Catalyst Studio
The Catalyst Operating System
This is how we run. Every diagnostic we use to find what’s holding a business back, and every system we use to build the fix, written down so you can run them yourself or judge them before you ever pay us anything.
Codify all of it into agents and you have a business that largely runs itself. That is exactly what our platform is. What’s below is the same operating system in a form you can read, argue with, and run by hand.
Start here
Three diagnostics are finished and free to run today, no account, nothing to install. Pick the one that sounds most like your week.
If more than one sounds like you, start with the Operations Diagnostic. It is the general one, and it usually ends by pointing at which of the others to run next.
The diagnostics
Each one starts with the workbook: the thing you actually run, with the checklists, the worksheets and the prompts in order. The three short pieces under it explain the reasoning behind each step. Read them if you want to argue with the method; you do not need them to use it.
The five stages every one of them runs
Operations Diagnostic
Run it todayFind the single thing slowing the business down the most, and work out what kind of fix it needs.
The AI Constraint Diagnostic
The three systems below in one place and in order, so you can run the whole thing yourself: work out what really happens in a process, find the one thing limiting it, check that fixing it would change anything, and choose the right kind of fix. It ends with a prompt you paste into ChatGPT, Claude, or whatever assistant you already use.
What you needOne process that frustrates you, an hour with whoever runs it day to day, and whatever records the business already keeps about it.
Open the full diagnosticFind the Constraint
Most businesses don’t have a shortage of problems. They have a shortage of clarity about which one is worth fixing. How to reconstruct what’s really happening in a process, and find the one thing limiting it.
Don’t Fix the Symptom
“Proposals go out too slowly” is an observation. How to ask why enough times to turn it into a diagnosis, without letting AI hand you a confident guess dressed up as an answer.
Don’t Automate the Wrong Thing
Once you know what is constraining the business, AI is one possible fix among several. A way to choose the right intervention before you choose a tool.
Advertising Waste Diagnostic
Run it this weekWork out how much of your ad budget is buying customers, how much is not, and which part of that you can prove either way.
The Advertising Waste Diagnostic
The three systems below in one place and in order, so you can run the whole thing yourself: find out how many of the sales your ad platform claims you can find in your own records, sort the questionable spend into the four kinds, put a number on each, and design the one test that would settle the biggest remaining question. It ends with a prompt you paste into any AI assistant, along with your own exports.
What you needOne month of reports out of Google Ads or Meta, and the same month of leads, orders, or calls from wherever your business records them.
Open the full diagnosticReconcile Before You Optimize
Every advertising platform reports its own success. Before you move a dollar, find out how many of the conversions it counts are customers you can find in your own records. The one comparison that decides whether anything else in the account can be trusted.
Four Kinds of Waste
Wasted spend is four separate problems wearing one word: money going somewhere wrong, money counted as a result nobody can find, money the platform won’t show you, and money spent on customers who were already coming. How to sort them, and why only one of the four can be fixed this afternoon.
Where the Next Dollar Goes
Attribution tells you a touchpoint came first. Only a holdout tells you the advertising created a customer who would otherwise have stayed away. What the platforms will run for you, what they won’t, and how to run the test yourself at a budget that can’t buy a formal lift study.
Waste Diagnostic
Start it this weekFind the work that exists only because of how the work is arranged, put a cost on it, and decide what stops.
The Waste Diagnostic
The three systems below in one place and in order, so you can run the whole thing yourself: write out what happens step by step, work out who each step is really for, name and cost the work that only exists to serve the process, then decide what stops, what gets cheaper, and what stays. It ends with a prompt you paste into any AI assistant, along with your notes.
What you needOne process you can watch for two weeks, a walkthrough from the people who run it, and whatever timestamps your systems already record.
Open the full diagnosticWho Is This Step For?
Every step in a process feels necessary to the person performing it. One question, asked one step at a time, sorts them into three piles: work the customer came for, work a nameable requirement forces, and work that exists only because of how the work is arranged.
The Wastes of Office Work
Office waste comes in a small number of recurring shapes, seen one way by the customer and another way from inside. Naming the shape is what makes it findable: where the rest of it is hiding, what number would prove it costs something, and which of them are consequences of one unclear request upstream.
Cut It or Fix It
Deciding what happens to each finding is a different judgment from the one that found it. Some work should stop, some has to keep happening and can be made much cheaper, and automation is the fourth question rather than the first.
Sales Pipeline Diagnostic
PlannedWhere opportunities disappear between a lead and a customer.
Customer Acquisition Diagnostic
PlannedWhere the cost of winning a customer stops making sense.
Technology Waste Diagnostic
PlannedWhere software, data, and systems create unnecessary complexity.
Build
How the fix gets made, once a diagnostic points at something worth building. This is the half we codify into agents.
Catalyst Build Process
How a request becomes shipped software here: one shared board for team and customers, automated triage, build, and review by default, with a person’s eyes on it before anything higher-risk reaches production.
The Machines Behind Automated Triage and Build
Two dedicated machines run the unattended steps all day: what runs on them, why dedicated hardware rather than a laptop or a cloud schedule, and the one place a person always has to say yes.
Catching Stale Engineering Notes
A daily check that holds our own written notes honest against what shipped, and the one command that applies what it finds.