Our AI could do far more than we were asking of it.
We paid for one that could find the thread, read the contract, pull the numbers and draft the reply. And we used it for questions. The real work — the client follow-up, the renewal, the board update — stayed on our list.
Not because the AI couldn’t help. Because we didn’t know how to hand it over. Which parts of this task can it take? What does it need to know first? What’s left for us? Working that out, task after task, was a skill we never had time to build. And when we did try, the work ended up spread across chats that wandered, each one starting again from zero.
The tools we tried didn’t touch that. Task managers stop at organized. Note apps stop at findable. Everything is in the right place, and the work still sits there.
So we built the missing piece, and kept it light. You name the task. Underway works out the handoff — what done looks like, which parts AI can take, what it needs to know about you — and briefs your own assistant, which does the work with whatever tools you’ve connected it to. Each task keeps its whole record in one place, comes to you only for your part, and teaches Underway a little more about how you work, so the next one arrives better prepared.
We didn’t build another assistant, and we don’t want access to your accounts. Your AI keeps its own connections; we hold the task and what was done on it.
The measure we hold ourselves to is how much work comes off your plate for each minute of attention it costs you.
A clever brief you have to babysit fails it. A quiet draft waiting for you when you get back passes it.