Propolis: AI inside the team's daily tools.
Workflow automation and copilots embedded inside an existing operations stack. Measurable productivity gains in the first sprint — without asking the team to change tool.
The challenge
Propolis had a productivity problem that wasn't a productivity problem — it was a fragmentation problem. Their ops team lived inside Notion, Slack, Linear, Gmail, and three internal tools. Every AI vendor wanted them to switch to a shiny new dashboard.
The brief was the opposite: don't move our team. Bring AI to where we already work.
Our approach
We embedded inside their stack rather than around it. Slack slash-commands wired to a custom agent. Notion side-actions for document operations. Linear automations on issue creation. The team didn't learn a new tool — their existing tools just got smarter.
We measured in two ways: frequency of use (the boring metric) and tasks deflected from human (the meaningful one). Both moved within the first sprint.
The stack
- AgentsCustom Claude agents, deployed as Slack apps and Notion integrations.
- Orchestrationn8n for cross-tool flows. Linear and Gmail wired in via official APIs.
- HostingSelf-hosted on the client's existing AWS account — no new vendor.
- ObservabilityPostHog for usage analytics. Custom Slack reports on adoption per team.
Adoption first, scope later
We deliberately under-scoped the first sprint — three slash commands, two Notion actions, one Linear automation. The point was to get something into people's hands and watch what they actually used.
After two weeks of usage telemetry, we knew which patterns to invest in. Sprint two doubled the surface area; sprint three added the cross-tool flows that emerged from the first month's usage.
What's next
The team owns the stack now. They've added two of their own slash commands without us. That's the deliverable that mattered — internal capability, not vendor dependency.
“They didn't sell us a platform. They made our existing platform better. Six weeks in and the team was using AI without thinking about it.”
Tell us what you're trying to ship.
Book a 30-min strategy call. We'll tell you in 30 minutes whether AI makes sense for your business — and if it does, exactly what we'd build, in what order, for what budget. No deck. No follow-up email sequence. Just a real conversation.