Software & AI roadmap
The goal of the day: agree on one vision for how Askel works with AI, see how today's setup maps to it, and leave with the road there planned in Trello.
This page is Mike's working draft. The orange boxes are proposed positions to argue about, not decisions.
Agenda
| Time | Block | Lead |
|---|---|---|
| 10:00–11:00 | 1 · The vision: two goals and a posture | Mike |
| 11:00–11:45 | 2 · Where we are, mapped to the vision: a quick live tour of what is running. Carry over anything from Friday's Melers digitalisation retro & demo. | Mike |
| 11:45–12:00 | Break | |
| 12:00–13:00 | 3 · Steve and Askel OS: when, how, why | Mike, Vária |
| 13:00–13:45 | Lunch | |
| 13:45–14:45 | 4 · Security workshop | Niklas, Mikke |
| 14:45–15:15 | 5 · Trello-ing our AI journey: how we get there | All |
| 15:15–15:35 | 6 · Talking about our AI strategy: short | All |
| 15:35–16:00 | 7 · Show and tell: light, no writing | All |
1 · The vision
Two main goals and one minor one. Everything after this block is measured against them.
Goal 1 · A single source of truth
We already have it: cc-disco-askel, Steve's workspace. The job now is to hammer on it, so that what Askel knows lives there and not in someone's head, inbox or private notes.
Goal 2 · AIs that resemble the people in the company
Each person's AI reflects them and their domain of expertise. Three parts:
- Hand-designed per person. Each of us gets the AI setup that makes that person the most efficient, not one generic tool for everyone.
- Interoperable at all times. These setups always work with each other and with the single source of truth.
- Tastes evolve, and we share them. We keep showing each other our setups and what our AI covers (web app building? talking to prospects? project management?). That way our tastes evolve, we can advocate for solutions we believe in, and AI stays something that makes its humans better.
Minor goal · Maintain our own tools where it makes sense
CRM: yes. Google Workspace: probably not. We are already good at this, so it is more a posture and a way of looking at the future than a project.
2 · Where we are, mapped to the vision
None of this was built as a product. Each piece solves a real problem at a portfolio company or in Askel's own work.
| Thing | What it does | Serves | State |
|---|---|---|---|
| Steve (cc-disco-askel) | Askel's AI agent on Discord. About 20 scheduled jobs (sourcing sweeps, tender and marketplace alerts, Trello and Business Finland syncs, weekly digest) and the deal playbooks (screening, valuation, DD, IC, knowledge transfer). | Goal 1. One shared agent today, not one per person. | live |
| Melers CRM | Invite-only, bilingual B2B CRM: sales pipeline, customers, contacts, imports. Since October also orders, invoicing to Fivaldi, customer prices and scanned waybill reading. Runs on Cloudflare; its SaaS guardrails make it multi-tenant-ready. | Minor goal (our own tool) | live |
| KT handbook | Knowledge-transfer handbook for portfolio companies, with AI processing of uploaded material. | Goal 1, minor goal | live |
| Outreach ledger | Records every company the cold-outreach pipeline touches and enforces the hard rules (no double emails, daily caps, kill switch). | Goal 1 | live |
| tsp-tarjous | Proposal tool for Turun Suurpesula. | Minor goal | live |
| buukkaus | Cold-call objection helper for Melers callers. | Goal 2: an early per-role tool | live |
| Askel OS | Partner workspace (sourcing, screening, IC, DD, grow) on mock data, with a live Steve pane since 6 Oct. | Goal 1, if it becomes real | mock data |
| AI Invoicer | Mikke's invoicing work. The CRM's October invoicing and waybill-reading commits may be where it landed. Mikke to confirm on the day. | Goal 2 (Mikke's domain) | to confirm |
The gap to talk about: goal 1 is in place. Goal 2 mostly is not: we have one shared Steve, and nobody has shown the others their own setup yet. Each person brings theirs to block 7.
Melers' own systems (Niklas, 28 Sep)
| Area | System | Note |
|---|---|---|
| Accounting | Fivaldi | The CRM now writes invoices here |
| E-invoicing | Verkkolaskut.fi | Fragile, per Niklas: "things can get messy if Steve starts to do things" there |
| Banking | OP, Aktia | 2FA |
| Payments | Viva Wallet (store), Zettle (drivers) | 2FA |
| PSOP invoicing | Parasta palvelua | 2FA |
| Staff | Connecteam: time tracking, comms, knowledge transfer | |
| Sales | crm.melers.fi | Ours |
| Documents | Google Drive | |
| Operations data | Detergent dispenser (kg/hours), video surveillance | Both on-site only; dispenser data could be a KPI |
| Driver routes | "Some spreadsheet somewhere" | |
| Domains | Moving to Cloudflare | Renewals due early 2027 |
3 · Steve and Askel OS: when, how, why
- Is Askel OS the partner workspace that replaces Trello, or a demo? When does the mock-data phase end, and who decides?
