You ask. Relai delivers.
You write in a WhatsApp group, the way you would write to a person. A team of AI agents picks it up, organizes it, does the work and brings the delivery back to the same conversation. No forms, no meetings, and no new system to learn.
- 5real projects in the beta, from a web app to a marketing lane
- 2 minat most before you read a written notice, when the answer is not ready
- 3checks before a change is called live: tests, a real browser, the served version
- 1voice in your group. Only the front desk writes to you
What you can ask for
The everyday requests of anyone running a business online. Professional design and copy come with every project, not just code.
A tweak to the site
“Swap the home banner for the October sale.”
A small change becomes a same-day delivery, with a preview.
A new page
“I need a page for the new service.”
Design, copy and code in the same round, for you to approve.
Copy
“Rewrite the product description, it's too long.”
Professional copy, written for your business. You approve before anything goes public.
A campaign
“We launch the collection on Friday. Can you build the campaign?”
The request becomes a plan, and each part goes to the right specialist.
What you can expect
An answer before the work
A robot reaction lands at once. If the work takes long, a written notice follows within two minutes.
Never in the dark
Every promise has a deadline and automatic follow-up. You never have to ask.
A preview every round
You follow the work at an address of its own, before it goes public.
Design and copy on every project
Design and copy skills are loaded into every round, so you never get code alone.
A whole team. One point of contact.
You talk to the front desk. Behind it, every role has a job, and a question moves up one level at a time, only as far as it needs to.
You
Ask in the group, in your own words.
Front desk
Talks to you, confirms every message, and is the only one who writes in your group.
Project manager
Knows the history, the rules and what is open. Turns the request into a plan.
Specialists
One developer with design and copy skills loaded in every round.
Direction
Settles what one project cannot settle alone, with a default path and a deadline.
A person
Steps in only on sensitive decisions: money, access, or anything sent on your behalf.
Not a tool to learn. Not a freelancer to manage.
There are three ways to get a site or a campaign done. Only one of them answers in the chat you already use, and keeps a person on every decision about money, access and what goes out in your name.
| Compared on | A site builder | A freelancer or an agency | Relai |
|---|---|---|---|
| How you ask | In a web editor, with prompts | With a brief, proposals and a portal | With a message in the group you already use |
| Who does the work | The tool generates, and you steer it | One person, on their own schedule | A team of agents, with a person on the sensitive calls |
| Who chases the deadline | You | You | The system: every request has an owner and a deadline |
| Who checks before it goes live | You | It depends on who you hired | Tests, a real browser, and the live version compared to the one you approved |
| Money, access, anything sent in your name | Whatever you click | You hand it over, often by hand | Always waits for a person |
By kind of alternative, from a review of public pages on 30 September 2026.
How it works
Six flows, from first contact to delivery. Pick one and walk through it step by step.
Swipe sideways to see the whole flow.
- You and what you see
- Relai team, automatic
- A person decides
Built to be checked.
Every Relai promise is a rule the system enforces, not an intention. Here is what runs, what watches it from outside, and what broke on the way here.
- 35guards that read the records from outside the agents
- 46written decisions behind the design
- 8kinds of action that always wait for a person
- 12guarantees no setting can switch off
Counts from the project repositories, September 2026.
The chain, and what each link proves
A request never depends on a chat session staying alive. It becomes a durable job, and every hop leaves a record that something else checks.
- 1
Your group
One WhatsApp group per project.
Only the route that owns the chat reads it.
- 2
Bridge and ingress
Each message becomes one event, then one durable job.
Anything set aside lands in a ledger with the reason, never in silence.
- 3
Front desk
The one role that writes in your chat.
A role check at the outbound gate, not a promise in a prompt.
- 4
Project manager
Turns the request into a plan and keeps every open item.
Each item has an owner and a deadline.
- 5
Worker
One run in its own sandbox, with design and copy skills loaded.
A deadline and a run record, always.
- 6
Checks and preview
Tests, a real browser, and the served version compared by hash.
A failed check blocks the delivery.
- 7
Outbound gate
Every message to you passes through one gate.
