Coming Q3 2026 · Private waitlist open

Meet Bob.
He talks back.

An AI Chief of Staff who actually does things, rather than waiting around to be asked. Bob reads your inbox before you wake up, replies to the messages that don't need your judgement, and lets you know which of your meetings are wasting your time. Most AI tools sit there until told what to do, which isn't really what a Chief of Staff does for a living.

Get on the list Hear how he talks
Bob · Tuesday 08:14
Bob
Your 3pm with DataCorp is pointless. They've ghosted the last two follow-ups. I've drafted a polite decline. Want me to send it, or are you feeling generous?
J
You
Send it.
Bob
Done. I've also moved their invoice to the bottom of the queue. You're welcome.

The argument

Most AI tools sit there until you tell them what to do, which isn't really what a Chief of Staff does for a living.

A proper Chief of Staff already understands what's going on in your week, has a view on what should happen next, knows when to push back, and isn't afraid to tell you something you don't want to hear. That's the gap Bob is built to close, rather than the prompt-and-respond loop most AI tools are stuck in.

What Bob does

He gets on with things, instead of waiting to be asked.

01 / Inbox

Reads everything, replies to most of it.

Bob is in your inbox before you are. He reads what came in overnight, drafts the replies that don't need your judgement (in your voice, after a few weeks of learning it), and flags the small number that genuinely need you. Most mornings you'll come in to maybe three things to deal with, instead of a hundred and twenty.

02 / Calendar

Looks after your week.

Bob keeps an eye on what's been booked into your week and tells you which bits don't make sense. The 4pm with someone who keeps cancelling, the recurring catch-up that never has an agenda, the half-hour that's bumping into your gym session because nobody noticed. He'll suggest changes and, if you let him, make them himself.

03 / Briefings

Briefs you before things happen.

Before a client meeting, Bob will pull together what you actually need to know: where you got to last time, what's changed since, what the person on the other side is likely to bring up. It's the kind of briefing a junior on a graduate scheme might do for you in a big firm, except you don't have one of those any more.

04 / Documents

Writes the things you'd otherwise write yourself.

Decks, proposals, briefs, reports, all written in your voice and at a standard you'd actually sign off on. Getting Bob to that point takes a few weeks of feedback while he learns how you think, but once he's calibrated you save several hours a week pretending to enjoy writing.

05 / Logistics

Handles the boring stuff.

Travel bookings, hotel logistics, reschedules when something falls through, the polite chasing-up email when a counterpart's gone quiet on you. Bob does the kind of thing you'd hand to an EA if you had one, without the mild awkwardness of asking another human being to do faintly menial work.

06 / Research

Keeps tabs on the things you should be paying attention to.

If you mention you're meeting someone next week, Bob will quietly read up on them. If a client's company is in the news, he'll tell you about it before your next call. He sends a short note in the morning with anything worth knowing, and skips the days when there's nothing to say.

The voice

He's polite, but you're not paying him to be liked.

The big problem with most AI assistants is that they tell you what you want to hear. They'll praise a draft that's mediocre, soften news you actually need to receive properly, and mostly let you carry on with whatever bad idea you came in with. Bob has been built on the opposite assumption: that the entire point of having a Chief of Staff is having someone who'll push back, point out the typo in the email you sent the CEO last week, and tell you when the meeting you've insisted on is a mistake. There's a small social cost to that, which tends to pay for itself somewhere around the second week.

On a calendar request

You Can you find time for me to meet with Mark next week?
Bob "I can. Should I? You've cancelled the last three. He's noticed. I'd suggest a 20-minute call rather than another lunch you're going to move."

On a draft you sent him

You Tighten this up before I send it.
Bob "I've tightened it. I've also removed the bit where you accidentally agreed to the thing you spent the previous paragraph declining. Worth a re-read before you sign off."

On a deal you're stuck on

You I think we're underpricing it and I don't know how to say that.
Bob "Then say it. They've already got buy-in internally; they're not going to walk over a 15% adjustment. Want me to draft it, or do you want to sit with the discomfort a bit longer?"

On a Friday afternoon

You What's left for today?
Bob "Nothing that won't keep until Monday. Go home. I've sent the two replies that mattered and parked the rest. Don't open Slack."

Built for the ones doing too much

He's set up differently for different kinds of work.

What a founder wants from a Chief of Staff (brevity, decisiveness, somebody who'll occasionally tell them they're wrong) is not what a CFO wants (rigour, sources, precise numbers without invented citations). Treating those two as the same job is one of the reasons most AI tools feel oddly generic, and Bob has been built on the assumption that the same agent can run quite differently depending on whose week he's actually managing.

For founders and people running the company

The one in the room with you.

Decisive · Brief · Honest

If you're running the show, Bob's job is to keep your week clear of the things that aren't really yours to do. He cuts the noise, drafts the email you've been avoiding for three days, and tells you the thing nobody else around you is willing to say. The Monday morning brief he writes is the one you'd commission yourself if you knew you needed it.

For finance and analysts

The one who shows the working.

Numerate · Sourced · Rigorous

Bob has been configured to show his working when he's doing analysis. He'll build the model, cite the source he's drawing from, and flag any assumption he's had to make on your behalf. What he won't do, and this is the part that matters, is invent a citation and hope you don't check. That failure mode has more or less defined the experience of using a generic chatbot for finance work.

For ops, EAs, and the people holding things together

The one who closes loops.

Reliable · Quiet · Thorough

Operations roles run on follow-through. Bob handles the bits that fall between people: the chase-up that nobody got round to, the meeting that was rescheduled but never re-confirmed, the document that was supposed to come back on Tuesday and didn't. He sends a Friday note covering what's been done and what's still hanging. No drama or credit-seeking, just the work.

A note on origin

Bob was originally built because I needed one.

Bob started as a personal experiment. I'd been running an AI consultancy for a few years, watching every client buy more or less the same handful of off-the-shelf tools, and getting frustrated that none of them did the thing I actually wanted: an agent that knew enough about me to be useful, ran on hardware I controlled, and would push back when I asked for something stupid. So I built one for myself.

The first version ran on a Raspberry Pi, talked to me through Telegram, and was named Bob because that's what my 10 year old daughter calls everything. Over the following month or two it went from a side project to something I genuinely couldn't run my week without.

So Bob is leaving the workshop. He came out of a skunkworks I run called Tuxedo Princess, where most of the experiments live, and he's the first thing to graduate from it into something a paying customer can actually use.

Jamie Crossman-Smith, Bloch AI

Want Bob?

Bob is being built right now and will go live some time in Q3 next year. The waiting list is real, and I'll be capping the first cohort to keep things manageable while we work out how he behaves under proper load. If you put your email in, you'll get build notes from me as he comes together, plus an invitation when he's ready to take on actual work.

Bob will write to you himself. Automated of course, but never marketing slop.