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Full Service Web Development - New York Full Service Web Development - New York

"Steve is an exceptionally talented developer/engineer/technical magician. Not only did the final product exceed expectations — it truly made an impression and set new standards. I highly recommend him."

Liz Oh, Head of Brand Design, Grammarly

Avocadatoria does full-stack web development, with a particular focus on production AI and agentic systems. That means everything from what your users see on their screens all the way back to the database—plus third-party integrations, payment systems, hosting, and dev-ops. It includes everything from complex single-page applications to marketing-oriented sites; from data-driven apps served in eight languages to international commerce sites that integrate with your existing systems; to plug-and-play modules that enhance your current online presence. These sites are responsive, search-engine-friendly, accessible, secure, quickly scalable, highly reliable, and easy to maintain.

In practice, that means integrating LLMs like Claude and OpenAI into web applications, designing the prompt and context strategies that make them useful, building MCP servers that let AI assistants interact with other systems gracefully, and designing agentic workflows in which LLMs do real work on behalf of users. Claude Code and the Claude Agent SDK are core daily engineering practice at Avocadatoria.

Avocadatoria also...

  • Wireframes and designs websites
  • Enhances the capabilities of existing sites
  • Extends designs created by others
  • Performs QA testing and automation
  • Writes copy
  • Ensures compliance with frequently evolving privacy laws (CCPA, GDPR regulations concerning cookie-consent banners and the like, etc.)
  • Edits audio and video and optimizes it for online use
  • Offshores work that makes sense to offshore
  • Works seamlessly with in-house, freelance, and offshore teams

"A rockstar... passionate and completely dedicated."

Apar Kothari Gupta, Director, Business Development, Samsung Electronics

Avocadatoria founder Steve Schneider is a New York-based software developer with over two decades' experience creating websites for clients such as BMW Motorcycles, Carnegie Hall, NBC, Warner Music Group, Guardian Life Insurance, Richemont SA, Novartis International, Starwood Hotels, the Museum of Natural History, Elektra Records, Johnson & Johnson, TIAA, and Charles Schwab, as well as for many start-ups. He has also worked for digital agencies such as Razorfish, Organic, and Merkley + Partners Interactive, as well as at AOL, Tablet Hotels, Major League Baseball, AdSonar, and Collide.com.

Additionally, he spent six years as a serial start-up CTO at three VC-funded ventures (MyNines.com, Squarekey, and Tunnel X Inc.). In all three cases he was completely hands-on, writing the bulk of the code comprising each company's codebase. Details of his work are here.

Recent work has focused on production AI and agentic systems: integrating Claude and OpenAI into client applications, designing and building MCP servers, working on agentic workflows, and using Claude Code and the Claude Agent SDK daily as core engineering practice.

Steve graduated from NYU with a B.A. in political science. His personal website is The Avocado Papers. His LinkedIn is here.

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Steve Schneider has built web applications for scores of clients; some of them are listed here. In each case, he performed all technical tasks (technical architecture, front-end and back-end development, database design, third-party integrations, etc.).

A matter of trust

TruthOrLie.ai is a SaaS-based, AI-driven application which analyzes uploaded or streamed video (Zoom, Teams, etc.) and determines whether each statement made by participants is true or false, surfacing those assessments to users as streaming, annotated transcripts with no more than 5-10 seconds of latency. Steve designed and built the application's entire frontend (React, Next.js), the Node/Express API layer behind it, the architecture connecting those pieces to the Python machine-learning services, and the production infrastructure and deployment pipeline on AWS.

Going public in the time of COVID

When Compass Inc. prepared to go public on the New York Stock Exchange during the height of the COVID pandemic, they faced a unique challenge: how to bring thousands of employees and agents together for a once-in-a-lifetime milestone—while everyone was stuck at home. The solution was a custom-built internal site that transformed IPO day into a shared digital experience. From the ringing of the NYSE bell to interviews with company leaders and longtime team members, the platform gave everyone a front-row seat to the moment, wherever they were.

It was a true sprint—designed, built, and launched under pressure to be ready for IPO day. The result was a seamless, media-rich experience that captured the energy of a live event and helped a distributed workforce feel like one team at the center of it all.

A crowdfunding site that teaches you its secrets

Support Our Story, a fully custom-built crowdfunding platform launched in 2022, isn’t just a Kickstarter or IndieGoGo clone tailored for today’s creatives. It also coaches users every step of the way along the rewarding but treacherous road to a successful fundraising campaign. As the only "crowdfunding platform that coaches you," Support Our Story offers what other sites can’t.

