Learn the business before the build.

Start where the business already runs

Anthropic’s Blackinton story describes a manufacturer building planning and reporting tools over an existing COBOL system. The useful change was making work visible to the people on the factory floor while preserving the craft behind it.

BLA Studios, a two-person fabrication business, used Claude to troubleshoot equipment documentation and build a material-nesting program. Its robotic welding project is still being developed. These are different kinds of assistance, each tied to an actual problem.

Follow a recent example

OpenAI describes Choco accepting orders through the channels customers already use, then preparing structured records for existing ERP systems. The important discovery work includes the incoming formats, product knowledge, uncertain matches and exceptions that need a person.

For a studio engagement, we ask the operator to show the entire path. The policy document is one input; the decisions people make when information is missing are another.

• What arrives, through which channel, and how often?
• Which records and business rules make the result correct?
• Where do people copy, wait, check, correct or decide?
• Who owns the outcome, and what would make the change worth operating?

Make discovery produce a decision

Our first deliverable records the workflow, current effort, source systems, constraints and a useful initial scope. It includes examples of success and failure that the business can recognize.

The next decision is whether to proceed, narrow the work or stop. That may lead to configuring an existing product, adding a small integration or building something custom. The brief makes the choice assessable before implementation expands.