Founder-prepared, drafted with AI assistance. Accompanies feature draft v8, 5 October 2026. It names source types, not private files, and holds no figures or confidential terms.
Verification sheet — Gareth Huggins feature
How the feature was prepared
From the founder's interview (paraphrased voice notes on 2 and 3 October 2026 and his typed messages on 4 October), his own knowledge base and project records (read-only), the public record (Companies House), the live websites of his businesses, his clients and The Link Network, and read-only records from his organisation's code hosting (repository dates, pull-request counts, product READMEs). No client, family member, agency, startup founder or other third party was contacted. One AI evidence check and one AI editorial read were run; neither is external verification.
Status key
Public record: an independent official source. Public page: a company's own live page (its own voice). Record: a dated document, repository or delivery record in the founder's own systems. Account: the founder's account, not independently corroborated. Design: documented process or intent, not shown in live operation. Writer: the writer's interpretation.
Claim map
| ID | What the feature says | Basis | Status | What is still needed |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| V01 | Career through infrastructure and databases; defence an early setting that taught him how context governs data handling; virtualisation and cloud led to DBA and consulting roles across healthcare, payments, utilities and financial services, often the first or only DBA | His CVs, profiles, brand handbook and interview | Account | Stated plainly as biography; no dates anywhere (the timeline's first entry is undated) because his own records conflict on them. A reconciled career record before any year is used. |
| V02 | SQLOPTIMISE is a data-platform consultancy balancing security, performance, cost and manageability | His positioning; the public site | Account / Public page | None for this wording. Figures on the site are not used (see below). |
| V03 | aDBA: thirty health checks across fourteen areas, nothing fixed until someone opts in, an audit trail of everything done, deferred or blocked; assembled from the tools, scripts and open-source components he used in his own DBA work; being prepared for release | The product's own README and repository history (June 2024 to August 2026); his interview | Record / Account | Release, licence terms and any external use are not yet shown; the README is his own description. Which parts are his own work and which are third-party components is for him to set out when he releases it. |
| V04 | Suppliers can profit from a customer's limited understanding; he wants owners to understand what they buy | Interview | Account | An opinion, presented as his. |
| V05 | Miaigi designs and builds for independent businesses; ready-made website kits (Miaigi's pages call them blueprints and kits) or a fixed-fee discovery and written blueprint before a bespoke build | Miaigi's public pages; the club shop's own credit line | Public page | The site's prices and counts are not used; its pages are being corrected (fixes raised with his team). |
| V06 | The first clients arrived by word of mouth, from the towns around Farnham and Fleet | His team's own client records (February 2026, covering the clients to that date); clients' public locations | Record | Later clients' routes are not recorded here. A client's own account of how they found him. |
| V07 | Named clients and what their sites do: a taxi firm's quote requests; a contractor's site, with his motive given "in Miaigi's telling"; a tattoo studio's booking-request form; a club's site, portal and shop | The clients' live sites, read 4 and 5 October 2026; Miaigi's public case-study page | Public page | The contractor's motive paraphrases an unattributed testimonial on Miaigi's own page and is attributed to it in the text. No outcome figures are used. Clients are named because Miaigi's case-study page already names them; their own consent to this feature is not recorded. |
| V08 | Each live site carries a "Crafted by Miaigi" mark | The sites' live code and rendered pages | Public page | The mark is served by Miaigi, so it shows a relationship, not who built what. |
| V09 | Around a dozen local and independent businesses built or in build since 2025 | Repository records: engagements with repositories created September 2025 to September 2026 | Record | Not all are live; some are in build; none is counted as "live" here. Not the same as the count on Miaigi's site, which is not used. |
| V10 | The Link Network is a network where vetted UK businesses meet celebrities, influencers, mentors and investors; there is no joining fee, with a free tier and a premium tier; for now every member is vetted and approved by a person, which the team intends to automate as it grows; its landing page takes membership applications; a launch event for celebrities and influencers is planned for the start of December 2026, with doors opening to members around Christmas | The founder's description, 5 October 2026 (tiers, no joining fee, vetting and the plan to automate it, launch timing); the platform's own landing, about and pricing pages, read 5 October 2026 (the meeting-place description and the application form) | Account / Public page | The landing page read on 5 October still called the network private and invitation-only; the founder, who sits on its board, says the model is a free tier and a premium tier with no joining fee, and the page wording is the startup's to update. Automating the vetting is a plan, not a feature. The launch timing is the founder's plan: the platform's public landing page still showed a countdown to 15 October 2026 on 5 October, which he says is to be updated before the domain goes live. "If the plan holds" is used in the text. Its waiting-list count and referral-income message are deliberately not repeated. |
