diff --git a/LICENSE b/LICENSE
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+++ b/LICENSE
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+MIT LICENSE
+
+Copyright (c) 2016 James Laver
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
diff --git a/README.md b/README.md
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/README.md
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+The irresponsible clojure guild presents...
+
+# utrecht
+
+Modern postgres made easy
+
+## What is it?
+
+Just enough of a shim to pull together database pooling
+([HikariCP](https://github.com/brettwooldridge/hikaricp/), conversion
+between clojure/java and postgres datatypes
+([mpg](https://github.com/ShaneKilKelly/mpg/)) and to make it easy to
+work with transactions correctly.
+
+## Platform Support
+
+This module requires JDK 8. Please upgrade to JDK 8 to improve
+security and performance of your applications.
+
+This module depends on the latest version of the postgres driver at
+time of release. You should be able to use it with any non-ancient
+version of postgres.
+
+Note that we have explicitly provided full support for prepared
+statements. Prepared statements allows the parser and planner to run
+once ahead of time and swap in values as required. They're useful if
+you wish to execute one particular query many times in
+succession. With that, there is a caveat. Some optimisations are not
+performed against prepared queries because the actual values required
+are needed to perform them. That will include partial indexes where
+you don't provide an explicit value for that column.
+
+## Usage
+
+```
+(ns my.db
+ (:require [irresponsible.utrecht :as u]))
+
+(u/setup!) ;; install the inflation/deflation hooks
+(def pool (u/make-pool hikari-pool-opts))
+;; Several ways of doing the same thing
+(def bars (u/with-conn [conn pool]
+            (u/with-prep [q "select * from foo where bar = ?"]
+              (u/query conn q ["bar"])))
+(def bazs (u/with-conn [conn pool] ; execute unprepared
+             (u/run conn "SELECT * FROM foo WHERE bar = ?" ["baz"])))
+;; just execute some sql against a pool
+(def quuxs (u/q pool "SELECT * FROM foo WHERE bar = ?" ["quux"]))
+
+;; 
+
+;; During shutdown you'll want to close the pool
+(.close pool)
+
+```
+
+## Copyright and License
+
+Copyright (c) 2016 James Laver
+
+MIT LICENSE
+
+Permission is hereby granted, free of charge, to any person obtaining a copy of this software and associated documentation files (the "Software"), to deal in the Software without restriction, including without limitation the rights to use, copy, modify, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software, and to permit persons to whom the Software is furnished to do so, subject to the following conditions:
+
+The above copyright notice and this permission notice shall be included in all copies or substantial portions of the Software.
+
+THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO THE WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE AND NONINFRINGEMENT. IN NO EVENT SHALL THE AUTHORS OR COPYRIGHT HOLDERS BE LIABLE FOR ANY CLAIM, DAMAGES OR OTHER LIABILITY, WHETHER IN AN ACTION OF CONTRACT, TORT OR OTHERWISE, ARISING FROM, OUT OF OR IN CONNECTION WITH THE SOFTWARE OR THE USE OR OTHER DEALINGS IN THE SOFTWARE.
diff --git a/build.boot b/build.boot
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--- /dev/null
+++ b/build.boot
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+(set-env!
+ :project 'irresponsible/utrecht
+  :version "0.1.0"
+  :resource-paths #{"src"}
+  :source-paths #{"src"}
+  :dependencies '[[org.clojure/clojure       "1.8.0" :scope "provided"]
+                  [org.clojure/java.jdbc     "0.6.0-alpha1"]
+                  [cheshire                  "5.6.1"]
+                  [hikari-cp                 "1.6.1"]
+                  [mpg                       "0.2.0"]
+                  [clojure.java-time         "0.2.0"]
+                  [org.postgresql/postgresql "9.4.1208"]
+                  [adzerk/boot-test          "1.1.0" :scope "test"]])
+                  
+
+(require '[adzerk.boot-test :as t])
+
+(task-options!
