Chaz Jaco

The Problem (and the Fix)

I started at a Tulsa-area roofing company in January 2026, inside the claims side, watching adjuster scopes come in and crews hand-key them into Xactimate line by line. Three months later I had built ESXPress, the tool I wished existed on day one: a PDF to Xactimate ESX converter that reads the carrier scope, maps every line item to its real SEL code, and prices it for import.

Hands-On Foundation

The estimating knowledge inside ESXPress didn't come from a classroom. It came from the crew members around me, estimators and adjusters with ten-plus years under their belts, and from real scope PDFs run through the pipeline since. The code reference is a curated identity and usage reference informed by licensed use of Xactimate and the real scope PDFs run through the pipeline since, prices are not published. The pairing logic is measured from real claims, not guesses. The architecture side is self-taught, no degree, thirty-plus years of software architecture by trial and error: CRMs, data pipelines, applied AI, and the occasional computer we took apart just to see. That's the honest version, and I'd rather it be on the page than not.

Track Record & Precedent

Long before ESXPress, I was the guy in the office who tinkered. At the roofing company I became the person the office called for anything computer-shaped: document work, AI tools, the repetitive stuff that ate everyone's afternoon. The reaction was always the same, "you just saved me so much time, that would have taken me forever."

The first big build came first, though: my boss asked if I could make the office a CRM, and I said yeah. That project is live now at proofops.pro, and it's where I learned the AI stack that became ESXPress. One thing led to the next, which is how these things usually go.

Core Philosophy

Precision over prediction. ESXPress flags anything it can't verify instead of silently guessing, a single line-item error can move hundreds of thousands of dollars. A $214,000 mistake taught me that lesson early. (The story is inWhy Does Xactimate Reprice My Estimate?.) This is a two-person build: long nights, a lot of coffee, and a healthy respect for how much money rides on getting a line item right.

Off the Clock

I'm an adrenaline guy, years of slopestyle snowboarding, a longboard in the garage, and art of every sort. Creativity is the niche, and the fun is the point.