| V11 | Huggins is its technical partner and a member of its board (his public LinkedIn headline reads "Startup Board Member"): he wrote the architecture and delivery plan (January 2026), committed to a fixed scope with a developer lined up, lost that developer the week after the deal and a second part-way through, finished with a family-run development agency with engineers in India that a contact from his contracting and conference years introduced over LinkedIn, reviewed code against his requirements and standards with his factory's help, kept the final say over what went live; the platform is built and running, "the launch is in the diary", and the two sides plan more projects together | Interview; a dated project overview he prepared (22 January 2026); his team's project records; repository history (two main contributors, February to October 2026); the live landing page | Account / Record | The developer withdrawals rest on his account alone. The agency's view and the founders' confirmation have not been sought. "Built and running" is his account plus the live staging page; no third party has confirmed delivery. The board seat is on his own public LinkedIn headline and he confirmed on 5 October 2026 that it should be stated. All commercial terms are deliberately left out. |
| V12 | Eight months of reviewed code; the founders came with a business idea, a waiting list and no technical team | Repository record, February to October 2026 (two main contributors); interview; his team's project records of the waiting list (early 2026) and the platform's own page | Record / Account | Activity, not quality or deployment. The description of the founders is his account; their own view has not been sought. |
| V13 | A technical partner takes responsibility until it is live; "Huggins thinks tradespeople and sole traders deserve the same thing"; "in the space of a year he has set about proving it" | The definition is the writer's synthesis; the aim paraphrases his interview (useful technology for independent businesses, founders, sole traders and tradespeople); the year's summary is the writer's | Writer / Account | The definition and the summary are not claims by the founder. |
| V14 | The factory (Sofakingsoft): a console called the Mothership; every job starts as a GitHub issue; scout, scoper, engineer, validator; stage labels; agents with job titles and a daily log | His team's pipeline document (March 2026) and the repository | Design / Record | Describes the designed process. Throughput, quality and reliability are not shown. Internals are closed by his instruction. |
| V15 | Four things never done by an agent alone: moving money, speaking to a client, merging into a client's site, publishing; a named person decides and the decision is recorded | His team's operating charter (July 2026), written from an interview with him | Design | A rule, not evidence that it has never been breached. |
| V16 | On the Link Network the factory's part was review: it helped check the developers' code before he merged it | His typed words, 4 October 2026 ("has helped with reviewing", paraphrased); his team's record that he alone merges to the production branches | Account / Record | How much of the code was reviewed, and how reliably, is not shown. |
| V17 | The factory built its first client site end to end this summer (a family heating firm) which, in his telling, had come to Miaigi after its previous web provider refused to hand over its own website without a fee; the new site is live on the firm's own domain; two more are in build with go-lives planned for late October | His team's delivery records (August to October 2026); repository descriptions; the client's live site, read 4 October 2026, and his confirmation on 5 October; his account of the firm's reason for coming (5 October) | Record / Public page / Account | Delivered in August and live at the client's own domain. The previous provider's conduct is the founder's account, attributed in the text; the provider is unnamed and was not contacted; his team's records show only that the old site sat on a legacy host with a broken certificate. The two others are plans. Clients unnamed because they are not public case studies. |
| V18 | Internals closed for now; offering the factory to others is an ambition, not an offer; the factory business is called Sofakingsoft | Interview; his brief | Account | The business's own LinkedIn page uses the name Sofakingsoft and describes an AI-powered software factory in service terms; he should align that page's wording with an ambition rather than an offer before this is shared. |
| V19 | His father died suddenly this year, while the startup build was under way; it was a great shock; his father an entrepreneur who believed in helping people less fortunate; he kept going in his honour, wanting to make him proud and knowing his father already was; his partner's love and support carried him through | Interview (3 October 2026: the death "this year", continuing "through this period" difficult, the honour theme, "already proud", his partner's support) and his words on 5 October 2026 ("suddenly", "a big shock", give it respect) | Account | Both unnamed by his decision; no circumstances beyond "suddenly". |
