The Desk · system build

We don’t automate a task. We automate a desk.

A workflow is one job. A desk is everything one person does in a week — the inbox triaged twice a day, the same details typed into three systems, the quote nobody chased, the question that had a factual answer, the file that had to be named the same way as the last one.

A Desk is four to eight workflows that hand off to each other, a knowledge layer that answers from your own documents, and one place to see what it did overnight. It is a system, not a set of automations that happen to be near each other.

It runs in accounts you own, it cannot send or pay, and it is monitored for the run that never happens. Those rules do not change at this size — they matter more.

The buildFixed price
Price$20,000–60,000
Duration6–10 weeks
Quoted afterThe Blueprint
Deposit40% on signature
Can it send or payNo node
Who owns itYou do
Three payments, mapped to steps you can see happening: 40% to start, 30% when shadow mode begins, 30% at go-live.
What it is worth

A desk costs $36,000 a year, and the invoice arrives again next year.

That figure is not ours and it is not a projection. It is what another admin costs — $3,000+ a month, most of it spent sorting, routing and re-typing. A Desk is bought once and maintained.

WhatHow it behavesCost
Another adminSalaryRecurs every year, rises with wages, leaves, gets sick, and takes the undocumented knowledge with them. Handles the exceptions well — and the routine work identically to a machine.$36,000Per year · every year
A DeskOne-off buildBought once. Runs nightly. Escalates what it cannot classify with confidence rather than guessing. Documented, so the knowledge does not live in one person.$20,000–60,000One-time · fixed after the Blueprint
Keeping it aliveOptional retainerMonitoring, capacity to improve it, and someone on call. Priced separately so you can see it, and cancellable with thirty days.from $1,500Per month · 30-day notice

We are not going to tell you it replaces the person. It replaces the part of their week that was never worth a person — and on our own systems that is the part that also fails silently, which is why we publish the failure rate rather than the saving.

Scope

What is in the build, and what is deliberately outside it.

The second list is the one that makes the fixed price honest. A boundary discovered in week seven is a boundary that was never agreed.

Four to eight workflows, chained

Not four separate automations. One chain with a beginning and an end, where the output of each step is the input of the next and nothing falls between them.

A knowledge layer

It answers from your own documents, policies and past replies — not from the open internet, and not from a model’s general impression of your industry.

The integrations that desk touches

The mailbox, the CRM, the store, the shared folder, the calendar. Each one checked against the real API during the Blueprint, before it was quoted.

One place to see it

What it handled, what it escalated, what it was unsure about, and what it did while you were asleep.

Shadow mode across the whole chain

Five to seven days against your live data with zero writes — the entire system watching, not one workflow at a time.

Monitoring, wired before go-live

Alerting on the run that never happens, not only the run that errors. Added before it matters rather than after it has already cost something.

Outside the build · agreed before we startThe NOT-list

Anything that sends or pays. Unchanged at this price and it is the reason the price is defensible. Replacing software you already run — a Desk works inside your tools. A system on data we cannot reach cleanly; if there is no usable export it is named as not viable in the Blueprint, before you have paid to build it. Regulated sign-off, clinical or legal judgement — those escalate to a person, every time. A second desk, which is a second engagement.

Getting there

Nobody buys a Desk from a ninety-minute conversation.

And nobody should. A fixed price on a system is only honest if it was quoted from an architecture, which is what the Blueprint produces.

01 — The call

Thirty minutes, free. Whether a Desk is even the right shape for your problem, or whether two workflows would do.

02 — The Blueprint

Two to three weeks, $6,000, credited in full against the build. The architecture the fixed quote comes from. In full here.

03 — The Desk

Six to ten weeks, fixed price, 40% deposit. Shadow mode before anything writes.

04 — Or stop

After the Blueprint you own an architecture and a fixed quote. Taking both to another firm is a legitimate outcome and we would rather you did that than build something you were unsure about.