- Does Steve move from Discord into Askel OS, or do both stay?
- Goal 2 asks for one AI per person. Is that Steve with a per-person setup, or one agent each that shares Steve's source of truth?
- The 29 Sep platform plan: Cloudflare as the single backend, "zero SaaS within reason", three tiers (build, self-host open source, buy SaaS). It needs a go from Mike and Vária.
- How does Vária, or anyone, pull Mike in on a tech decision without waiting on him?
Steve stays where people already talk to him (Discord, plus the pane). Askel OS ends its mock phase only when it shows one real thing better than Trello does: the deal pipeline, fed from the outreach ledger. If nobody would open it daily for that, we park it.
Approve the platform plan with one change: buying SaaS is fine wherever building costs more than a week. Tech decisions go in a Trello list with a 48-hour default: if Mike hasn't answered, the proposer's call stands.
4 · Security workshop
- Which systems can our AIs touch? Read-only, write, or human-only?
- Once everyone has their own AI (goal 2), whose credentials does each one use, and what can it see?
- AI invoicing: from Mikke's work to the CRM to a production test on real invoices. What has to be true before it touches real money?
- Key-person risk: today all the tech runs through Mike. What is the target?
| Level | Systems |
|---|---|
| Agents write freely | Our own systems: CRM, KT handbook, outreach ledger, Trello, Drive |
| Agents draft, a human approves | Anything leaving the company: invoices to Fivaldi, customer emails, offers |
| Human only | Banking, POS, Verkkolaskut.fi, Parasta palvelua: everything behind 2FA or money-moving |
Key-person risk: every live system gets a named non-Mike owner and a one-page runbook in the KT handbook by year end. Mikke is the second technical person.
5 · Trello-ing our AI journey
Turn the vision into cards: how we get from block 2 to block 1. Each card has one owner and a done-definition you can check.
- Goal 1: everything lands in cc-disco-askel. List what still lives outside it (inboxes, private notes, spreadsheets like the driver routes) and move it in, one card each.
- Goal 2: one setup per person. One card per person (Mike, Niklas, Vária, Mikke): what their AI covers today, what it should cover, and who builds it.
- Goal 2: interoperability. One card for the rule that keeps these setups talking to each other and to the source of truth.
- Running work that fits the vision: Melers invoicing from the CRM (done when a full month of real invoices goes out through Fivaldi with no re-typing), and Auran Pesupojat as a second CRM and KT handbook workspace.
Stop: new mock-data prototypes, and new tools with no person or portfolio company asking for them.
6 · Talking about our AI strategy
A short point. How we talk about the way we work with AI helps us on all three fronts.
- Find: what do sellers and their staff hear about AI when we approach them, so it reads as care for the business and not as a threat to jobs?
- Fund: how do we tell banks and investors that AI is part of our operating edge, with something concrete to show?
- Grow: how do we explain it to portfolio staff and customers, and to people we might hire?
- What do we say publicly, who says it, and where?
One shared paragraph on how Askel uses AI, agreed by all four, that each of us adapts for sellers, funders and staff. It goes into the write-up the day after.
7 · Show and tell
After a day of workshop nobody can write well, so the last half hour is light: each person shows their own AI setup for five minutes, what it does for them and one thing they want to try next. This is goal 2's "share our setups" in practice, and it ends the day on something concrete.
The write-up comes the day after (Mon 16 Nov): Steve drafts it from the day's notes and the new Trello cards, Mike edits, and from then on we refer to it. It covers the vision as agreed, the Steve and Askel OS decisions, the security table, the Trello plan and the shared paragraph on how we talk about it.
Before the day
- Everyone: read this page and note where you disagree with the vision and the orange boxes. Bring your own AI setup to show in block 7.
- Mikke: the state of AI invoicing in one paragraph: what works, what's missing.
- Niklas: mark which Melers systems you'd trust an agent to read, and which never.
- Vária: the tech decisions you've waited on Mike for since September.
- Mike: the vision talk, and a short demo path for the tour.
Sources: the Trello card (task, Steve's 9 Oct agenda, Niklas's system list) and the Askel repos. Draft v2, 4 Nov 2026: vision first, security workshop, Trello-ing, write-up the day after.