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Field notes on systems that take work
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Bookings and web packages, custom software, lakehouse and OIC implementation, EMEA architecture — practical notes from a studio that ships with human-approved agents.
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Free booking links on Google Hotels: does your website show up?
A field note: you search for your hotel on Google with dates and only the online travel agencies appear. Free booking links can put your own website alongside them at no cost per click, if your booking engine sends your prices to Google and the click lands on a booking page of your own. How to check in 10 minutes, what to ask your provider, and when it isn't worth it.
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Does the WhatsApp button on your website reach the front desk?
A field note: the green button on the website was put there years ago by whoever built it, with whatever mobile was to hand. People who write from their phone think they are writing to you, and the message buzzes in a pocket that is nowhere near the desk. How to check it in five minutes, how the link has to be built, and when it is better left off.
WebIs your Google Business Profile still Temporarily closed?
A field note: you closed for three weeks in August, marked the profile Temporarily closed as Google asks, and in September you rolled the shutter up without unmarking it. Maps still says you are closed. How to check in five minutes, how to clear it, and when it should stay.
WebDoes your online shop take Bizum at checkout?
A field note: a Spanish buyer reaches the payment step on their phone, looks for Bizum, finds only the card form and closes the tab. How to check yours in five minutes, the routes to adding it, what it costs and when card-only is fine.
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Does your appointment form ever reach the desk?
A field note: someone books through your website, sees the thank-you screen and stops worrying. Nothing arrived at the desk. How to check it in ten minutes and what to put there instead.
WebWhat happens when someone taps Book on your Instagram?
A field note: the Book button under the profile name opens a blank message thread. Someone who had already chosen you is left writing the booking out from scratch.
WebDoes your own Book button open Booking.com?
A field note: someone searches your name, opens your site, taps Book, and lands on a listing that also shows two hotels from the same village. The portal earns its keep with strangers. When the guest has already chosen you, the booking belongs on your domain.
WebIs your 2023 PDF menu still coming up in Google?
A field note: the PDF you uploaded two summers ago still comes up in search, carrying last year's prices, allergens and opening hours, while the door tells a different story.
WebWhy do two homepage buttons lose the booking?
A field note: two buttons the same size at the top of the page, Book and Message us, and the person who came in from Maps stops between them. The first screen should carry one button, the one you actually want tapped, with WhatsApp and the phone under it and smaller.
WebIs your website still on summer hours?
A field note: mid-September, the shutter is up, Maps already has the right hours, and the site footer still announces summer hours or a closed-for-August notice. The person who already chose you believes the site and leaves without calling.
WebDoctoralia, or a bookings page on your own domain?
A field note: you open the practice site from Maps, tap Book, and the address bar is no longer theirs — or the button is only a phone, or a form with no slots. The directory finds strangers. Your own domain has to hold your hours.
WebWhy does your Google Business card show two phone numbers?
A field note: you tap your own Maps card and the first number rings a phone that is not in this shop — or rings nothing. Name, address and phone have to match on the card, the site and the door. One line, held.
WebAstra, Fable, or Grok: what actually changes in the shop?
A field note: the picker fills up this week — Fable 5.1 already in Cursor, Astra (OpenAI's GPT-6) shipped today but staged and not in Cursor, Grok 4.7 in about a week. None of them opens the shutter or sends the WhatsApp. For an SME that can pay, what changes is a workflow that drafts better and cheaper over long sessions, with a person who still signs the send.
WebWhatsApp Business, or a real bookings page?
A field note: WhatsApp closes the yes, the photo and the 'I'm outside,' but it is a poor diary of slots. A bookings page holds the inventory of time; the chat stays the channel. When a fixed-price bookings page is the honest next step.
WebDid Kit Digital leave you a website, or a brochure?
A field note: the grant paid for a deliverable — a site finished on time, invoiced, justified. What it did not pay for is a site that answers. The hangover is not a missing AI; it is a brochure that still ranks while the premises, the phone and WhatsApp do the real work.
WebWhere do the hours actually go in a hotel or a restaurant?
A field note. It is almost never a missing chatbot. The hours leak through four doors — the card, the booking that lives on TheFork, the site still stuck on summer hours, and the enquiry form that waits. An agent drafts; a person sends and publishes.
WebWhat we check on a workshop's Google profile before we build the site
A field note. Hours that match the shutter, photos taken with a phone, one category set correctly. That is the whole of Google Business as far as bookings are concerned.
WebYour shop site says “book online.” Then it only shows a phone number.
FAQ pages that promise online booking and then dump people on a phone line leak the work you already won. A bookings page plus a draft-only WhatsApp agent fixes the leak.
GovernanceAgents do not fail in the model. They fail at the data perimeter — and that is why governance vendors matter again.
