Tech After Dark · Flowood, MS · 08.11.2026
AI Without
the Theater
How established businesses can put AI to work.
J.C. Hiatt · partner
Praxient
The gap
AI is easy to get excited about.
The hard part is turning that into a number that moved.
Most businesses are still trying to close that gap.
Four tells
What theater looks like
They all start with the tool instead of the job.
01
The chatbot nobody on the team actually uses.
02
The pilot that demos great, then never ships.
03
"We added AI," and not one metric changed.
04
They bought the tool before they knew the job.
Why it happens
The tool comes before
the problem.
Most AI pitches lead with the technology.
A polished demo makes a tool easy to buy before the work is understood.
Change the question
The easy questionWhat can AI do?
The useful questionWhere does my business lose time & money?
The operation tells you where the model belongs.
The take-home · screenshot this
Four questions before you
build or buy anything
01
A real, repeating workflow?
The work happens often enough to repay the change.
02
Does it move a number?
Name the revenue recovered or staff time saved.
03
Human in the loop?
A person approves consequential decisions.
04
Can you turn it off?
You can return to the old process.
BUILT TO BE MEASURED AND STOPPED
How the system works
Models handle language.
Software handles the workflow.
Let the LLM do
- Read messy, human language
- Draft the first version
- Pull facts out of documents
- The fuzzy judgment calls
Let plain software do
- The rules, the math, the dates
- Move data between systems
- Remember state & history
- Run the workflow, every time
Custom software around a model is faster and more affordable to build than it was two years ago. The feedback loop can take hours rather than quarters. The scarce part is the experience to build a reliable system and the judgment to know where the model should stop.
In practice · my own shop
I build with this every day.
Two years ago I barely touched AI. Today it's how I build, plan, and operate.
6
apps shipped & running under rafl: two mobile, three web, one API
2
people building & operating all of it. No hires planned.
Day job
where I use the same approach at a different scale
Models for language work. Ordinary software for everything that must run the same way every time.
If you remember one thing
The workflow
is the strategy.
Find your most expensive repeating workflow. Improve it before buying a general AI tool.
Come say hi
We help operators choose and build
AI projects that earn their keep.
Good work starts with one workflow.
J.C. Hiatt & Trey Goff · partners, Praxient · The AI operating partner.
Have a costly repeating workflow? Come find us tonight · praxient.net
Want to see a focused agent at work? Try ours · praxient.net