— FAQ
AI and custom software, answered plainly
The questions businesses actually ask us, answered without sales language.
Do you work with international businesses?
Yes. Revealing Mind AI serves businesses worldwide. I am based in Newcastle, Australia, and deliver remotely, with on-site work available in NSW.
How much does an AI automation project cost?
Prices are in Australian dollars (AUD). The AI Business Demo is free. The AI Opportunity Audit is $1,250, the AI Workflow Sprint is $4,900 for one workflow over two weeks, and Operations AI Builds start at $9,900. The audit fee is credited in full against a Sprint or Operations Build booked within 30 days.
What is included in the AI Workflow Sprint?
One workflow, designed, built and deployed into your existing tools over two weeks for $4,900 AUD. The workflow and scope are agreed before the build. Multi-workflow systems are scoped separately as Operations AI Builds.
How do we get started?
Use the free AI Business Demo to describe your business, existing tools and operational problem, or contact me directly if you already know what you need. Paid work starts with an agreed scope and deliverables.
Do you build AI chatbots?
Sometimes, but it is rarely the most valuable thing I can build. A chat interface is only useful when it is connected to real systems and real data. More often the win is in the workflow behind it — triage, qualification, document handling, reporting.
What if I don't know what to automate yet?
That is the normal starting point, and it is the question I am usually hired to answer. Tell me what your business does and I will identify a specific opportunity and show you what could be built. If you want a deeper review, the AI Opportunity Audit maps your workflows properly.
Do you work with our existing software?
Yes. I build against the tools you already run rather than asking you to replace them. Integration and data flow is most of the work in a real automation project.
Where are you based?
Newcastle, NSW, Australia. I work with businesses worldwide, remote-first, with on-site work available in NSW.
Is the free demo actually free?
Yes, and there is no call required to get it. You submit information about your business, the system analyses it and generates a personalised proof of concept you can look at immediately.
What is the difference between AI automation and an AI agent?
Automation replaces a repetitive processing step — it runs when triggered and does one defined thing. An agent decides between multiple actions within guardrails you set. Automation is more predictable; agents are more flexible and need tighter limits and logging.
Is Cadence Ops the only thing you build?
Cadence Ops is a live event-production platform built by Revealing Mind AI, not the only thing we build.
What is the Revealing Mind app?
The Revealing Mind app is a separate personal life and work OS in private beta, not the studio offering.
What can AI automate in a small business?
The reliable wins are repetitive information-handling tasks: reading and sorting inbound enquiries, extracting data from documents into your systems, drafting standard replies for approval, generating quotes from structured inputs, and assembling reports that someone currently builds by hand. The common thread is that a person is pattern-matching rather than deciding. If your team follows a rule they could write down, that step is a candidate. What AI does not reliably automate in a small business: judgement calls with incomplete information, anything with legal or safety consequences without a human checkpoint, and relationship work with your customers.
How can AI reduce business administration?
Administration is mostly moving information between places and chasing things that have not progressed. Both are automatable. Practically: intake forms that create records and tasks automatically instead of being re-keyed; documents that are read and filed without manual data entry; scheduled reports assembled from live data; and alerts when something has been sitting too long. The measurable outcome is usually fewer manual steps per job and fewer things missed, rather than headcount reduction.
What is an AI agent?
An AI agent is software that can choose between several actions to achieve a goal, rather than performing one fixed step. It typically has access to tools — a database, an email system, an API — and decides which to use. The important engineering question is not how capable the agent is, but how tightly its action space is bounded. A safe agent has an enumerated list of things it may do, approval gates on anything consequential, and a log of every action. For most businesses today, the useful pattern is an agent that prepares work for human approval rather than acting unilaterally.
When should a business build custom software?
When the cost of bending your process to fit a product exceeds the cost of building the process you actually need. That usually shows up as spreadsheets bolted onto SaaS, duplicate data entry, or a workflow nobody can see end to end. Buy when your process is genuinely standard. Build when the process is your competitive advantage, or when no product models your operation without significant workarounds. The honest test: if three separate tools plus a spreadsheet are holding your operation together, and staff spend real time reconciling them, a custom system is likely cheaper over a few years.
How can AI help a trades business?
The highest-value automation in trades is usually job intake and quoting. Enquiries arrive by phone, text, email and web form, and turning them into a consistent quote takes time that is not billable. A practical system captures the enquiry in one place, extracts the job details, checks them against your pricing rules, drafts a quote for you to approve, and follows up automatically if the customer does not respond. Second most valuable: scheduling and job status, so customers stop calling to ask when someone is arriving.
How much does custom software cost?
For the work I do: a fixed-scope workflow build starts at $4,900, and a multi-workflow or full system build starts from $9,900 and scales with scope. An Opportunity Audit at $1,250 produces a written scope and estimate before you commit to a build. What drives cost is integration surface and edge cases, not screens. A simple-looking tool that must reconcile three existing systems is more work than a complex-looking tool with one clean data source. Be sceptical of anyone quoting a build without mapping your workflow first. The scope is the deliverable.
What is the difference between AI automation and AI agents?
AI automation performs a defined step when triggered: classify this email, extract these fields, draft this reply. It is predictable and easy to test. An AI agent chooses between multiple actions to reach an outcome. It is more flexible and more useful for open-ended work, but needs explicit guardrails, approval gates and logging. Most businesses should start with automation on a high-frequency step, then extend to agent-style behaviour once the data and guardrails are in place.