a hand-drawn pack of white ghost-like animals and a grey wolf, layered over green and blue diagonal stripes with red hearts and yellow stars scattered through

a sketchbook · doodle nº ookpassant

chelsea
hopkins

i generally hate writing about myself but this website is about me, so here goes...
i build things: communities, videos, a newsletter, an app or two.

also answers to sea.

i

hello

doodle i · me, mid-hop.

i'm chelsea. i live on the edge of the forest of dean and i've spent the last decade doing communications for a council, an events agency and a global hosting company. the thread through all of it is people: finding the ones who care about a thing and giving them somewhere to be.

the day job is pr and social at scale, and the bits of it i invented for myself: a youtube channel, a newsletter, an in-person website week for the co-working space over the road. off the clock i've spent fifteen years moderating odd corners of the internet, i help run a 3,500-person convention, and i build the tools i wish existed. i'm a chartered pr practitioner, an illustrator by training, and the person who ends up holding the clipboard.

also: woods, rivers, racecars.

  • i set a goal before i start anything, then report what happened.
  • i notice the gap, sketch it, pull in whoever's needed, and ship it.
  • posthog on everything from day one.
  • i write the docs first.
ii

how i got here

the day job, and the ones before it.

  1. 2023 · now

    communications lead fasthosts, ionos group

    pr and social for a global hosting brand, across ten markets. i took the channels from nearly nothing to the best in the group, and i'm the one they call when something goes sideways.

  2. 2023 · now

    deputy head of creative confuzzled

    a 3,500-person convention that raises a lot for charity. i run the creative team and the guest experience for the week.

  3. 2023 · 2025

    founder escape goat racing

    an off-road race team built from nothing. it ended up on channel 4. i taught tinie tempah to drive a jimny.

  4. 2021 · 2023

    head of brand & marketing pytch

    a live events agency with a private jet in the car park. campaigns for the bbc and others, and a 1,200-delegate congress i stage managed twice.

  5. 2019 · 2021

    communications specialist forest of dean district council

    sole comms lead. then covid happened. i learned crisis comms properly, with the army, navy and raf on the calls.

  6. 2018 · 2019

    group marketing manager ponthir road service station

    five car brands, three sites, one voice. launched the group's first video campaign and won suzuki's purple cow marketing award for it.

  7. before

    earlier family businesses, a sculpture garden, a lot of mud

    it started at my family's off-road centre, hosting groups from the age of fourteen. everything since has been a variation on that.

also seen at

credentials

the long version is a pdf. email me for it.

iii

the big ones

the two i built for myself.

doodle ii · pine wood, november. a good place to hide a note.

whimsee

live on ios + android

why
i wanted an app that sends you outside instead of keeping you in. you hide a small note where you stand. only someone who walks there can read it. no feed, no algorithms, no infinite anything.
the clever bit
postgis decides whether you're actually there. row level security keeps every note dark until you are. edge functions do the rest.
built with
expo / react native · next.js on cloudflare workers · supabase · posthog
where it lives
wherever you happen to be standing.
also writes
the whimsee blog: research notes on the places themselves, written before anything gets planted in them.
doodle iii · a jackdaw, from a reference photo by emma lambert.

jackdaw

closed beta

why
nobody's coming to run your socials. jackdaw drafts posts in your voice, you veto every one, and it learns what lands.
the clever bit
one typescript core under both faces. claude writes per-platform captions, headless chromium renders the carousels, and publishing is idempotent across ten platforms, so a retry never double-posts.
built with
typescript / node · telegram bot + web app · claude api · headless chromium · posthog
where it lives
telegram, and a web app for bigger screens. the early queue is open.

polyarmory: pr for a free steam game with no budget. what that involved.

iv

scribblings

things i've built, written up. there's a feed.

  1. buildMerge everything. Ship nothing.

    How one person runs a release process with 62 feature flags.

  2. essayYour agent has stopped imagining a reader

    you're absolutely right! this article stinks.

  3. buildI picked 10 metres because of a puddle

    Never show a button the server will refuse.

  4. essayTaste is the part you can't vibe

    What an arts degree does for a builder that a bootcamp doesn't.

  5. essayI don't feel at all

    Eurobeat fancams of Michèle Mouton, and the switch that flips on a start line.

  6. essayI don't want Whimsee to be my incomelocked

    It's free forever, and free things need a person who's fed.

all 13 notes

doodle iv · things found out in the open.
v

odds and ends

things i've left out in the open.

  1. pressed-hog

    a hedgehog with a wordpress plugin in it. wires posthog into wordpress properly: session replay, surveys, woocommerce events, consent modes, a reverse proxy that ad blockers don't clock, and analytics inside wp-admin.

  2. courser-calculator

    horse genetics for a horse rpg i play. rolls four foals from two parents, then lists every foal the pairing could ever produce. runs entirely in your browser. have a go.

  3. marshpoint

    marshal signups for motorsport events, self-hosted. invite links, licence uploads, team rosters, and a dashboard for whoever's holding the clipboard.

  4. minimum-viable-exercise

    a claude code skill. while claude works, it sets me a quick desk workout and checks afterwards whether i did it.

smaller scraps, some of them rough
  1. where-when

    i had to be in the office 50% of the time. this kept score.

  2. speed-countdown

    an offline pwa so my dad can count down to his racecar arriving. strongly vibe-coded.

  3. dirt-plugin

    wordpress admin for off-road racing.

  4. dirtbike-quiz

    which dirtbike are you.

vi

commissions

app and web development for other people, through hopkins action. evenings and weekends.

i build apps and websites for people who'd rather it just worked. mostly small businesses i already know, and i'll tell you when something's a bad idea.

websites
wordpress and woocommerce that businesses run on. bookings, memberships, stock control, dealer maps. i've been building on wordpress since 2008, and a platform i built is live on three client sites right now.
apps
mobile apps in expo and react native, shipped to both stores. web apps in next.js and supabase. whimsee is what that looks like when i build it for myself.
the bits around it
analytics wired in from day one so you can see what's happening. the copy, the launch, the press. i did comms before i did code, and it shows.
  • typescript
  • node
  • react
  • react native
  • expo
  • next.js
  • supabase
  • postgres
  • cloudflare
  • docker
  • php
  • wordpress
  • woocommerce
  • laravel
  • claude api
  • posthog
vii

find me

where to find me.

you can email me too if you like. hello at this website dot co dot uk.