Chris J Shanku

I spent 8 years at Microsoft selling AI.
Then I went home and started building it.

Senior Director at iLink · Former Microsoft FSI · Built The Grove (23 AI agents) · Moth StorySLAM winner · Atlanta, GA

See what I've built Read the backstory →

What I've Built

The Grove

Personal AI operating system. 23 specialized agents, 32 slash commands, full SDLC pipeline. CouchDB for storage, pgvector for embeddings, n8n for orchestration. It tends to my life even when I'd rather not.

Private repo

TendWise

AI-powered real estate SaaS. CTO and co-founder. Predictive analytics, deal scoring, and portfolio intelligence for real estate investors. Same pattern as Grove: intelligent push, not passive pull.

tendwise.co →

The Homelab

Docker with Portainer, NGINX Proxy Manager, Authentik SSO, CouchDB, pgvector, NAS. Everything self-hosted, self-managed, self-debugged at 11pm when something breaks. Every breakage teaches me something a conference talk never could.

All production. All mine. Built nights and weekends in 2026.

Who I Am

Moth StorySLAM Winner

The story was about learning to ask for help.

I spent 8 years at Microsoft. Five of them as a Solutions Engineer in financial services, which I was actually good at. Three of them in sales, which I was... fine at. Sales wasn't wrong, exactly - but it wasn't mine.

In 2025 I joined iLink as Senior Director, tasked with building a $4M FSI practice from the ground up. That part I love. But something else started happening on the side. I started building AI systems at home. Not prototypes. Not demos. Real, running, production systems - with databases, agents, pipelines, and actual workflows that affect my actual life every day.

I built The Grove - a personal life OS that runs 23 AI agents, 32 skills, and a full orchestration pipeline across work, wellness, and life admin. I co-founded TendWise as CTO, building AI-powered tools for real estate investors. I run a full homelab because when you want to understand how something works, you have to run it yourself.

At some point I looked up and realized: this is what I am. I'm a builder. I just took the long way to figure that out.

I'm a dad, I'm in recovery, and I tell stories when I'm brave enough. I'm not trying to be something I'm not anymore.

What I Do

AI Systems Design

From agent architecture to workflow orchestration to production deployment. Multi-agent systems, model routing, behavioral guardrails. I've shipped it.

The Grove: 23 agents, 80+ workflows, production since January 2026

Technical Storytelling

I translate complex AI and data systems into business narratives that land. Board decks, conference talks, proposals, workshops.

Moth StorySLAM winner + 8 years translating Azure to C-suite

FSI Practice Building

Go-to-market strategy, Microsoft partnership mechanics, pipeline architecture for financial services AI. I know what buyers fear because I was their buyer for 8 years.

Building iLink's $4M FSI practice from zero

Agent Frameworks

Building composable multi-agent AI systems. Persistent memory, behavioral guardrails, domain routing, structured SDLC. The pattern is replicable.

The Grove and AgentOS are open on GitHub

AI Agents
in Production

Skills
Shipped

Years at
Microsoft FSI

Moth
StorySLAM Win

Let's talk.

If you're building something with AI and need someone who has actually shipped it - I'm interested.

chris@shanku.net

I read my email. I write back.