Getting Started

A guided path from “I can write code” to the work businesses pay a monthly retainer for — built around one real system: Relay, an operations automation that runs a business’s daily work with AI steps inside it, on self-hosted n8n with a TypeScript service beside it.

Sixteen steps. The first four are not code: what the manual work costs, how a non-deterministic step behaves inside a workflow, what the no-code market already does, and how to scope a retainer. Take a step in an evening or over two weeks. The order matters, the pace doesn’t.

Who this is for

• Comfortable with TypeScript or another server language — async, HTTP, JSON, a test runner
• Comfortable with SQL, a terminal, git and Docker
• You have called an LLM API at least once

Not assumed: n8n, workflow automation, self-hosting, redaction, evaluation, or any opinion about whether no-code tools are real engineering.

This is the most integration-heavy material in the catalog and the least algorithmic. That is deliberate. Most paid work is wiring, and the wiring is where it goes wrong.

What you are building, concretely

Relay is not a product. It is the shape of a delivered engagement: a business’s actual process, running every day, with the parts that need judgement handled by a model and the parts that need guarantees handled by your code. It replays after a failure, it asks a person when it should, it keeps the client’s confidential documents where they are allowed to be, and it reports what it cost.

The portfolio artefact is unusual for this catalog and closer to real work than most: a system running a real process, with a dashboard showing runs, failures, human decisions, hours saved and cost per run. Plus the golden set that says the AI steps still behave.

Three businesses are the running examples all the way through. They disagree on the axis that matters here — what a wrong AI step costs:

• the baseline

  Fern & Oak

  Homeware brand · AI product descriptions · low stakes

  The baseline: an AI step with a clear contract, a golden set to validate against, and a cost ledger the client can read.

• the constraint

  Ridgeway Legal

  Law firm · document summaries · strict confidentiality

  What may leave the building: data classification, workflow gates that check before any AI step, and a client who needs to see the evidence.

• the exception

  Brightline Recruiting

  Recruitment agency · AI-assisted shortlisting · decisions about people

  Fairness, audit, and accountability: the workflow makes a decision that affects a person's livelihood, and the client must be able to explain every output.

Three business workflows, one n8n platform: each one exists to break a rule the others do not.

The business	What Relay does for them	What it forces you to handle
Fern & Oak — a marketing agency	Reads the shared inbox, classifies enquiries, creates and tags CRM records, drafts a first reply for a human to send	The high-volume, low-stakes baseline. A wrong tag costs seconds to fix. This is where you learn the mechanics — replay, idempotency, cost — without anything at risk.
Ridgeway Legal — a small law firm	Takes incoming contracts, extracts key terms, flags unusual clauses for a solicitor	Confidentiality. Client documents are privileged, and “just send it to an API” is not an available answer. Redaction, where inference runs, what the paperwork must say, and — as a last resort — a local model with its real cost stated.
Brightline Recruiting — a recruitment agency	Screens applications against a role and produces a shortlist with reasons	The AI’s output is about a person. Nothing may be auto-rejected, the reasoning must be recorded and reviewable, the inputs must be checked for things that should not influence a decision, and a human signs off every outcome. This one breaks the model of “the workflow decides”.

Same platform, same patterns, three sets of rules. One system, configured per client, never a line branching on which client it is.

Three questions to keep asking: what happens when this runs twice? who decided this, and can they show why? and what does one run cost?

Other businesses in this shape: property managers routing maintenance requests, clinics handling referrals, wholesalers processing orders from email, insurance brokers triaging claims, accountants onboarding clients. All of them run a daily process by hand today.

Why AI operations automation

Most automation material teaches the tool. This domain was chosen because of one property that breaks every no-code tutorial: a step whose output you cannot predict, inside a process that needs guarantees.

Reality of the domain	Forces you to learn
The client’s process is not written down anywhere	Discovery, and building against a description that turns out to be wrong
One step in the workflow is non-deterministic	A contract around the AI step — validate its output, handle the case where it is wrong, never let it silently decide
Workflows fail halfway through	Replay from a known point, idempotency at every external write, and knowing what already happened
Some outputs must not be automatic	Human sign-off as a first-class state, not a notification
Some documents may not leave the building	Redaction, inference location, contractual answers, and the real cost of a local model
A decision about a person is not a decision about a record	Recorded reasoning, reviewable outcomes, and inputs that must not influence the result
Model behaviour changes and nobody is watching	A golden set for the AI steps, run on a schedule, not just on change
The client pays monthly	Cost per run, a dashboard they read, and a report that renews the retainer
The requirement changes at week six	Because it always does. The material makes it happen to you.

