Soma v1 is officially live!
For the past few months I've been quietly building the platform I wish I'd had for my entire consulting career. It's called Soma, and it's now how I deliver tools, agents and automations to my consulting clients.
THE PROBLEM
If you've ever consulted on AI or operations, this will sound familiar. You find a great solution for a client, and then you have to deliver it. That usually means:
- Yet another subscription. A new tool, a new login, a new per-seat fee. Multiply that by every problem you solve and the client ends up paying for a stack of SaaS products that each do one thing, mostly overlapping, and nobody remembers who has access to what.
- Agents with no adult supervision. Everyone's experimenting with AI agents now, which is great, until one of them sends an email, updates a record or posts something and nobody can say who asked for it, who approved it or what it actually did. There's basically no governance.
- Knowledge in a hundred places. Every tool keeps its own little slice of the business, so every AI assistant starts from zero and has to be re-told the same context over and over.
- Data going who-knows-where. Client data gets pasted into public chatbots with no idea how it's stored or used.
- It all walks out the door. When a team member leaves, or when my engagement ends, the knowledge and the setup tend to leave with them.
I kept solving the same handful of problems for different clients, and duct-taping the same tools together each time. So I decided to build the thing that holds it all together.
WHAT I DESIGNED
Soma is a team portal where every person gets their own AI agent, and every agent shares one picture of the business. (The name comes from the cell body of a neuron, and yes, I leaned all the way into the brain theme: there's a Cortex, a Thalamus, a Pulse, Synapses...)
The core idea: one source of truth beats a smarter model. If every agent reads from the same shared brain, and every action they take runs through the same set of rules, you get AI that's actually useful and accountable.
Soma's portfolio health page: every brand's status at a glance.
THE FEATURES (V1)
Here's what's in the box at launch:
- An agent for every seat. Each team member gets their own agent, in the portal chat (on every page) and in Slack. Meet people where they already talk, not in yet another app.
- One shared brain. Company knowledge, records and history live in one place that every agent reads from, so nobody re-explains anything.
- Agents that act, not just chat. Agents run automations, update records and send reports, but every action goes through one gate that checks it against the rules, gets approval when it needs it, and logs it. Every action has an owner, an approval rule and a paper trail.
- Access that follows the org chart. You grant access once, by role, and it flows down. No more managing permissions tool by tool.
- Your choice of AI models. Soma routes to the right model for the job (fast and cheap for simple things, deeper models for hard ones), with private, encrypted options so client data stays private even while AI processes it. No lock-in to a single AI provider.
- Dashboards and reporting. Analytics from Google Analytics, Search Console, YouTube, LinkedIn, email and podcast platforms, all in one place, plus morning briefs delivered to the team.
- Specialist agents. An Agent Builder for making new ones, a company knowledge agent, read-only analysts for things like revenue and spreadsheets, and an onboarding guide for new users.
- Website chatbots. The same brain can power chatbots on a client's own websites, so the public gets accurate, on-brand answers too.
- Separate and secure. Each client gets their own instance on its own cloud server, with their data kept fully separate.
Choosing which AI models the agents use, and what they cost.
Working with an agent in the portal chat.
HOW I USE IT WITH CLIENTS
This is where it gets fun. Soma isn't a product I'm selling seats to. It's the platform I use to launch tools and solutions for my consulting clients.
I first built and deployed it as CSIO at Growth Science Capital, where each portfolio brand gets its own portal and its own data. Now, when a client needs something, I don't go shopping for another subscription. I build it inside their Soma instance, usually in days rather than months, shaped around exactly how their team works. It plugs straight into the shared brain, and the agents can use it from day one.
And I'm going a step further: I'm actively replacing my clients' existing subscriptions. Project management, reporting dashboards, website chatbots, internal knowledge bases... piece by piece, those per-seat tools get swapped for custom versions that live in one governed place. The client saves real money every month, gets tools that fit how they actually work, and ends up with everything (the data, the knowledge, the agents) in one place they own. When people come and go, the knowledge stays.
It also sets them up for what's coming. Agents are going to do more and more of the work, and the companies that do well will be the ones with a clean source of truth and clear rules about what their agents can do.
WHAT I'VE LEARNED SO FAR
- One source of truth beats a smarter model. Most "bad AI" is really AI with bad or missing context.
- Agents must act, not just chat, and every action needs an owner, an approval rule and a log.
- Access should follow the org chart: grant it once and let it flow down.
- Meet people where they talk. If it's another app to remember, it won't get used.
v1 is just the beginning, and I'll be sharing more as new tools roll out. If you're drowning in subscriptions, or wondering how to give your team AI agents without losing control, let's talk.
Watch this space.
UPDATE (October 30, 2026): The subscription replacements have started. I just built a simpler, custom version of ClickUp for one client that will save them hundreds of dollars a month in seats. Read more in Agentic Portals, Custom Tools & Cost Savings.
