I help businesses and professionals turn AI into reliable, everyday capability — not demos.
I'm Ethan Sun — founder of Rixin Kaiwu (日新开物), an AI-native startup, with 20+ years of hands-on R&D, project management, and on-site delivery. We work forward-deployed: embedded with your team until it runs in your real business.
Founder, Rixin Kaiwu (日新开物)
Rixin Kaiwu is an AI-native startup — in how it is organized and how it works, not just in what it builds. The company itself runs on AI agents and automated workflows, and helps businesses and professionals do the same. Our principle: people own the judgment and the quality; AI extends what we can execute.
Find the work worth automating
Map your processes and pick the use cases with real payoff — through hands-on coaching and small, low-risk pilots.
Make workflows actually run
Connect your tools, data, and AI into workflows and agents, with human review, state, and error handling built in.
Turn ideas into usable products
From prototype and MVP to vertical platforms your team and customers rely on every day.
Keep systems improving
After launch, keep tuning quality, cost, and real usage feedback so the system grows with the business.
Things I've shipped
Open source and client work — client projects are presented anonymized. Production systems, not demos.
Runspool — local-first CLI workflow engine
Turns scripts, files, and checklists into resumable, observable workflows. A small plugin kernel with SQLite state, retries, pause/resume, approval gates for side-effect steps, and JSON output for AI agents. v0.2.1 on PyPI.
View on GitHub ↗ Case study · in productionEnd-to-end content automation pipeline
One video URL in — bilingual subtitles, a subtitled video, an article, and posts on three platforms out. Runs in production as plugins on Runspool: Playwright automation, ASR, and multi-round LLM translation.
Read case study → Case studyAI trend discovery & analysis platform
Multi-source collection, deduplication, semantic clustering, a scoring engine, and automated reports — on a custom multi-provider LLM gateway with caching and budget control. FastAPI · Next.js.
Read case study →AI home search & agent platform
For North American real estate: live listings, map-based discovery, and AI-assisted search in Chinese or English, connecting home buyers with agent services across web, iOS, and Android.
Senior engineering, AI-native execution
Forward-deployed
Working embedded with your team, not handing over a deck or a demo: understand the real process, validate in small steps, and stay until it runs in your real business.
Judgment stays human
People own the decisions and the quality; AI extends execution. Risky, irreversible steps — approve, sign, pay, publish — keep a human in the loop by design.
AI-native, all the way down
I direct AI coding agents like a dev team while owning architecture, review, and delivery myself — and the company runs on its own agents and automated workflows.
Common questions
Who is Ethan Sun?
Ethan Sun is the founder of Rixin Kaiwu (日新开物), an AI-native startup, and a forward deployed AI engineer with 20+ years of hands-on experience in software R&D, project management, and on-site delivery. He builds AI agents, workflows, and AI-native software for businesses and professionals, and maintains the open-source workflow engine Runspool.
What is Rixin Kaiwu?
Rixin Kaiwu (日新开物, Beijing Rixin Kaiwu Technology Co., Ltd.) is an AI-native startup founded in 2026. It helps businesses and professionals find the work worth automating, build workflows and AI agents with human review built in, turn ideas into usable products from MVP to vertical platforms, and keep those systems improving after launch.
What does “forward deployed” mean here?
Working embedded with your team rather than handing over a deck or a demo: understanding how the work is really done, validating in small steps, and staying until the system runs in your real business. People own the judgment and the quality; AI extends what the team can execute.
How do projects start?
Usually with one real process. We map how the work is actually done, pick the use case with clear payoff, and validate it at small scale before investing further. To start a conversation, email contact@rixinkaiwu.com or reach Ethan directly at ethan@ethansun.dev.
What is Runspool?
Runspool is Ethan’s open-source (MIT), local-first CLI workflow engine. It turns scripts, files, and checklists into resumable, observable workflows with SQLite state, retries, pause/resume, approval gates for side-effect steps, and JSON output for AI agents. Install it with uv (uv tool install runspool) or pip (pip install runspool).
What technologies does Ethan Sun work with?
Python, FastAPI, TypeScript, React, and Next.js on the application side; Claude and OpenAI APIs, AI agents, RAG, and embeddings on the AI side; Playwright for browser automation; SQLite, PostgreSQL, and Cloudflare Workers for data and deployment.
Let's talk
Have a process you want AI to actually run, or just want to compare notes? Tell me the outcome you're after.
Project inquiries for Rixin Kaiwu:
contact@rixinkaiwu.com ·
rixinkaiwu.com
Or connect on LinkedIn.