Blog

Practical thinking on software and AI.

Plain, jargon-free writing from the people who do the work. Building custom software, putting AI to work properly, and looking after the systems your business runs on.

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What would sorting out your legacy system cost?

Answer a few questions about the state it is in and get a costed plan in two minutes: stabilise, support, modernise, or rebuild.

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What An OpenAI Select Partner Can Do For You

Agents inside the systems you already run, MCP connections, document and photo processing, voice, evaluation, and models on AWS Bedrock.

Should You Build Your Own AI Agents?

The demo takes an afternoon. What breaks is month seven, when the model is retired and the person who built it is on another job.

Is It Them, Or Is It You?

Four things that are your supplier's fault whatever else is true, three that are usually yours, and what you can check this week without reading a line of code.

Filing By Hand Stopped Being An Option

Free filing closed and tax returns now need software. The cost is not the licence, it is the data sitting in the wrong system with a person in between.

Your First AI Agent Should Chase Your Invoices

Late payment costs UK small firms £26bn at any moment. The most useful first agent is the boring one: polite, tireless, and reading the same aged debtors report as your bookkeeper.

Your Software Developer Has Disappeared. Now What?

What to secure in the first week, what can be recovered without them, and the mistakes that turn a nuisance into a crisis.

How much does it cost to modernise a legacy system?

How Much Does Legacy Modernisation Cost?

The arithmetic behind sorting out an ageing system: the audit, monthly support, and modernising against rebuilding, with the day bands shown.

Experts in agentic AI consultancy for UK businesses

A service that identifies the processes where AI agents deliver measurable returns, then designs, builds and operates them inside the systems a business already runs.

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What would an AI agent cost your business?

Pick the processes that eat your team's time and see which agents would take them on, and what they cost a month.

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Fix, modernise or replace? A framework for legacy systems

What to measure before you decide anything, and why a full rebuild is usually the most expensive option on the table, not the safest one.

OpenClaw vs Hermes Agent: two opposite bets on memory

The two biggest open-source AI agents answered the same problem in opposite ways. That choice decides your running costs and whether it can run on your own hardware.

How much does custom software cost in the UK?

Our day rate, the day bands behind each feature, what goes into every build before you choose anything, and the costs most quotes leave out.

How much does an AI agent cost a UK business?

From £40-a-month tools to six-figure builds: what agents cost, what moves the price, and what the evidence says you get back.

Legacy application support: what good looks like

Most support arrangements are thinner than they look. What a proper one covers, the warning signs yours is wearing out, and how a handover works.

Your software is seven years old. Should you be worried?

Old software that still runs your business is an asset, not a time bomb. Five questions any owner can answer in an afternoon, no technical knowledge required.

How to check the npm worm hasn't got you

The Shai-Hulud worm went through npm again this week. A ten minute check for anyone who ships software, and the four lines of config that stop the next one.

How we use AI, and where the humans come in.

AI has made building software faster and better value than it's been in decades. Here's exactly how we put it to work, and what it can't do.

Teaching AI to See

Teaching your systems to read and understand visual data automatically, with superhuman speed and accuracy.

How LLMs Are Shaping the Future

Beyond the headlines, large language models are driving a fundamental shift in how businesses work.

Boosting utilisation by 20% with a bespoke real-time scheduler

Boosting Utilisation by 20% with a Real-Time Scheduler

A weather-aware scheduler for a field team dispersed across the UK, and what a 20 per cent utilisation lift actually buys.

Why We Build on Laravel

What a framework actually is, why we standardised on Laravel, and what that choice means for the cost and continuity of your system.

What to work out before you build custom software

What to Work Out Before You Build Software

Six things to settle before you brief a developer, including the spreadsheet that is secretly your specification.

Tailored vs. Off-the-Shelf

Custom applications or off-the-shelf tools and spreadsheets? The pros and cons of each approach.

Scaling for Success

Custom applications are not a luxury reserved for large corporations. They are feasible and beneficial for businesses of all sizes.

Reviving a legacy system, one careful step at a time

Reviving a Legacy System, Step by Step

How we take over ageing software and modernise it without a rewrite: get control, build a safety net, then improve it in careful slices.

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