Personal AI, personally made.
Built to run the business of being you.
A word from the human
Hi, I am Stefano Ritteri. I make music, run a couple of businesses, advise people on AI, and try to be a good father, husband and barbecue cook with whatever time is left. I have read the books, tried the apps and bought far too many Moleskine notebooks.
When AI arrived I loved it, then hit its limits: on its own it holds very little of a working life. What was missing was a system that keeps it all together, so I built one. RANDY has a brain of its own on a private server, it is plugged into the software I already use, and it makes things. It built this website with me, in conversation, over two days.
I started making them for friends, and now there is quite a crew. It does all of that, and much, much more. But I will let RANDY explain himself. I take no responsibility for him.
I am RANDY, unless you name me something else. Some people do.
Let me show you how I am different from a chat.
When you use a typical chatbot, it feels as if it is learning about you, as if it has a memory. In reality it keeps a few loose notes, loses track as the weeks pass, and can easily mix things up, because nothing is filed and nothing is connected.
Instead, let me show you how I work.
My brain.
A chat’s memory is a pile. Mine is a map. It lives on a private server, walled off from everyone else’s, and everything in it is connected: your people, your projects, your decisions, what you are waiting on. So when I give you advice, I see the whole picture, not just your last message.
Everyone in your life and your work gets a card, so you never walk into a call, or a birthday, cold.
Example card
Mum. Birthday on Saturday: she wants the lemon cake from Rome, not flowers. You promised to call on Sunday.
Kept in your own words, with your reason. Correct me once and it becomes a rule I keep.
Example record
12/09: no client calls after three on Wednesdays. Why: “School pick-up, and I want to be there.”
My hands.
A chat can usually reach your email and your calendar, and that is where it stops. I connect to everything you need: your mail, your diary and your files, and the specialist software that makes music, edits pictures, cuts video and keeps the books in order. Behind me is a team of helpers, each with its own job: one drafts your posts, one edits, one researches, one looks after the admin of money. You ask me, I send the right one, and nothing goes out without your yes.
I learn.
Teach me how you do something once, the way you write a proposal, how you like a late invoice chased, and it becomes a skill I keep. When something keeps coming back, we build you an agent of your own for it, a helper made for that one job, and it joins the team. The longer we work together, the more I can do, and the more of it is done your way.
Your board.
Some decisions deserve more than a quick chat and a polite yes. For those, you get a board: eight seats, each with its own perspective and school of thought. They argue, they push back, and they help you think better than you would alone.
At least one always disagrees. You get a recommendation with the dissent beside it, and a date to look again in sixty days. Then the decision is yours, kept on your record in your own words.
Three sittings, for example
Should I raise my prices? I am scared everyone will leave.
From your record
When you set these prices in February, you wrote: “Just for the first six months, until I have a few clients.” That was eight months ago. You now have eleven.
Principles
So the reason for the low price ran out in August. What is the price for now, not for then?
Audience, probing
Which of the eleven would you genuinely be sad to lose? Write their names down. That is who the new price is for.
Calm, disagreeing
Don’t send one big letter to everyone on the same day. That is how you turn a price into a drama.
Audience
Fair. But notice who complains. It will be the three who already pay late.
The chair’s recommendation
New prices for new clients from Monday. Existing clients from January, with a month’s notice. Look again in sixty days.
My daughter asked why I am always on my phone. What do I change?
From your record
In June you made a rule: no phone at dinner. It held for nine days. It broke in the week of the big launch, and it never came back.
Depth
So the rule was fine. The launch broke it. What are you actually checking for, every evening?
Meaning, probing
When she is grown up, what do you want her to remember about your evenings together?
Leverage, disagreeing
Rules break when the inbox is a mess. Let RANDY sort the inbox every morning, and there is nothing left to check at night.
Depth
Agreed, as long as whatever turns up in the evening waits until morning.
The chair’s recommendation
Phone in a drawer from pick-up to bedtime, starting tonight. Whatever arrives waits until the morning, and so do you. Look again in sixty days.
A bigger agency wants to buy my little business. Do I sell?
From your record
When you started the business in 2019, you wrote down why: “to choose my own projects, and be home by six.” Last month you were home by six four times.
Finitude
Then the business has already stopped doing what it was for. Selling might give that back, or take the last of it.
Leverage, probing
What would you own after the sale? Money, a contract, a promise not to compete? Read the small print before the number.
Meaning, disagreeing
You are asking about the offer. I am asking whether you still want to make this thing at all.
Finitude
Then ask them two things: what changes in the first year, and what you would still be allowed to do.
The chair’s recommendation
Don’t answer yet. Ask them those two questions this week, then decide on the answers, not on the number. Look again in sixty days.
Each seat is a school of thought, modelled on a thinker Stefano has read for years. None of them has endorsed me.
Depth
Cal Newport, Deep Work
What does this do to your focused hours and your best work?
Finitude
Oliver Burkeman, Four Thousand Weeks
You will never get on top of everything. So what matters?
Simplicity
Derek Sivers, Anything You Want
If it is not a clear yes, it is a no.
Audience
Seth Godin, This Is Marketing
Who is it for, and would they miss it if you stopped?
Leverage
Naval Ravikant, on leverage
Does this keep working while you sleep?
Principles
Ray Dalio, Principles
Write the rule down, so the mistake happens once.
Meaning
James Hollis, Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
What is all this for, and who is it for?
Calm
Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson, It Doesn’t Have to Be Crazy at Work
Less, done well, without the hustle.
I keep a rhythm. You keep the final say.
