The Breaking Trail Blog
We write about what we actually see. What's working. What's breaking. What to watch. Everything here comes from the engagements we're running right now, not from summarizing other people's ideas.
Featured
Every company we audit has the same problem, and it isn't the tools. It's the measurement layer nobody set up. Here's what we see inside every failed pilot, and what the successful ones had in common.
Hours saved is a start. It isn't the whole answer. Here are the seven metrics we build into every engagement, and why most AI projects fail to track any of them.
Our audit process, explained in detail. What we look for, what we find most often, and why the audit alone usually pays for itself.
Two open-source agent frameworks, two different philosophies. We use both, and the choice depends on what the client actually needs. Here's our decision framework.
Some tools demo well and fall apart at scale. Some promise integration and deliver duct tape. This is the list, with the reasoning, updated as we learn more.
If you're paying for five AI tools and only measuring one, you're not spending on AI. You're gambling on it. Here's how to run the numbers yourself.
The term comes from Palantir. The practice is older. This is what a forward-deployed model looks like inside a $2M service business, not a Fortune 500.
Most people conflate these two. They shouldn't. A personal agent runs in your background, maintains memory, and acts on your behalf. A chatbot answers when spoken to.
We've audited enough businesses now to see the patterns. Here are the warning signs, and the fix for each one.
The methodology behind our monthly reports. No attribution guesswork, no vanity metrics. Just the math we'd show you if we were on the call together.
CRM to email. Calendar to phone system. Voice agent to dispatch. Here's where implementations most often fail, and what we do differently.
Everyone wants a custom AI agent until they see the timeline. Here's how we decide whether to build custom or deploy something off the shelf.
We hear the same stories. The build that was abandoned. The pilot that never shipped. The tool that no one could explain. Here's our answer, and why we structure engagements the way we do.
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We don't do weekly roundups. We write when we see something inside a client engagement that's worth sharing. Usually twice a month. Sometimes once. Never when we have nothing to say.
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The articles here are written from what we see in the field. If there's a question we haven't covered yet, we'd rather answer it on a call than write a post that misses the point.
