Field notes

Honest writing about AI workflows in the wild.

Patterns, failure modes, and what actually works when you're shipping AI inside a small team. No content marketing.

Field notes

The AI WhatsApp reply that almost cost an estate agent a complaint

An AI-generated buyer reply quoted a property feature that didn't exist. The problem wasn't the model. It was the absence of a verification gate before the message left the building.

16 May 2026

estate-agencyai-workflowverification

14 May 2026

The prompt library that nobody uses

Most agencies build a shared prompt library during their AI honeymoon period. Six months later it's half-broken and nobody touches it. The problem is never the library. It's the absence of ownership.

11 May 2026

Property listings can't be AI written. They can be AI assembled.

The problem with AI-generated listings isn't the AI. It's that generation without structure produces identical-sounding copy at volume. Assembly fixes that.

1 May 2026

Your CRM is a data lake. Your AI tool is drinking from the wrong tap.

Estate agents plugging AI into Reapit, Alto, or Jupix are getting confident-sounding summaries drawn from duplicate contacts, soft-deleted records, and tags nobody has touched in three years. The problem is the data, not the model.

1 May 2026

Why your agency's 24-hour turnaround promise is now a liability

Fast-turnaround guarantees made sense before AI. Now they train clients to send vague briefs faster and expect polished output anyway. Here is how to restructure the promise before it costs you.

25 Apr 2026

Why most AI pilots fail before they ship

The pattern is almost always the same: excitement, a promising first prompt, slow drift, then silent abandonment. Here are the four checks that actually break that cycle.

25 Apr 2026

Section 21 is gone: your Monday morning workflow change

Section 21 is gone. Every eviction now needs a documented evidence trail. Here's the workflow your lettings operation needs before the next possession issue.

25 Apr 2026

The brief is the bottleneck. AI can't fix bad intake

AI makes a bad brief worse, faster. This is the intake structure that gives AI tools something to work with, and cuts revision rounds in half.

25 Apr 2026

AML checks are now a workflow problem, not a paperwork problem

Having an AML policy is not the same as having an AML workflow. Here's the operational difference, and why HMRC is now testing the latter.

25 Apr 2026

Your AI reporting tool is making up your client's numbers

AI reporting tools invent numbers. Here's the verification gate your agency needs before any AI-generated client report leaves the building.

25 Apr 2026

Why AI-written property listings are a brand problem

AI-written listings all sound the same. Here's why that's a brand problem for your agency, and where AI actually belongs in your listing workflow.