AI consultancy, automation and agents
I build AI systems that do real work inside businesses - triaging enquiries, drafting content for human approval, keeping shops and CRMs tidy - and I keep them running after launch. One developer, 20+ years of web and platform work, a studio in Ogbourne St George, Wiltshire, clients wherever the internet reaches.
Most AI consultancy is a strategy document and an invoice. I'd rather show you running systems.
An AI-assisted SEO and content platform I built and operate across multiple healthcare websites. It plans keywords, generates content, and routes every piece through human review before anything publishes. Governed automation, live for real operations, every day.
The plumbing that lets AI assistants like Claude and ChatGPT manage content, products and orders on live sites, under rules, with approvals. The AI proposes; a person disposes.
An API-driven system producing compliant product pages for pharmacy clients, where "roughly right" isn't good enough and every claim is checked.
A data platform scoring every US occupation against what AI can actually do today. I built it partly because I wanted an honest answer to the question clients ask most: what should AI not be doing?
Each of these has the same shape: AI does the repetitive work, a human owns the judgement, and everything is logged.
If your systems are WordPress or WooCommerce, Xero or QuickBooks, Klaviyo or Mailchimp, Zendesk, GA4 and Tag Manager, a mainstream CRM - anything with an API - I can almost certainly connect to them. If they're a filing cabinet, we should talk about the website first.
This is the part I won't compromise on, and the part cheap automation skips.
Anything customer-facing or consequential gets human sign-off before it acts. Every action is logged, so you can see what the AI did and why. Access is scoped: the agent that drafts product descriptions can't touch your orders. And every system I build has an off switch and a named owner - you can stop it, today, without calling me.
I've built for healthcare and regulated content, where the cost of a wrong sentence is real. That discipline carries into everything else.
Part of the job is saying no. Things I regularly talk clients out of:
If I look at your business and can't find automation that pays for itself, I'll say so and charge you nothing for the opinion.
We go through how the work actually happens - where the hours go, where the mistakes happen, what the data looks like. You get a short written plan with costs, quoted fixed before we start.
One narrow job, built small, measured honestly. If it doesn't pay, we stop there and you've lost little.
The full version, integrated with your systems, with the approval steps and logging described above.
Monitoring, model updates, cost control, and changes as your business changes.
Fixed written quote at each stage. No stage commits you to the next.
For context, published UK rates run £950–£2,400 a day for AI consultancy, with automation projects scoped at £5,000–£20,000 before anything is built. Most of the market won't print a number at all.
I work differently: a fixed written quote for a defined piece of work, before it starts. Small businesses shouldn't need an enterprise budget to automate an inbox.
Straight answers, pulled from real search data. Something else on your mind?
Ask a questionYes - agents that do defined jobs inside your systems, not general chatbots. Triaging enquiries, drafting quotes, tidying product data, producing reports. Rules you set, approvals where it matters, logs of everything, and an off switch.
Understanding the task, connecting to the systems where it lives, building the automation with review steps, and measuring whether it genuinely saves time or wins work. The AI is maybe a third of it. The other two-thirds is plumbing and judgement.
In a small business, usually no - it replaces the parts of their week they'd happily lose. The businesses that do well with this use it to answer faster and take on more, not to cut the one person who knows everything.
Your data stays in your systems; the AI is granted the minimum access the job needs, and what it reads and writes is logged. Where data is sensitive - I work with healthcare content - we agree what never leaves your side of the fence before anything is built.
That's what the pilot is for. One small job, measured against what it costs. If the numbers don't work, we stop, and you keep the written review either way.
Possibly not. Sometimes the honest answer is a better website, a form that asks the right questions, or an integration with no AI in it at all. I build all three, so I've no incentive to sell you the fashionable one.
I do. The person who scopes it builds it, and the person who builds it answers the phone afterwards. That's the whole point of a one-person studio.
Start with the review. Tell me what eats your week - email gordon@firstideas.co.uk or WhatsApp me. You'll get a straight answer about whether AI can take it off your plate, in writing.
Your business name is enough to start a free preview. A rough brief is enough to start a quote.