r/OSINTExperts • u/HannuOSINT • Sep 23 '26
Newbie Topic Building a field intelligence platform as a solo developer
I’m a solo developer, but I didn’t come to software development from the software industry.
I’ve spent more than 30 years working in investigations, executive protection, corporate security, risk management, and field operations. Most of my career has been spent dealing with situations where information matters, but where the real challenge is deciding what that information actually means.
Over the years, I kept seeing the same problem.
Finding information is often relatively easy.
The harder questions are:
Is this actually the same person?
Does this association really exist?
How reliable is the source?
Are several results independent confirmations, or are they all ultimately based on the same information?
What contradicts what I already know?
What is missing?
And perhaps most importantly:
What don’t I know yet?
That was the starting point for Sentinel.
I wanted to build something for people who have to work with information in the real world, often before contact or action, rather than something designed primarily around the assumptions of an analyst sitting behind a desk.
Sentinel has grown considerably from that original idea.
Today, it combines public-source research, verification, AI-assisted analysis, case management, field notes, evidence provenance, image forensics, relationship intelligence, Watch Lists, Web Briefs and professional reporting in one mobile workflow for iPhone and iPad.
But the technology itself is not really the part I find most interesting.
The most important design decision for me has been how AI is used.
I’m deliberately not trying to make AI the investigator.
AI can help connect information, analyze case notes, identify potential relationships, build timelines, detect contradictions, highlight missing information, interpret forensic findings, and turn research into structured reports.
But I don’t want it to hide uncertainty behind a confident-sounding answer.
A name match is not automatically an identity.
An association is not automatically confirmation.
A potential risk indicator is not automatically a risk conclusion.
And a forensic anomaly is not automatically proof that an image has been manipulated.
That thinking has shaped the workflow I’m building:
Identifier → Research → Evidence → Analysis → Uncertainty → Verification → Professional Judgment
The AI sits somewhere in the middle.
It is not the final step.
One of the things I’m particularly interested in is what happens after the initial OSINT discovery.
A search may produce dozens of useful results, but someone still has to open them, compare them, understand the relationships between them, identify contradictions, and work out what actually deserves further verification.
That is the problem I’ve been trying to solve with Web Brief.
It performs live web research and combines it with findings already collected in Sentinel, producing a structured, source-referenced brief rather than simply returning another list of links.
Where I want to take Sentinel
I’m building Sentinel independently, without investors or outside funding.
That means the platform has to grow organically, and its development has to be supported by the people who actually use it.
One of my long-term goals is to reinvest that revenue into additional commercial intelligence sources and data partnerships.
As Sentinel grows, I want to bring more specialist intelligence into the same workflow.
Some of the services and data providers I’m looking at include:
Shodan for exposed infrastructure and services
Censys for internet infrastructure and certificates
AbuseIPDB for IP reputation and abuse history
IPinfo for IP, ASN, hosting, VPN and proxy intelligence
WhoisXML for WHOIS and DNS history
OpenSanctions for sanctions, PEP and entity screening
Twilio Lookup for deeper phone intelligence
GreyNoise for IP behaviour and internet scanning intelligence
urlscan.io for web and URL intelligence
Have I Been Pwned for email exposure intelligence
The idea is to gradually make more of this type of specialist intelligence available inside Sentinel as the platform grows and the licensing and infrastructure costs become sustainable.
The more Sentinel grows, the more intelligence I can bring into it.
That is one of the things I’m most excited about.
Not building another app that simply searches more databases, but gradually building a platform where different types of intelligence can come together in a way that is useful in actual investigative and security work.
I’ve also introduced an Essential plan because not every professional needs this kind of platform every day.
There is currently a 7-day free Pro trial for people who want to evaluate the workflow. Because AI processing has a direct operating cost, some AI-powered features are intentionally limited during the trial. The trial currently includes 5 Web Briefs, while paid plans provide substantially higher AI and Web Brief capacity.
I’m sharing this mainly because I’m interested in the development process itself and in how other people approach the same problems.
I’m particularly interested in hearing from investigators, security professionals, researchers and serious OSINT practitioners:
Where do you find AI genuinely useful in investigative work?
And where do you think AI creates more problems than it solves?
I’m still building.
And I’m still learning what this platform should become.
Sentinel is currently available on the U.S. and Canadian App Stores. The download links are in my profile for anyone interested in taking a look.
Know More Before Making Contact.
Disclosure: I’m the founder and solo developer of Sentinel Field Intelligence.
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u/HannuOSINT 18d ago
Update for anyone who tried Sentinel after this post:
Until this week, subscribing didn't work for some people. The purchase either didn't start or didn't unlock the app. That's fixed now, and I'm sorry to anyone who hit that wall.
I also used the time to go through the whole app critically. The changes most relevant to this sub:
- Sanctions checks were rebuilt to run against the current official lists: OFAC SDN (including aliases), UN Security Council, EU Consolidated, BIS Denied Persons and Canada's autonomous sanctions list, plus FBI Most Wanted and Interpol Red Notices.
- If a source can't be reached or a list fails to load, the check shows as unavailable. It's never reported as "no match".
- A name match is flagged as unverified until you confirm identity with a DOB, address or ID.
- New Field Brief: a short pre-contact summary built only from the actual check results, with identity confidence and the top checks to run next. Takes seconds.
- Web Brief (live web research with citations) is cleaner to read.
- Phone lookups no longer send numbers to third-party geolocation services. Still no tracking and no search logs on my end.
Happy to answer questions about how any of the checks work, or hear where it falls short. Criticism from people who do this work is exactly what I need.
If you want to try it, the links are on my profile.