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.