How we run Ostley
We run our own business on the same kind of system we build for you.
13 October 2026
Contents
Send the form on ostley.com and it lands in our CRM, the system we run Ostley from.
It arrives as a new lead and files itself as a prospect on our client list, stamped with the time it landed. The form talks to the CRM from our server, with a key your browser never sees.
The CRM started as a copy of the code behind Ostley OS, the system we set up for clients, and we’ve added pages of our own around it. When one of them gets a fix the other needs, we carry it across deliberately. So the system we build for you starts from the same code as ours.
Everything is written down
Most of the work on Ostley happens inside Claude Code, Anthropic’s AI coding tool, the one we build with.
We clear the conversation after every task, so each new one starts with only what’s written in the files. Anything that lived only in the chat is gone.
So every client and project gets a status file. The rule is one screen, in this shape:
- where the work is today
- the next steps, each with the name of the person who owns it
- what we’re waiting on, and from whom
- the last few changes, newest first
The full history goes in a log beside it, so the status stays short enough to read in a minute. Since 9 October each file is also meant to open with the goal and a test for what good looks like, and we’re adding them as we go.
In your own business, start with the job only one person understands, and give it a page like that. If they’re off sick, the next person reads one page and knows where it’s up to. Put a name on every next step, so nobody has to ask whose it is.
The CRM writes our to-do list
The CRM reads those status files. Every next step becomes a to-do for whichever of us it names, and the Today page shows each client’s top one. Tick it in the CRM and the next sync ticks the line in the file. Add a to-do in the CRM and the sync writes it into the file. Nobody copies a to-do across by hand.
At the end of a working session, Claude reads what changed since the last update. It writes a short note on each client whose work moved, and a sticky note for each of us with the top three things for tomorrow. Every fact in them comes from the files or from what we’ve told it.
A shared document for each job, kept to one screen with a name on every next step, gets you most of this. Our CRM saves us copying those steps into a to-do list.
Rules, read when they apply
Counted 11 October 2026
Claude keeps more than 180 notes, most of them on how Ostley works, and more than 60 of them are house rules. Some are about craft, like designing the phone version at the same time as the laptop one. Some are about honesty, like never using AI to enlarge a photo of a real person.
A rule helps when it’s read at the moment it applies, so some of them come up on their own inside Claude Code:
| When | What happens |
|---|---|
| Any request of 12 words or more | A reminder goes in first: find the goal and the test for what good looks like, then start. |
| Any request about showing up on Google or launching a site | A reminder goes in first to run every step of the search checklist. |
| A file is about to be saved loose at the top of the workspace | It’s stopped, and the file goes in the folder for its project. |
| Claude finishes a piece of work | If files changed and nothing was written down, it says so. |
The same idea works without software. A checklist kept where the job happens, inside the van door or beside the till, gets read when it’s needed.
Our proposals take their terms straight from the terms page on ostley.com. A script copies them in word for word, so the terms you sign match the page on the day we send the proposal.
Since 9 October, apart from small edits, work bound for a client goes past a fresh AI auditor before we see it. How we test a system before it goes live covers what the auditor checks and what it has caught.
What it means for you
The system we build for you carries your business’s name and colours, and it holds what your business uses and nothing else. For an owner on the tools, that can be customers and a calendar on the phone. Where it runs automations, you see what each one did and what’s waiting on your OK. Booking times and prices are always set or approved by a person.
Nothing the AI writes goes out without your OK. A message you approve once goes out as written.
Your job with us runs on the same habits. It gets its own status file from the first day. When we tell you where it’s up to, every open item names who it’s waiting on, including when that’s us, so you don’t have to guess why something is late.
Where we’re at
Ostley is young, and a lot of this is weeks old. The CRM started building the to-do list from the files on 6 October. The auditor and the goal reminder started on 9 October. We’re learning how to grow Ostley while we build for other businesses, and this is the system we’re doing it with.
When a job teaches us something, it becomes a rule, and the next build starts with it.
If part of your business lives only in one person’s head, that’s a good thing to bring to the free 20-minute call.