Gavin Basuel

About Gavin Basuel

Las Vegas, NV · Forward-Deployed & Design Engineer

Creator of tattoo.dev, uqp.dev (Universal Quoting Protocol), and quote.dev. I design, ship, and operate AI-native protocols, developer APIs, agent fleets, and revenue systems end-to-end — from client discovery to production rollout — through Done Agents and 1G Media.

The arc: Washington (Saint Martin's, UW '18, founding 1G Media) → Pasadena, CA, IT / Marketing / Growth Operator at InkHub, a holding company for tattoo studios (2019–2021) → Las Vegas, where those operator years became Tattoo.Agency → Tattoo.co → Tattoo.dev, Text Permanent, and the open quoting stack — uqp.dev → UCP → quote.dev (in build).

Lifeline · 2014 — 2026

Technical & Systems Contributions

Layer 1 · Open standard · Apache-2.0

uqp.dev — Universal Quoting Protocol

Also universalquotingprotocol.com. Existing agentic commerce standards like UCP (Universal Commerce Protocol) work for fixed-price catalogs (shopping, lodging, food) but break down for non-fixed-price, custom-quoted services. UQP fills that pre-checkout layer: AI agent discovery, structured intake questions, and quoting — then routes cleanly into the UCP standard once a price is determined. Apache-2.0, @uqp/core + @uqp/packs.

Layer 2 · Quote router · In active build

quote.dev — Quote Router for AI agents

Built on UQP + the UCP checkout handoff to make quoting and buying from every custom-priced industry effortless for AI agents (<10s /auth.md onboarding, <200ms Stage 1 estimates, remote MCP, quote locks). Work in progress — in active development, not every vertical is finished.

Tattoo Company · 3 pillars · Co-Founded with brother

Tattoo.Agency · Tattoo.co · Tattoo.dev

Started hands-on with my brother running Tattoo.Agency — CRM installation, sales & consultation team management, paid media buying, custom websites, SEO, and reporting, remote + flying out to visit client studios across the USA ($1.81M+ in custom-quoted deposits across 3,305+ clients). Evolved into Tattoo.co (marketplace for tattoo studios & artists) and Tattoo.dev / docs.tattoo.dev — API, MCP & agentic tools built to make software free for the tattoo industry.

Agent operations

Done Agents

Agentic operations studio running a persistent fleet of 37 agents across 87 git.cafe repos — 4,333 own commits and 768 Hoplite agent threads in the last year. Plus a TypeScript Spaceship registrar CLI + MCP (58 operations, 45 endpoints) with dry-run/confirmation guards.

Operator origin · Pasadena, CA · 2019–2021

InkHub — IT / Marketing / Growth Operator

Lived in Pasadena, CA, and worked as IT / Marketing / Growth Operator at InkHub, a holding company for tattoo studios (2019–2021), including Skin Design Tattoos, Manifest Studio and Big Sleeps Studio. I architected multi-location CRM & lead-to-consultation pipelines (Funnel Design + SMS automation), Notion weekly artist payout & booking ops, and local SEO / Google Business Profile and paid social per studio. Running real consultations, payouts and custom deposits is the operator-to-protocol bridge: it directly inspired Tattoo.co, Text Permanent, tattoo.dev, uqp.dev and quote.dev after I relocated to Las Vegas in 2023.

AI product · tattoo try-on

Tatted Up — try.tattoo.co

Photoreal AI tattoo try-on for the Tattoo.co ecosystem: upload a mirror selfie and preview real tattoo styles on skin. The same tattoo-trained render is exposed to agents over a live MCP endpoint (/api/mcp), an llms.txt, and prepaid agentic-commerce tokens.

Builder origin · UX craft

Designlab UX Academy (@uxgavin)

Before the agents, the craft: full-time UX Academy (Phase 1 & Phase 2, from Nov 2016) with 105 shipped UI/UX design submissions under 1-on-1 mentorship — personas, card sorting, sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, and usability testing. That research-first habit is why uqp.dev starts from structured scope factors, not a price field.

Programmatic SEO network

The Las Vegas network

13 live local discovery properties powered by a pSEO / GEO-AEO workflow engine — including Formula Vegas, Remote Vegas, and Supa Cards.

Forward-Deployed Thesis

I have spent my time building and deploying AI workflows and CRM systems where I was entirely responsible for talking to stakeholders, identifying operational bottlenecks, and shipping the solution. Because I worked with agile businesses, I know how to move fast and prove ROI quickly. I am looking to bring that exact same high-agency, value-driven execution to enterprise-scale data infrastructure.

Who I Want to Work With

I have spent my time building and deploying AI workflows and CRM systems where I was entirely responsible for talking to stakeholders, identifying operational bottlenecks, and shipping the solution. Because I worked with agile businesses, I know how to move fast and prove ROI quickly. I am looking to bring that exact same high-agency, value-driven execution to enterprise-scale data infrastructure.

Track 01 · Forward-Deployed · Design & Growth Engineer

For Teams · Forward-Deployed, Product & Design Engineer

Fast-paced, zero-bureaucracy teams shipping ambitious AI products where builders get uncapped AI token budgets, high autonomy, and direct customer & revenue ownership — orchestrating multi-agent fleets into production TypeScript rather than sitting in committees.

Track 02 · Done Agents · Tattoo Company

Operators, Studios & Brands

Founders and multi-location operators who want production agentic workflows, custom MCPs & CLIs, conversion-engineered web & headless Shopify builds, or programmatic SEO engines shipped in days, not quarters.

Email GavinDM on X Chat ↗Done Agents ↗Tattoo.co ↗

Education & Early Highlights

University of Washington
Data visualization, GIS, statistics, ecommerce UX / dark-patterns research.
B.A., Science, Technology, and Society · 2018
Saint Martin's University
Elected Student Government VP (2015–2016), Norcia Student Mentor, NCAA DII Track & Field scholarship athlete (sprints, long jump, relay).
2014 – 2016
Full-time UX Academy (Phase 1 & Phase 2) — 105 shipped UI/UX design submissions under 1-on-1 mentorship: research, personas, IA & card sorting, sitemaps, user flows, wireframes, prototyping, usability testing.
Phase 1 & 2 · from Nov 2016
Global AI Hackathon Seattle
UX & Frontend Lead, MarcoPolo-Recommender — Microsoft Graph API, TF-IDF, NMF for enterprise knowledge discovery.
3rd Place · 2017
Gavin's Letter

Playbooks on agentic engineering, AI workflows, programmatic SEO, and building internet businesses.

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