It is more than a place to raise money—it is a guided experience, designed by and for storytellers, dreamers, and doers. Creators receive personalized support, expert insights, and built-in accountability that turns ideas into action—and action into results. Because at the heart of every successful campaign isn’t just funding—it’s a story, well told and well supported.

A super-private place for super-secret chats

Tunnel X, the first-of-its-kind platform, enabled ultra-private, ultra-secure communication between two people through a single-page web app or mobile apps (iOS and Android). Long before mainstream platforms like WhatsApp emphasized privacy and security, Tunnel X provided full 256-bit end-to-end encryption of all communications.

Hired as CTO, Steve oversaw all technical architecture, web development, and mobile-app development. He implemented a state-of-the-art at-rest encryption scheme for all messages and attachments, with his implementation vetted by Dr. Yevgeniy Dodis, cryptography professor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.

Tunnel X assembled an impressive advisory board, including legal scholar Laurence Tribe of Harvard Law School and media theorist Steven Johnson. The company secured funding from Milestone Venture Partners and others.

The Kayak for sample sales

MyNines.com was the first online aggregator of sample-sale sites like Gilt, RueLaLa, and Hautelook. The founders hired Steve as their hands-on CTO, responsible for technical architecture, product development, and full-stack implementation.

MyNines needed to ingest product data from third-party retailers in real time, across a variety of formats. Steve built systems to normalize and store this data, which was then presented on the site in a searchable, sortable, filterable format. Users could also sign up for brand- or category-specific alerts, and product data could be exported for third-party publishers in multiple formats.

Two days after launch, the company secured VC funding led by Tribeca Venture Partners.

A leading-edge app for trainers and clients

Kqool.com, created by NYC fitness expert Andrew McCreary, was built in close collaboration with Steve. The platform allowed McCreary and his fellow trainers to assign fitness routines to clients online and monitor their progress—years before this functionality became common.

Clients can log workouts, track food intake (including via a comprehensive calorie-counter integration), record weight, and manage other fitness data—all in one place.

The ultimate home for The Ultimate Driving Machine

BMWMotorcycles.com, built freelance for Merkley + Partners Interactive, included both a complete redesign of the consumer-facing website and development of a custom content management system. Steve built the CMS to allow BMW to manage editorial content, model data, associated images and videos, special promotions, events, homepage features, and more—all without developer intervention.

The result: a flexible, self-managed platform that eliminated ongoing maintenance needs.

"Steve helped me realize my vision as an online experience. I was so lucky to have met such a qualified programmer and designer."

Andrew McCreary, Kqool.com

Tools and technologies Avocadatoria works with regularly:

  • Frontend: React, Next.js, modern JavaScript/JSX, TypeScript, CSS/SCSS, responsive site development
  • Backend: Node.js, Express, Fastify, Strapi, AWS Lambda, RESTful APIs, webhooks, microservices, serverless architecture, Redis
  • Agentic AI Systems: Claude Agent SDK, advanced Claude Code work (custom skills, prompts, slash commands, rules, subagents, the agentic loop itself), MCP server design and development, tool design for LLM consumers, context management patterns, prompt caching, reliability and failure-mode handling for production agentic systems
  • LLM Integration: Anthropic and OpenAI LLM integration in production applications (both server-side and client-side via Next.js routes and official SDKs), prompt engineering, structured output design, prompt caching, context management
  • Databases: PostgreSQL, MySQL, MongoDB
  • AWS / Cloud Infrastructure: EC2, S3, Lambda, RDS, CloudFront, in-depth IAM (cross-account roles, least-privilege policy design, federated access), Route 53, API Gateway, ALB/NLB, Auto Scaling Groups (elastic deployment based on CPU/load metrics), CloudWatch, CodeBuild, CodeDeploy, CodePipeline, SES, SNS, ACM
  • Deployment & DevOps: Jenkins, GitHub Actions, CircleCI, Heroku, build automation, CI/CD pipelines, zero-downtime deployment into Auto Scaling Groups behind ALBs/NLBs via CodeDeploy, Claude Code and Claude Agent SDK integrated into CI/CD pipelines (automated code review, pre-commit checks, agentic developer tooling), monitoring & logging
  • Third-Party Integrations: Stripe (payments, subscriptions, checkout, UI integration), Auth0, Firebase, Zapier, ForestAdmin
  • Compliance: ADA, CCPA/GDPR and general privacy-law compliance

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Or, if you prefer, send mail or call:

Avocadatoria
30 West 88th St., #4B
New York, NY 10024
Tel. 718-809-0536

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