Production agents need an enforced data perimeter: FGAC, lineage, observability, and drift detection in the tool path — not prompt guardrails alone. Why data-access platforms inherit the architecture LLM-security startups must bolt on.
AutomationHow to run AI in your marketing campaigns without becoming a content mill
A campaign operating layer for mid-market teams: brief → draft → human edit → distribute → measure. What to automate, what to keep human-only, and a 90-day starter plan that doesn't require faking your numbers.
AutomationHow to burn fewer tokens in Cursor and Claude without making the work worse
Practical token discipline for operators using Cursor and Claude daily: what actually burns spend, scoped context, prompt caching, agent-loop hygiene, and team rules that cut the bill without cutting quality.
DataGartner: 60% of AI projects will be abandoned over data that was never AI-ready. Here's what 'AI-ready' actually means.
Gartner predicts organizations will abandon 60% of AI projects unsupported by AI-ready data. Cloudera's 2026 numbers show the Readiness Illusion: companies claim strategy while access and governance lag. Operator translation inside.
GovernanceGartner's first AI-governance Magic Quadrant is excellent. It's also priced for someone else.
Gartner's inaugural AI Governance Platforms MQ (June 2026) prices the category for enterprises — $65M today, $1.4B by 2030. Below the Governance Poverty Line, obligations still apply. Here is what mid-market operators can actually assemble.
AutomationGartner says 40% of agentic AI projects will die by 2027. The autopsy is more useful than the number.
Gartner's 40% agent cancellation forecast and MIT NANDA's 95% zero-ROI claim dominate the failure discourse — but the evidence is weaker than the headlines. We call it the Scoping Crisis: management failure, not model failure.
AutomationWhat AI agent implementation really costs in 2026
AI agent implementation cost in 2026: phase-by-phase breakdown, hidden costs, and illustrative inference ranges. Background note — current work is web packages and US→EMEA.
AutomationAI agents vs RPA vs Zapier: an honest comparison for operators
AI agents vs RPA vs Zapier in 2026: capability, cost and maintenance compared honestly — when the boring tool wins, and when an agent is genuinely the fit.
AutomationAI for independent hotels: a practical guide (Spain & Southern Europe)
AI for independent hotels in Spain and Southern Europe: multilingual guest triage, draft replies with human approval, seasonal scale — no invented connectors. Current work starts with a website package.
AutomationAI process automation: a complete guide for operations teams
AI process automation in 2026: what to automate first, illustrative weekly hours table, four ROI flows, and human oversight on sensitive actions. Background — current work is web packages and US→EMEA.
AutomationHow to automate customer replies with AI — without losing the human
Automate customer replies with AI in seven steps: triage, templates, MCP tools, open/frontier routing, and a human approval queue before every send.
AutomationWhat getting Claude-certified taught us about building real AI systems
We build on open models by default — and just got certified on the most premium stack in the industry. Here's why that isn't a contradiction, and five lessons from Anthropic's Claude Certified Architect exam that apply to any operator putting agents into production.
GovernanceThe EU AI Act for operating companies: what actually applies to you now
EU AI Act for operators after the Digital Omnibus: Article 50 transparency 2 Aug 2026, Annex III high-risk 2 Dec 2027 — what normal businesses using agents must do and ignore.
AutomationOpen-source vs frontier models: the real cost math for business automation
Open vs frontier LLM cost for automation in 2026: routing logic, illustrative per-call economics, ~80/20 blended savings, residency, and when premium APIs earn their place.
AutomationWhat is an AI Operating Layer? (And why your next hire might be one)
An AI Operating Layer connects governed agents, your data, and hybrid models under one stack — open by default, human oversight built in. Background note — current work is web packages and US→EMEA.
GovernanceYour model stack just became a governance decision
Grok 4.5's EU gap, GLM-5.2's open weights, and a flagship model priced at double its predecessor: three launches in one month that turned model choice from an engineering preference into a cost and data-residency decision.
GovernanceThe AI Act 'delay': a reprieve or a trap?
The Digital Omnibus moved the headline deadline — but transparency obligations, Spain's draft AI law, and your supervisor didn't move. A practitioner's reading.
GovernanceThe Omnibus moved your deadline. Here's what to do with the runway.
The EU Digital Omnibus deferred high-risk AI Act duties — but Article 50 transparency still lands in August 2026. A practical plan for the months you actually have.
GovernanceData governance without the headache
How small and mid-size companies can get privacy and records right early — turning compliance from a tax into an advantage.
AutomationAgent automation 101 — agents that do real work
A practical primer on AI agents for operations teams: what an agent is, when to keep a human in the loop, and how to start small and stay safe.
BrandThe mint manifesto — why fresh beats heavy
Why we named an AI, data and cloud boutique after a herb, and what freshness means when you ship software for companies that take data seriously.
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Web packages have fixed scope and published prices. Platform, data, and EMEA work starts with a conversation.