed by drawing less, not loading less
  • A custom PHP CMS with restore points, plus a theme engine emitting CSS custom properties so the palette is editable without touching code
Boobies Earth homepage — 3D models orbiting in a browser scene
model-viewerglTF / DracoPHP CMSSharpCSS custom propsFTP deploy
Visit site →
06

AI DJ Avatar

Solo build — Electron app, real-time audio, 3D avatar · 2026

A desktop AI DJ that hosts a live stream. It reads chat, answers out loud in a real voice, picks the music, and drives a rigged 3D avatar that dances to whatever is playing.

  • OpenAI Realtime API for low-latency conversational voice, with ElevenLabs and Claude in the loop
  • Live TikTok chat ingestion, so viewer messages steer the set as it happens
  • A Three.js avatar with a GLB animation set — idle, bass beats, per-track dance clips — plus Simli lip-sync
  • Persistent personality and memory modules that keep the DJ in character across a whole stream
ElectronThree.jsOpenAI RealtimeElevenLabsLiveKitTikTok Live
07

Forex Signal Bot

Solo build — strategy engine, API integration, cost control · 2026

A Python and Flask service that reads live FX markets, scores setups with an LLM alongside technical signals, and reports through a live dashboard.

  • OANDA practice and live endpoints behind a single config switch, with tuned cache TTLs on quote, account, and open-trade calls
  • Market context pulled from Finnhub and Alpha Vantage and folded into a weighted signal score
  • Hard daily budget caps on AI spend — per request, per token, and per dollar — with running usage accounting
  • Persistent trade memory and profit history, deployed under cPanel through passenger_wsgi.py
PythonFlaskOANDA APILLM scoringWSGI / cPanel
08

Quest XR Bridge

Solo build — Unity scenes, Android build, device bridge · 2026

A Meta Quest application built in Unity against the Meta XR SDK, packaged as a native Android APK with its own Gradle build, alongside a companion bridge for driving the headset from a desktop app.

  • Unity scene and interaction work against the Meta XR SDK
  • A standalone Gradle/Android build producing an installable Quest APK
  • A desktop-to-headset bridge for sending state into the running application
UnityC#Meta XR SDKAndroid / GradleQuest

Capabilities

The stack I actually ship on.

Web platforms

  • HTML & CSS
  • JavaScript
  • PHP
  • MySQL
  • Node & Express
  • REST APIs
  • Auth & sessions
  • Admin tooling
  • Apache / cPanel

AI & real-time

  • OpenAI Realtime API
  • Claude API
  • ElevenLabs voice
  • LiveKit
  • Live chat ingestion
  • Prompt & cost budgeting
  • Agent memory

3D, XR & graphics

  • Three.js
  • model-viewer
  • glTF / GLB / Draco
  • Unity & C#
  • Meta Quest / XR
  • Real-time perf tuning

Data & automation

  • Python
  • Flask
  • Trading & market APIs
  • Caching strategies
  • JSON data stores
  • Deploy scripting

Delivery

  • Image & model compression
  • Page-weight budgeting
  • GPU fill-rate tuning
  • FTP deploy pipelines
  • SEO & structured data
  • Shared-hosting constraints

Experience

Nine years in and around the web.

2026 — present

Independent Developer

JTC · joshtcruz.com

Designing and shipping full products alone: database schema through backend, frontend, 3D asset pipeline, and the deploy scripts that put them on a live server. Every project above went from empty folder to running site.

2021 — present

Technical Specialist

Apple Inc. · Lake Grove, NY

Support customers across the whole ownership life cycle — diagnosis, repair options, trade-in and upgrade paths — and turn technical detail into a recommendation someone can actually act on.

  • Triage needs quickly to drive in-store sessions per hour and cut customer wait times
  • Offer education and ownership routes when a repair is the weaker option for the customer
  • Previously Specialist — device setup, troubleshooting, software support, and customer data transfers
  • Store device management on the merchandising team: Plano execution, ISU configuration and troubleshooting through RDM
2017 — 2021

Owner

BICO Media · Selden, NY

Ran my own web design and development studio. Took client projects from first conversation through requirements, design, build, and launch — and owned the client relationship the whole way.

  • Designed and built websites for small-business clients end to end
  • Defined requirements with clients, gathered feedback, and steered technology choices around what their business actually needed
  • Managed supplier, client, and stakeholder relationships directly, with an eye on the long-term partnership rather than the single job
2017 — 2021

Content Manager

Kings of Blades Inc. · Farmingville, NY

Owned content across the brand, working alongside marketing and customer support to keep the experience consistent wherever a customer met it.

  • Analysed site analytics and user feedback to measure content performance and act on what it showed
  • Implemented CMS workflows, then trained and mentored the team on publishing through them
2017 — 2018

Internet Sales Representative

Chevrolet of Smithtown · Smithtown, NY

Handled online sales enquiries, explaining technical product detail clearly to buyers who did not speak the jargon.

  • Implemented CMS workflows and trained team members on publishing processes
  • Managed enquiries, resolutions, and after-sales support through to a satisfied customer

Contact

Tell me what you want built.

Freelance projects, contract work, or a full-time role — send the shape of the problem and I’ll tell you honestly whether I’m the right person for it.

Email
info@joshtcruz.com
Live work
thebartrmarket.com · rhrjunkremoval.com · adjservices.com · raiderstrade.com · boobiesearth.com