What you’ll learn

Area	Technology
Orchestration	n8n, self-hosted with Docker — workflows, triggers, error workflows, queue mode
Your code	A TypeScript service (Hono) beside n8n: validators, idempotency, the ledger, the cost meter, the golden-set runner
Why both	n8n is excellent at connecting things and bad at guarantees. The split is the whole engineering argument, and it is what a no-code operator cannot do.
Model use	The Claude API — structured outputs against a schema, prompt caching, batch, effort, and a measured model choice
Correctness	Idempotency keys, replay from a checkpoint, at-least-once reality, external writes that happen once
People	Human sign-off as a workflow state, sign-off queues, expiry, and what an approver is shown
Confidentiality	Redaction before egress, inference location, retention, contractual answers, and self-hosting a model with honest numbers
Fairness	Recorded reasoning, reviewable outcomes, inputs excluded from a decision, and an audit trail for decisions about people
Evaluation	A golden set per AI step, scheduled runs, drift on a model you do not control
Cost	Cost per run, per client, per step; the dashboard; the lever order; batch and caching
Operations	Self-hosting, backups, secrets, the monthly report, and handling a changed requirement
Business	What the manual process costs, what the no-code market charges, how to price a retainer
AI workflow	An AGENTS.md harness, a LEARN/BUILD contract, a portable reviewer prompt

How this material is structured

Part	What it is	When you read it
Setup	The AI harness and a portable reviewer prompt.	Once, before step 4.
Roadmap	The 16 steps in six sections, plus the locked decisions, the client simulator, and the guardrails.	Skim the overview, then work in order.
Reference	Per-step rubrics, the AGENTS.md template, deliberate omissions.	One rubric section per step.

Section	Steps	Focus
Concepts	0–3	What the manual work costs, how an AI step behaves in a workflow, the no-code market, scoping a retainer
Foundations	4–6	Self-hosted n8n and the sidecar, the run ledger, the first workflow with no AI in it
Workflows	7–10	The first AI step and its contract, idempotency and replay, human sign-off, confidentiality
Trust	11–12	The golden set for AI steps, and fairness and audit for decisions about people
Cost	13–14	Where the spend is and how to show it to a client, then the levers
Operations	15	Deploy, handover, the monthly report, and the requirement that changed

• Concepts0–3
  • 0What the daily process costs
  • 1How an AI step behaves inside a workflow
  • 2What the no-code market already does
  • 3Scoping a retainer
• Foundations4–6
  • 4Self-hosted n8n, the sidecar, and the quality gate
  • 5The run ledger
  • 6The first workflow, with no AI in it
• Workflows7–10
  • 7The first AI step, and its contract
  • 8Replay when a step is non-deterministic
  • 9Human sign-off as a workflow state
  • 10What may leave the building
• Trust11–12
  • 11The golden set, and a model you do not control
  • 12Decisions about people
• Cost13–14
  • 13Where the money goes, and showing it to the client
  • 14Making it cost less
• Operations15
  • 15Deploy, handover, and the requirement that changed

LEARN the agent tutors, you decideBUILD the agent may generate

Six sections, 16 steps: four concept steps before any workflow, because what may leave the building is decided before the first node.

There is deliberately no implementation code in any of these documents.

The three paths

Understand the job — steps 0–3. No code. Ends with a retainer proposal you would send.

Build the thing — steps 4–12. n8n, the sidecar, the ledger, workflows, AI steps, replay, sign-off, confidentiality, the golden set, fairness. Ends with three running client automations whose behaviour you can prove.

Keep the client — steps 13–15. Cost, the dashboard, deploy, handover, the monthly report, and the changed requirement.

How to read a roadmap step

Part	What it’s for
Story	The user story driving the step. If you can’t demo it, you haven’t finished.
Mode	LEARN or BUILD — see the mode contract.
Why now	What this step depends on.
Concepts	What you’re actually learning.
Libraries	What to add, and sometimes why over the obvious alternative.
Expected outcome	What you should have. On steps 0–3 that is a written document.
Verification	How you prove it’s done.

Proving a step is done

Layer	What it is
L1 — Gating test	The acceptance test, ACC-NN. Unambiguous pass/fail.
L2 — Manual checks	What a test can’t catch — killing a workflow halfway, reading a sign-off queue as the approver.
L3 — AI code review	The reviewer prompt.
L4 — Anti-patterns	AP-NN-x: “you did it wrong if…”.
L5 — Automated guardrails	CI, types, the golden set from step 11. See the Roadmap Overview.

The per-step loop

1. Check the Mode.
2. Read the step.
3. For replay, sign-off, confidentiality and evaluation steps — write the acceptance test first. (Steps 8, 9, 10, 11 especially.)
4. Implement until it passes.
5. Run the L2 checks.
6. Self-check the AP-NN-* list.
7. Submit to the reviewer with that step’s rubric section only.
8. Fix, resubmit until PASS.

Expect to fail review the first time at steps 8, 10 and 12.

A note on cost

Steps 7 onwards spend real money, and it is small — inbox triage at a few hundred items a month is dollars, not tens of dollars. The surprise in this material is the other direction: the server usually costs more than the inference. Step 13 exists so you find that out from your own numbers rather than from this paragraph. Set a spending limit before step 7.

Start here

1. Read this page to the end.
2. Skim the Roadmap Overview — the locked decisions and the client simulator.
3. Start step 0. No repo. A calculator and an hour.
4. Set up the agent harness and the reviewer before step 4.
5. Bring up the client simulator at step 4 — three seeded businesses with their inboxes, files and systems, and a change request that arrives later whether you are ready or not.