Fast, durable websites from the Last Best Place
I'm Joel Wilson, a frontend engineer in Helena. For the past nine years I've built websites and apps for watershed councils, trail crews, trout chapters, restaurants, and publishers across Montana, mostly in React, Next.js, and TypeScript.
JHW Development LLC Helena, Montana 46.59° N, 112.04° W
Client work
All 22 projectsHow I work
- Accessible by default
- I build to WCAG 2.2 AA: semantic HTML, keyboard and screen-reader testing, axe and Lighthouse checks, sufficient color contrast, alt text, and captions.
- Easy for your staff to update
- Sites run on a content management system, usually WordPress, so the people who know the content can change it themselves.
- Fast on any connection
- Lean pages and optimized images that load quickly on phones and rural connections.
From the lab
Side projects and tools I build to try new things.
- 2026yAzzIA retro-styled browser dice game with twelve ways to play Yahtzee, from the classic to Triple, Kismet, Yatzy, and the 1938 Yacht. Rules, stats, nothing to install.
- 2026Media Downloader with Hooks - DockerizedMedia-downloader-with-hooks is a containerized TypeScript application built with Bun, Fastify, and Docker that automates the process of downloading and organizing content from YouTube, TikTok, and SoundCloud. The tool offers a responsive Tailwind CSS frontend for visual previews, metadata fetching, and specific time-range clipping, while the backend utilizes yt-dlp to manage high-fidelity audio extraction (WAV for SoundCloud, MP3 for others) and premium quality video. It features a robust post-download workflow that can trigger custom hooks—such as Slack notifications or TikTok auto-uploads, and is designed for seamless integration with media servers like Jellyfin to create a permanent, ad-free media archive.
- 2026MoshTubeMoshtube is an interactive, browser-based video synthesizer and VJ tool that allows users to remix and blend dual YouTube video streams in real-time. Built as a creative coding experiment, it features a custom "mosh" engine that applies dynamic SVG filters and CSS blend modes to simulate glitch art, analog signal degradation, and psychedelic visual effects. The application supports granular control over video looping, playback speed, and layer opacity, as well as a "chaos mode" for randomized procedural generation of audiovisual scenes.
- 2025Barkley PartyAn interactive, audio-reactive 3D visualizer centered around a stylized, cartoonish dog character that floats and dances in space while the user can rotate the scene with their mouse. The background dynamically shifts color—moving along a blue-to-red spectrum—based on sound input, with volume and bass intensity driving the visual mood, so louder or heavier audio makes the scene feel more intense and energetic. Gold crown-shaped particles drift and scatter around the dog, reinforcing the theme tied to the event it was built for.
Have a project in mind?
Tell me a little about your organization and what the site needs to do. Email is the best way to reach me.


