At Transcendent Software, we routinely hear from companies that know AI will play a role in reaching their business goals. The reasons are all over the place, but the pattern is remarkably consistent. A company sees the potential, buys a tool or starts building something, and expects momentum to follow. Then the organization discovers that […]
The happy path makes a good demo. Recovery is what makes a system useful. About six months into my first professional software job, our team had a problem. We were building technology for the ticketing industry at a time when much of that industry still ran on fax machines, automated phone dialers, a few websites, […]
The recent OpenAI and Hugging Face security incident is worth paying attention to, but not because every business should panic about AI. It is worth paying attention to because it shows where this whole AI era is heading. OpenAI said the incident happened during an internal evaluation of advanced cyber capabilities. The models were being […]
A lot of AI and automation projects do not stall because the model is weak. They stall because the next decision is hidden. The business has a process. The process has exceptions. The exceptions live in someone’s head. The approvals happen in email. The status lives in a spreadsheet. The real business rule is buried […]
A lot of companies are still treating AI like a tool selection problem. Which model should we use?Which chatbot should we try?Which vendor has the best demo?Which feature should we add? Those questions are not useless, but they are usually not the best place to start. A better question is: What work needs a better […]
I missed my normal Sunday writing window this week. That is not a complaint. It is just what happened. We hosted a party on Saturday for the 250th birthday of the United States, and by the time Sunday came around, the weekend had already become the lesson. The party was spectacular. The fireworks were great. […]
AI has made it easier than ever to get software to a first version. That is not a small thing. A founder with an idea, persistence, and the right tools can now build something that would have taken a much larger team not that long ago. Internal tools, mobile apps, dashboards, automation workflows, prototypes, and […]
Most businesses do not start with an AI problem. They start with a business problem. Something takes too long. Something breaks too often. Something depends on one person remembering every hidden step. Something lives across spreadsheets, inboxes, old software, shared drives, tribal knowledge, and a few “just ask Jake” moments that somehow became part of […]
AI has gotten very good at creating impressive moments. A prompt turns into a plan. A model summarizes a document. A chatbot answers a question. A prototype looks magical in a five minute demo. That is useful, but it is not the same thing as a working business system. Real businesses need more than a […]
Being a builder is a skill. I have spent the last few days helping a client prepare for a website launch. He designed the vision. Another company handled the original build. I came in afterward to help tie everything together, refine the rough edges, and make the entire experience actually work the way it should. […]