| V20 | "Build the machine that sets us free." | The written motto at the top of his team's knowledge base and the mission line of its reference repository | Record (verbatim) | None; the attribution line says what it is. |
| V21 | Timeline dates | April 2021: Companies House (Dexteritas Consulting Ltd). June 2024 (the aDBA codebase), December 2024, February 2026, August 2026: repository and delivery records. May 2025 ("appears online"), September 2025: domain registrations. December 2025: web-archive capture, so "live by early December". January 2026: dated document. March 2026: his team's records and repository. 15 October 2026: the platform's own page | Public record / Record / Public page | Repository dates show when work started, not when anything went live, except where a live page or archive capture is cited. |
| V23 | "Hampshire–Surrey border, England" | His own records (home town) and his businesses' public pages (Farnham) | Record / Public page | Deliberately a border rather than a town, so no client is placed in his town. |
| V24 | David Owen, who managed him at NHS Wales Informatics Service, wrote in a public recommendation dated 8 March 2020: "Gareth demonstrated exceptional knowledge of SQL Server and a very good understanding of the underlying Operating System." He added that he "would not hesitate to offer Gareth permanent or contract employment in the future" | A recommendation displayed on his public LinkedIn profile, read 5 October 2026; the recommender is named there and gives the organisation | Independent (one person's public testimony) | Exact words from a recommendation the recommender published on the founder's public profile; named at the founder's decision (5 October 2026). One of two public recommendations on the profile. |
| V25 | In June 2023 he pitched an AI-powered platform for IT professionals at the AI Summit London's accelerator pitching competition | The Projects section of his public LinkedIn profile (self-authored), read 5 October 2026 | Account | His own description of the entry; the organiser's record has not been checked. No placing or award is claimed. |
| V26 | "South African-born" | His own public LinkedIn About line | Account | His own public self-description. |
| V27 | His LinkedIn entry for the factory lists him as its "Janitor": "the only human employed in a fully autonomous AI-powered software factory", there to keep the lights on; the article calls this satire | His own LinkedIn Experience entry (Sofa King Factory, from December 2023), read 5 October 2026; his instruction of 5 October 2026 that the line is satire | Satire (his own words, quoted exactly) | Not a factual claim and not treated as one: it asserts nothing about employment, headcount or how autonomous the factory is, and the article says so in the sentence that follows. The four human gates are stated in the next paragraph. |
| V28 | The cover image is AI-rendered from his own photograph and captioned as such; the small portrait beside his name is a square crop of the same image | His LinkedIn profile photograph, confirmed by him as his on 5 October 2026, and his request of the same date for a rendered cover portrait | Disclosed | Not a photograph. The caption sits under the cover; the small crop carries the same disclosure in its alt text. A photographed portrait with rights confirmed should replace it before publication in a title that requires photography. |
| V22 | The standard his career implies; "the factory is what that idea became once the tools caught up"; "launch-ready" (built and running, launch planned); "the brink of launch"; "a software factory built to take on the next ones"; that aDBA runs on "the same rule his software factory would later run on"; "the kind of job small businesses usually get done badly"; "exactly the kind of case he set Miaigi up for"; "the attention usually reserved for much larger clients"; the closing paragraph ("open to its first members" and "a price that works for each of them" describe the planned launch and his stated aim, not results) | Writer | Writer | Interpretation, not claims by the founder. The aDBA-to-factory parallel is the writer's observation of two designs; the founder has not said one informed the other. |
What is not used, and why
Figures and counts published on the founder's own websites (not substantiated on the page; corrections are with his team). Outcome figures and testimonials on Miaigi's case-study cards (company-published, no period or source). Any commercial terms (prices, fees, revenue, investment) between him, his clients or the startup (private). The engineering agency's name and the developers' identities (no permission recorded). Commercial terms of his relationship with The Link Network. The founders' names. The circumstances of his father's death beyond "suddenly". The previous web provider's name.
Further reporting an editor would want
- The Link Network's founders' confirmation of his role, of the delivery and of the December launch plan, and the agency's account of the engineering.
- One client's own sentence, with permission, on what changed for them.
- A career record with dates, reconciled against his profiles.
- A look, with permission, at the factory's approval records for one real job.
This sheet is not a certificate of independent verification, and nothing in it authorises publication.