+  pom {:project (get-env :project)
+       :version (get-env :version)
+       :description ""
+       :url "https://github.com/irresponsible/utrecht"
+       :scm {:url "https://github.com/irresponsible/utrecht.git"}
+       :license {"MIT" "https://en.wikipedia.org/MIT_License"}}
+  target  {:dir #{"target"}})
+
+(deftask testing []
+  (set-env! :source-paths   #(conj % "test")
+            :resource-paths #(conj % "test"))
+  identity)
+
+(deftask test []
+  (comp (testing) (speak) (t/test)))
+
+(deftask autotest []
+  (comp (testing) (watch) (speak) (t/test)))
+
+(deftask make-release-jar []
+  (comp (pom) (jar)))
diff --git a/src/irresponsible/utrecht.clj b/src/irresponsible/utrecht.clj
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..4d14d68
--- /dev/null
+++ b/src/irresponsible/utrecht.clj
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+(ns irresponsible.utrecht
+  (:require [mpg.core :as mpg]
+            [clojure.java.jdbc :as j]
+            [hikari-cp.core :as h]))
+
+(def setup
+  "Installs conversion hooks for postgres datatypes
+   args: []
+   returns: nil"
+  mpg/patch)
+
+(defn make-pool
+  "Given a HikariCP configuration map, creates a pool
+   Args: [conf]
+     conf should be a map of parameters as accepted by hikari
+   Returns: pool"
+  [conf]
+  ;; apply defaults
+  {:datasource
+   (-> {:adapter "postgresql"
+        :port-number 5432
+        :server-name "localhost"
+        :auto-commit false}
+       ;; :connection-timeout 30000
+       ;; :validation-timeout 5000
+       ;; :idle-timeout       600000
+       ;; :max-lifetime       1800000
+       ;; :minimum-idle       10
+       ;; :maximum-pool-size  10
+       ;; :pool-name          "db-pool"       
+       ;; :register-mbeans false
+       (merge conf)
+       h/make-datasource)})
+
+(def close-pool
+  "Closes the given pool
+   args: [pool]
+   returns: nil"
+  (comp h/close-datasource :datasource))
+
+(defmacro with-conn [& exprs]
+  `(j/with-db-connection ~@exprs))
+
+(def prep j/prepare-statement)
+
+(defmacro with-prep [conn names & exprs]
+  (when (not= 0 (mod (count names) 2))
+    (throw (ex-info "with-prepared assignment vector is uneven" {})))
+  (letfn [(f [[name sql]]
+            [name `(prep (:connection ~conn) ~sql)])]
+    (let [parts (partition 2 names)
+          names (map first parts)
+          assigns (vec (mapcat f parts))
+          closes (mapv (partial list '.close) names)]
+      `(let ~assigns
+         (try
+           (do ~@exprs)
+           (finally ~@closes))))))
+
+(defn query
+  "Executes a query that returns some results (e.g. select)
+   args: [conn sql bind-params-vec]
+     params should be a vector of param values
+   returns: resultset or nil"
+  [conn sql bind-params-vec]
+  (j/query conn (into [sql] bind-params-vec)))
+
+(defn execute
+  "Executes a query that does not return a result with zero or more sets of params
+   args: [conn sql & bind-params-vecs]
+   returns: vector of update counts"
+  [conn q & bind-params-vecs]
+  (j/execute! conn (into [q] bind-params-vecs)
+              {:transaction? false  :multi? true}))
+
+(defn q [pool sql args]
+  (with-conn [conn pool]
+    (query conn sql args)))
+
+(def isolations
+  #{:none            
+    :read-uncommitted ; prevent dirty write
+    :read-committed   ; prevent dirty read
+    :repeatable-read  ; prevent fuzzy read
+    :serializable})   ; prevent phantoms
+
+(defn transact
+  "Executes a given function within a transaction
+   args: [conn isolation read-only? func]
+     conn: a connection as obtained through with-conn
+     isolation: one of :none, :read-uncommitted, :read-committed,
+                       :repeatable-read, :serializable
+     read-only?: boolean"
+ [conn isolation read-only? func]
+  (when-not (isolations isolation)
+    (throw (ex-info (str "transact: invalid isolation: " isolation)
+                    {:got isolation  :valid isolations})))
+  (j/db-transaction* conn func {:isolation isolation  :read-only? read-only?}))
+
+(defmacro in-transaction
+  "[macro] Executes code within a transaction
+   args: [conn isolation roness & exprs]
+     conn: a connection as obtained through with-conn
+     isolation: one of :none, :read-uncommitted, :read-committed,
+                       :repeatable-read, :serializable
+     writability: one of :ro, :rw. Whether to lock for read only"
+  [conn isolation roness & exprs]
+  `(transact ~conn ~isolation ~(case roness :ro true :rw false)
+     (fn [~'_] ~@exprs)))