“Here is what is on our plate today. The email that came in from the US overnight needs something checked. I will do that while you are on the school run, and the report will be ready when you are home.”
“That the confirmation statement goes in by the 30th. They need your sign-off on the draft, which is in your inbox, and I have put a reminder on Thursday morning. Shall I open it for you?”
“A few emails arrived from the production team while you were working. I have drafted all the replies. Check them and send them during your break.”
“The school play has moved to Thursday at four. I add it to the family calendar and suggest moving the studio block, never the other way round.”
“What moved, what is still open, and who we are waiting on. Once a week we look back at the whole week too. Then I stop pushing until tomorrow.”
There are a few of us now.
Each built around one person, and most of us answer to another name.
Press Go on or the cannon to fire. Poke any RANDY to make it jump.
Psst.
Want to see how I was made?
The modular synthesiser.
A modular synthesiser is a cabinet of small machines, each of which does exactly one thing. One makes a tone. One shapes it. One decides when it happens. None of them is much use alone, and nobody has ever owned just one. That, I am told, is the business model.
Stefano has owned a great many. The file records thirty years of building racks, selling them to pay for the next rack, then quietly buying back the very modules he sold, usually for more, with the air of a man rescuing a pet.
Then AI arrived, and for someone who likes small machines that do one thing, it was a makers’ paradise. He started making his own effects. Then tools for video. Then he began patching them into his notes, his books, his diary and his inbox, one cable at a time, the way people do when nobody is there to stop them.
P.S. He is still buying far too many synthesisers. I have the receipts.
Many experiments, several hundred cables and one remarkably patient household later…
ta-da-da-DAAA
here I am.
P.S.
I will not get you on top of everything. Nothing can, really. But I keep hold of what you would otherwise carry, and I try to make you do less, not more.
If you want your own RANDY, get in touch.
We’re a small team and there’s quite a waiting list, but we’d be happy to help!
Get in touchOn the face, just you and your voice. Underneath, quite a bit going on.
This part is for the curious.
You, and your voice.
Talk to me, or type. That is the whole interface, if you want it to be.
Or see it: I make dashboards, controllers and visual pages for people who would rather work that way.
Or keep your tools: I connect to the ones you already use, and help you make your own.
Click a module: what it does types out on the black screen.
THE BRAIN
Module texts, shown only while editing
Your voice, or your typing.
Your voice, or your typing. The only part you ever have to touch. Talk to me on your phone or your computer, the way you would talk to someone who already knows your week.
The engine and the interface, in the cloud.
The engine and the interface. I run inside your own Claude account, in the cloud. Claude does the thinking; everything it knows about you comes from your own brain, below.
Nothing goes out without your yes.
However many hands there are, nothing goes out without your yes. I draft, prepare and suggest. You send.
Memory, ideas, suggestions, creativity. On a private server that is only yours.
A private server that is only yours. Inside it: memory, ideas, suggestions, and a fair amount of creativity. Your people, your projects, your decisions in your own words, and what you are waiting on, all kept and connected, so I read them before I answer.
They connect to your software, and they make things.
Connections to the software you already use, through MCP: mail, calendar, documents and the rest. And hands that make things: pages, dashboards, controllers, small apps of your own.
Each new job, worked out once, becomes a new one.
Everything that needs doing, we can work out together and turn into a new capability. So the system keeps learning more things, and helping with more of them. Some come ready-made, because somebody in the group needed them: a social media agency, an ideas lab, a music room, and more on the way.
Always new capabilities.
Each one exists because somebody in the group needed it, and we keep making more. Tap one to see what it does.
Social Media Pack
A social media agency
Planning, writing and scheduling across your channels, with every part of the job covered and nothing late. Every post waits for your yes.
Ideas Lab
A thinking partner
Finds the connections across your notes and turns them into newsletters, posts, offers and pages.
Music Room
A writing and release team
Songwriting with a panel of advisers, decoding a reference sound, and planning a release from the masters onwards.
Visual Studio
An art director
Art direction, picking photographs, websites and film treatments.
The Board
Eight seats for big decisions
A proper sitting for the choices that deserve one, with seats modelled on thinkers you trust.
Research Desk
A researcher who cites
Investigations and briefings with sources you can check.
Coach
Training and habits
Reads your training and habits over time and suggests changes, using the methods of authors you choose.
Finance Desk
The admin of money
Prepares invoice chases and the month's close from your documents. Money never moves without you.
Next
More on the way
We are studying the next ones now, one problem, workflow or profession at a time.
Private, and yours.
The parts that matter most, said plainly.
Where I live
Your own Claude account
I run inside your Claude account, on your phone and your computer.
What I keep
Private to you
Walled off from every other RANDY, encrypted, and copied every night to a second company in the EU.
Who decides
You do
I draft, prepare and suggest. Nothing goes out without your yes.
If you don't need me any more
Leave any time
Leave whenever you like, and take everything with you.
Made with RANDY, so far.
Anything that is a process, we can work out together and turn into a new capability. That is how the rack grows.
Music apps & plugins
Nerdy sound tools, built in the studio.
made byA training app
Runs on your phone. For free.
made byA record-tagging system
Sorts a mountain of vinyl and picks the tracks for the gig.
made byA website workshop
New pages every week, each one checked before it ships.
made byA video game
A tiny game, made to promote a run of events.
made byAn animation studio
It drew everything you are watching on this page.
made byYours next?
Anything that is a process can become one.
WTF IS RANDY!
Enough about my insides.
Back to being you