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CASE STUDIES

The work behind the proposition.

Five pieces of real work, drawn with the same three layers you'll find everywhere else on this site. One of them is mine and has run every day since it launched. The others were built for other people or built to prove a point. Each says exactly where it got to.

THE MODEL

Three layers, every time.

Everything below is this same picture with the names filled in. The order matters more than anything else on it: the person sits above the machine, never beside it. Not every system needs all three. Two of the ones below are deterministic the whole way through, on purpose. They're better for it.

LAYER 3
HUMAN CONTROL
Your call.
Judgement, approval and relationships. The place where the decisions that matter stay yours.
  • JUDGEMENT
  • APPROVAL
  • CONTEXT
  • TRUST
PROPOSED WORK ↑ YOUR GO ↓
LAYER 2
INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS
It proposes.
Operational intelligence wired to the whole system. It watches, looks things up, drafts and writes down exactly what it wants to do. It doesn't do it.
  • READS
  • CHECKS
  • DRAFTS
  • NEVER ACTS
THE QUEUE every action crosses here
LAYER 1
RELIABLE SYSTEMS
It executes.
Workflows, interfaces, databases and scripts. Predictable, repeatable and the same every time, with nothing thinking at the moment anything happens.
  • AUTOMATION
  • INTEGRATIONS
  • DATA
  • WORKFLOWS
THE AGENT PROPOSES. IT NEVER CHANGES ANYTHING ITSELF.

It writes what it wants to do into the queue. You approve in batches, then a plain worker carries it out with no model in the loop. That's why an approval here is a promise about one exact change rather than a general permission.

CASE STUDY 01 LIVE

A shop that runs on this every day.

The Guilded Veil is my own online shop, with real stock, real customers and real VAT. It's been run this way since it launched. It's the one thing on this site I'm willing to call proven, because it's the only one I've had to live with.

LAYER 3
HUMAN CONTROL
You see what needs you and nothing else. Everything waiting on a decision arrives in one place.
Morning brief
LIVE
Plain answers
LIVE
Approval screen
IN BUILD
DRAFTS ON STANDBY ↑ YOUR GO ↓
LAYER 2
INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS
It reads across the whole shop every day, notices what changed and gets the work ready before anyone asks.
Operations layer
WATCHES · CHECKS · DRAFTS
What it knows
HISTORY · YOUR VOICE
SIGNALS ↑ APPROVED ACTIONS ↓
LAYER 1
RELIABLE SYSTEMS
The shop's own systems. A customer ordering, paying and getting their delivery never touches a model.
Storefront
ORDERS · CHECKOUT
Payments
STRIPE
Post
LABELS · CUSTOMS
Books
VAT · LEDGER
Scheduled reads
SCRIPTED · NO MODEL
CASE STUDY 02 DELIVERED

Revenue reporting for a technology group.

The problem is a common one. In this trade most of the revenue sits with a small number of accounts, while a long tail of renewals and small orders quietly eats the hours that should go to them. The numbers that would show you this live in three systems that don't agree, so every board pack gets assembled by hand, late.

Built and handed over, so it isn't mine to point at. The business isn't named, no figure from its accounts appears here and none ever will. What's published is the shape.

LAYER 3
HUMAN CONTROL
The figures, a plain answer to a question you actually asked and a board pack already drafted for you to argue with.
Dashboard
THE FIGURES
Ask it
PLAIN ANSWERS
Drafted board pack
FOR REVIEW
DRAFTED FOR REVIEW ↑ YOUR GO ↓
LAYER 2
INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS
It reads across all three systems, works out the forecast against target and explains in words what moved.
Reporting engine
FORECAST · MARGIN · ATTAINMENT
What it knows
CONTEXT · RETRIEVAL
READS ↑ NOTHING WRITTEN BACK ↓
LAYER 1
RELIABLE SYSTEMS
Their systems of record, unchanged and still the truth. The engine reads them. Every figure traces back to the one it came from.
CRM
PIPELINE · DEALS
Finance
INVOICES · BILLING
Delivery
PROJECTS · SLAS
Ingestion
SCRIPTED · NO MODEL
CASE STUDY 03 DEPLOYED

Deciding what an AI agent is allowed to touch.

