Operating model
How we work
Not “AI that chats.” Named roles. A shared board. Hard autonomy lines. A workflow that refuses to automate waste.
We build production software for African markets — commerce, logistics, messaging, AI — with a human principal and a multi-agent org on Hermes. Cycle time with receipts: pull requests, tests, deploy gates. No invented metrics.
We reason from constraints, not analogy. “Company Y does it” is not a requirement. Physics, axioms, and a named owner are.
The Algorithm
Mandatory. In order.
Every task, feature, or process passes these five steps. Never optimize a process that should not exist. Production discipline applied to agents and product scope — not a personality cult.
01
Question every requirement
Challenge the why. Name the person who made the requirement. “Industry standard” or “because a competitor does it” is invalid.
02
Delete the part or process
If you are not adding back at least 10% of what you deleted, you are not deleting enough.
03
Simplify or optimize
Only now make the remaining process efficient. Optimize after delete — never before.
04
Accelerate cycle time
Speed up only after the work is lean. Faster waste is still waste.
05
Automate last
Automating waste multiplies waste. Bots and calendars come after the constraint is real.
Coordination
Three layers. Escalate — don’t stall.
Kanban — the engine
Inter-agent handoffs live on a shared board. Tasks claim atomically. Dependencies are explicit. Nick monitors stuck edges and unblocks them.
Basecamp — the human surface
Daily briefs, CEO instructions, and high-signal updates Kuda needs to see. Not the place agent-to-agent work waits.
Workspaces + missions
Each department has inbox/active/deliverables. Cross-functional work lives in mission hubs. Any agent can navigate any other workspace by convention.
PRs as SSOT discipline
Engineering is code + PRs. Company operating system changes ship the same way. If it is not in the repo (and logged when material), it did not happen.
Agent fast path
Kanban is the engine. Chat is not.
Agent-to-agent handoffs do not sit in Basecamp waiting for a human to notice. They go on the shared Kanban board with explicit dependencies. When work is blocked outside an owner’s domain, the owner posts a dependency — Nick clears the edge.
Basecamp stays the dashboard for the principal: daily briefs, direct instructions, material decisions. Dual-routing the same handoff into Kanban and Basecamp is how signal dies.
Ship bar
“Shipped” means receipts.
Branch → push → pull request
No direct commits to main on company or product repos. No “too small for a PR” exception.
Local CI green + signoff
Product merges require full local CI and a green commit status. Empty checks are not green. Hot-patches are not a waiver.
Verify or halt
Every claim is backed by tool output. Blocked scrape, missing credential, flaky source — stop and report.
Decisions are logged
Material calls land in a decision log with first-principles rationale. If it is not written down, it did not happen.