You're paying for AI. Is it doing any work?
I'm Chris Paton, an AI consultant and engineer. I build agentic workflows that take real work off your team, and I prove them on my own businesses first.
Station
- 01Map the flowEvery step, owner and hand-off
- 02Cut the wasteRe-keying, chasing, waiting
- 03Deploy agentsOn the work that's left
- 04MeasureHours back, every week
The problem
Most AI rollouts add work before they take any away
You bought the licences. Everyone has a chat window open. Yet the month-end close takes just as long, the content calendar still slips and the same three people still chase every order.
Usually that's not because the AI is bad. It's because it was bolted onto a process that was already full of waste. People now write the prompt, check the answer, fix the answer and paste it somewhere else. Automate a bad process and you get faster waste.
I fix the process first, then put agents on the part that's left.
What I do
Five ways to work together, each one leading into the next
AI Readiness Assessment
Start with the free AI Benefit Scorecard. If it shows a real opportunity, the Agentic Readiness Audit maps one or two of your processes, lists the waste and gives you a costed plan for what to hand to agents first.
2 weeks, remote, fixed price.
Agentic Workflows
I build one production workflow for content, operations, sales or data. It comes with monitoring, guardrails and a proper handover, so your team runs it and it isn't a black box.
4–8 weeks, fixed scope.
Agentic Engineering
For dev teams using AI coding tools. I set up agent skills, review gates and a test harness for AI-written code, so your seniors get more done and your juniors grow faster.
4–6 weeks.
GTM Engine and Fractional AI Lead
Two ways to keep going once something is running. The GTM Engine is a content and SEO pipeline built on Verqos, the engine I run my own sites on. Or have me as your fractional AI lead for a few days a month.
Monthly · ongoing
AAIO
Agentic AI Optimisation: making your business discoverable, citable and usable by AI answer engines and AI agents, and measuring whether it is.
How I work
A method first, tools second
Lean before agents.
I map the value stream and remove the waste first, then automate what's left. It's the cheapest AI saving you'll ever make.
Knowledge · Skills · Wisdom.
AI brings the knowledge. Your team's repeatable know-how becomes skills that agents run. Judgement stays with your people.
ZPD for teams.
With the right scaffolding of skills, reviews and tests, agents let each person work one level above where they are today.
Strategic programming.
People own the architecture, the intent and the tests. Agents write the code inside those lines.
Proof from my own production lines
I run this on my own businesses before I sell it to yours
Campercation
A campervan travel platform I own and run
The blog runs on a search-seeded pipeline: topics come from search data, drafts are generated and GEO-structured, images go to a CDN and posts publish through a .NET API. A weekly SEO loop decides what to write or update next.
25,000+ stopovers on the live map
RunningTrustedVillas
A villa rental platform I own and run
A property sync pipeline with monitoring, so listings stay current without anyone re-keying them. Hub content sits under change control, so an agent can’t quietly rewrite a live page.
63,000+ properties synced
RunningVerqos
The content engine behind both
The same pipeline, productised. It plans, drafts, checks and publishes, with a human review queue for anything legal, pricing or competitive.
Hundreds of hours saved
RunningHow I run the business
Scheduled agent tasks
My weekly LinkedIn and SEO reviews run as scheduled agent tasks with written quality guardrails. I read the output, not the raw data.
24/7 automated agents running
Running
Who it's for
This works best if you're one of these
An owner-led business or scale-up with 10–250 staff that pays for AI tools but can't point to anything that's faster or cheaper.
A small engineering team using agentic coding tools that needs guardrails, testing and review practice, not more generated code.
A founder or marketing lead who needs content, SEO and outbound to keep running without another hire.
I work remotely with teams in the UK, the US and other English-speaking markets.
FAQ
What does an AI consultant actually do?
A good one tells you where AI will save time or money in your business, where it won't, and then helps you build it. I start by mapping how the work gets done today, cut the waste, then build agentic workflows for the steps where an agent can do the job reliably. You get a working system, not a slide deck.
How much does an AI consultant cost?
My work is fixed-price. The AI Benefit Scorecard is free. The Agentic Readiness Audit is typically £2,500–£4,000 for two weeks. A workflow build is typically £8,000–£25,000, depending on scope. I quote a fixed price for your scope, so you know the cost before we start.
What is an agentic workflow?
It's a process where an AI agent carries out a series of steps on its own, such as reading, deciding, using tools and writing, with checks built in and clear points where a person signs off. It isn't a chatbot. It's a piece of work that gets done without someone prompting each step.
Why isn't AI saving us any time?
Usually it's been added to a process that was already wasteful, so people spend their time prompting, checking and fixing. Fix the process first and the same tools start paying back. The free scorecard shows where your biggest gap is.
What should we hand to AI agents, and what should we keep?
I use a simple test. Knowledge (looking things up, summarising, drafting) can go to AI. Repeatable know-how can become skills that agents run. Judgement, relationships and anything with real risk stay with your people.
Do you work with companies outside the UK?
Yes. Everything is delivered remotely, and I work with teams in the UK, the US and other English-speaking markets.
Find out where AI would actually pay off
Ten questions, a score out of 100, and three next steps in your inbox.