Give an agent access to a company's knowledge and two questions follow immediately. What is it allowed to reach? And afterwards, what did it actually do? This is a service that answers both. A person sets the policy, the agent works inside it and every request is written down whether it was allowed or refused. Built for more than one customer from a standing start and deployed to production.

Deployed and running, with no paying customer yet. A pilot proposal is with a prospect. I'm describing what the system does rather than what it has earned, because those are different things.

LAYER 3
HUMAN CONTROL
A person decides what this agent may reach and for how long, then keeps the ability to pull it back while it's still running.
Policy
SET BY A PERSON
Revocation
STOP IT MID-RUN
The record
WHAT IT DID
REQUESTS ↑ WHAT IT MAY DO ↓
LAYER 2
INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS
Here the agent is the thing being governed rather than the thing doing the governing. It asks. It never decides what it's entitled to.
The agent
ASKS · NEVER DECIDES
ALLOWED OR REFUSED ↑ EVERY REQUEST RECORDED ↓
LAYER 1
RELIABLE SYSTEMS
The part that enforces it. Several customers on shared infrastructure, kept apart from each other, with nothing thinking at the moment a request is allowed or refused.
Enforcement
NO MODEL IN THE PATH
Customer separation
SHARED · KEPT APART
Audit store
EVERY REQUEST
CASE STUDY 04 BUILT · DEMO

A cold audit to a working shop, in a day.

A business with no shop online. I audited how it sells today, then built and deployed a real one seeded with its own products, its real prices and the labelling its trade has to carry. Checkout tested end to end against the backend. Audit to a link they could click, the same day.

Built as a demo, not a business. Payments are faked, so nothing in it can charge anyone. No email provider is wired in at all, so it can't contact a soul. Every request in a full browser session went to the demo's own two hosts and nothing else.

LAYER 3 · NOT USED HERE
HUMAN CONTROL
Nothing to approve, because nothing proposes anything. Nothing in it can send, spend or contact anyone.
LAYER 2 · NOT USED HERE
INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS
A demo doesn't need one. There's nothing here that has to watch, decide or draft.
LAYER 1
RELIABLE SYSTEMS
A complete shop and nothing more than a shop. This is the layer I'd build first for any client, then leave alone.
Storefront
CATALOGUE · PRODUCT PAGES
Checkout
18+ GATE · FLAT RATE
Backend
ORDERS · GB REGION
Seeded catalogue
THEIR OWN PRODUCTS
CASE STUDY 05 DELIVERED

A live video switcher, deterministic all the way down.

A real-time switcher built for a broadcast client. One container, a control interface, automatic failover and a screen for the operator. In broadcast a fault shows up on television in front of everyone, so the discipline goes in the build rather than the promise: nothing mocked, log redaction tested, every check run before it ships. Cut latency measured at 3.1ms at the 99th percentile on my own rig.

LAYER 3 · NOT USED HERE
HUMAN CONTROL
No approval layer, because nothing is proposing anything. The operator drives the machine directly, in the room, in real time.
LAYER 2 · NOT USED HERE
INTELLIGENT OPERATIONS
You could add one to work out when to cut. This job didn't need the judgement, so it hasn't got any. That's the point of showing it here.
LAYER 1
RELIABLE SYSTEMS
Predictable, repeatable and the same every time, which is the only thing that counts when it's going out live.
Switcher core
REAL TIME
Control interface
PROGRAMMABLE
Failover
AUTOMATIC
Operator screen
LIVE CONTROL
ALSO ON THE RECORD

Work that isn't an operations system.

Not everything worth knowing fits the three layers. These are here because they say something about range rather than about architecture.

A spatial audio venture

Taken from a concept to a filed PCT patent and a working, demonstrable product, over two and a half years of sustained work. One person across the engineering, the intellectual property and the commercial side of it.

PATENT FILED · PRODUCT WORKING

Twenty years before any of this

Live broadcast and media systems, at national scale. The kind where a fault shows up on television in front of everyone. That's where the habits come from: hard limits, clear records and nothing important left to chance.

THE CV IS ON LINKEDIN

Want one of these drawn for your business?

The audit produces exactly this: a picture of how your business runs today and where the work is going. It's free, it takes a couple of hours of your time and the map is yours to keep.