Shawn Baako

Agent systems in practice

See what an agent could do in your business.

The useful question is not whether your company “needs AI.” It is whether an agent could gather the information people keep chasing, prepare the next piece of work, and give the right person a clear decision instead of another inbox to manage.

Patterns that cross industries

Different businesses. Familiar kinds of work.

These systems began in different settings, but the work underneath them is not limited to one industry. A clinic, manufacturer, professional firm, retailer, nonprofit, or public agency may all need to manage changing requests, guide a complex decision, coordinate handoffs, complete a controlled transaction, or turn field updates into usable records.

The labels separate a working public demonstration, systems implemented inside the pre-production Zestli platform, and work still in development. They are engineering examples—not client case studies or claimed business outcomes.

02 / Guided decisionsBuilt · pre-production

Traveler Concierge & Guardian

Planning a trip means balancing preferences, dates, budgets, live options, and the needs of more than one traveler. The concierge keeps those details together, helps shape a coherent plan, and watches for changes that matter after the conversation ends.

The reusable patternGuided decision support that compares changing options, remembers preferences and constraints, and flags relevant updates. The same approach can support procurement, onboarding, product selection, benefits navigation, account service, or another complex choice.

03 / Exception managementBuilt · active development

Host Operations Agent

A guest change can affect the calendar, staff, inventory, a listing, and tomorrow’s arrival plan. This agent brings that work into one place, prepares the update, shows what it used, and keeps the operator in charge of guest promises and business decisions.

The reusable patternException management for changes that affect schedules, capacity, inventory, teams, and customer commitments. It fits appointment-based, location-based, and field operations in any sector.

04 / Controlled transactionsBuilt · pre-production

Travel Commerce Gateway

This system lets another approved assistant search real options, get a current quote, and move a booking forward without bypassing identity, price, payment, or confirmation checks. If a step fails, the transaction does not quietly pretend it succeeded.

The reusable patternControlled access to approved offerings, prices, capacity, and transaction steps. It applies wherever customers, partners, or other software need to search, quote, reserve, order, or pay without bypassing business rules.

05 / Cross-functional workBuilt internally · active development

Hex Internal Operating Agent

Running a company means moving between sales, support, research, finance, projects, and system health. Hex gathers the relevant evidence, brings the right specialist into the work, prepares an action, and stops where a signature or accountable judgment is required.

The reusable patternCross-functional coordination that gathers evidence, routes work, prepares actions, and surfaces accountable decisions. It fits any organization where commitments disappear between sales, service, finance, operations, research, compliance, or leadership.

06 / Field work intakeIn development

Voice & Vision Operations Desk

Some work starts with a spoken update, a site photo, a marked-up document, or someone whose hands are busy. This project lets the agent listen, inspect the supplied material, update the work in view, and recover cleanly when the conversation is interrupted.

The reusable patternMultimodal intake that turns spoken updates, photos, and marked-up documents into structured work. It fits any deskless or field-based team for whom stopping to type into a form is the wrong interface.

From idea to working system

What this means for your project.

You should not have to choose a model, database, or agent framework before the work is clear. I use the technical depth behind these systems to answer the practical questions first.

01 / The job

What is worth giving to an agent?

We follow one real task from arrival to completion, separate preparation from judgment, and decide whether the answer is a process fix, existing software, or an agent.

02 / The information

What will it need to know?

I help organize the documents, records, business knowledge, and update rules the agent will rely on, so it can show where an answer came from instead of guessing.

03 / The tools

What should it be allowed to do?

The agent can work with approved email, calendars, files, databases, payments, business software, or APIs. We define what it may prepare, what it may update, and what still requires a person.

04 / The experience

How will people actually use it?

The right interface may be web, mobile, voice, a photo, a document, or a quiet background workflow. I design around where the work already happens rather than adding another dashboard by reflex.

05 / The hard days

What happens when something goes wrong?

We plan for missing information, a failed tool, a changed request, duplicate work, lost connectivity, and a person changing course. The system should fail visibly, recover cleanly, and preserve the current record.

06 / The proof

How will we know it deserves a place?

We test representative work before rollout and choose measures that fit the job: cycle time, corrections, completed work, customer experience, cost, or capacity. A pilot should produce evidence, not enthusiasm alone.

For technical readers: tools and architecture I work with
Agents and models

Single- and multi-agent orchestration, specialist routing, skills, memory, model evaluation and routing, fine-tuning, local inference, and multimodal systems.

Data and knowledge

PostgreSQL, pgvector, embeddings, semantic and hybrid search, knowledge graphs, ingestion, deduplication, recommendation systems, and Bayesian methods.

Products and integrations

Python, FastMCP, Temporal, Flutter/Dart, Astro/JavaScript, REST and MCP APIs, Stripe, OAuth, email, calendars, supplier systems, and webhooks.

Reliability and operations

Idempotency, retries, compensation, evaluation gates, RBAC, audit trails, prompt-injection defenses, OpenTelemetry, CI/CD, containers, Cloudflare, and DigitalOcean.

Start with the work you already know

Bring one job your team keeps chasing.

Tell me where it starts, what keeps changing, and where it gets stuck. We can decide whether the next move is a cleaner process, better use of software you already own, or a small agent pilot.

Book 20 minutes