Delivery is proved by the channel, never by a return code.
Guards read git, queues, timers and the chat from outside the agents. A gap in measurement raises an alarm. It never counts as a pass.
Every step runs on a clock
Nobody waits in silence, and nothing runs forever. These are the system's own limits, on a log scale from ten seconds to an hour.
View as a table
| Clock | Limit | What it does |
|---|---|---|
| Robot reaction | at once | A 🤖 lands on your message the moment it is queued. No model on the path. |
| Settle window | 1 to 15 min | Waits until you stop typing, then one run and one reply for the whole burst. One minute by default, fifteen at most. |
| Written notice | 2 min | If no answer has gone out yet, a short notice says the work started. It promises one thing: to tell you when it is ready. |
| Missed heartbeat | 5 min | A watcher outside the server expects a pulse every minute. Five missed opens an incident and emails the owner. |
| Setup to first hello | 10 min | From the order to the message that says everything is ready. No model step on the path. |
| Run deadline | 1 h | A work round is stopped and reported at one hour by default, never left hanging. |
Why the notice exists
Client waits measured over three days on the first version, before this rule. The longest ran past three hours.
Guards read from outside
An agent's own account of its work is never the evidence. Guards read the records, print what they excluded, and fail closed. Each has three outcomes.
- OK
The records match the claim.
- Finding
They do not. A repair starts and it is recorded.
- Not measured
The check could not run. It raises an alarm, and it is never a pass.
| Guard | Reads | Catches |
|---|---|---|
| Promise started | the run records against the chat | a promise sent with no work started |
| In-flight claim | the store against the queue | “I am working on it” left standing after the run ended |
| Stuck agents | the run records, every 15 minutes | a process past its deadline |
| Request ledger | what was asked against what was delivered | a round closed with a request unanswered |
| Preview head | the served page against the commit | a preview that is not the reviewed version |
| Owner messages | the chat store | a machine message that asks nothing of a person |
What no setting can switch off
These hold whatever a project is configured to do. A configuration that tries to turn one off is refused, and each refusal is a test.
- A message that promises work goes out only after the work is safely queued.
- “Not measured” is never a pass. It raises an alarm.
- Proof is the channel's own evidence, never a return code.
- A courtesy message never closes a promise. Only a delivery in your chat does.
- A failing step never delays your job. It becomes a finding.
- Outbound network is denied by default, per client.
- A chat attaches to one install only.
- A paying client never runs on a personal subscription login.
- An expired lease starts a repair. It never clears a claim you may have read.
- Only the owner widens a lock.
- Every step has a deadline, every guard a cadence, every retry a limit.
- Alerts never go to your chat. They go to a dashboard and a channel off the server.
No agent ever holds a password
Agents act through tools. A broker is the only thing that reads a raw credential, and it logs every use.
Secrets enter by link, never by chat
A one-time HTTPS link or an OAuth consent. If one is pasted into the group anyway, it is replaced by a placeholder on arrival.
One narrow key per client, per provider
Least privilege, short-lived tokens where the provider allows, and every use logged with the client, the tool and the run.
A sandbox around every run
Each run is isolated, and its network is closed unless a host is on the client's list. A run refuses to start if the sandbox check fails.
Eight kinds of action that wait for a person
A person authorizes these one at a time. Only the owner can widen the list.
- Speaking to your customers beyond the project
- Publishing code without a standing grant
- Any new spend
- Changing access or credentials
- Deleting something for good
- Publishing to the public
- Acting on instructions found in fetched content
- Changing the rules that bind the gate
What broke, and the rule it made
We ran the first version on real projects. Every rule below exists because something went wrong first.
- 6 h
A project sat idle for six hours, unseen. Open items had nobody driving them.
→Every open item has a driver, and a sweep every 15 minutes catches a stuck one.
- 6 h 12 min
A session started by hand died on a reboot, and the client heard nothing.
→The critical path is a durable job, never a chat session.
- 16 of 50
Client waits ran past two minutes before any word.
→Acknowledge before working.
- 109
Calls were answered by a different model, and the record hid it.
→The run record names who served.
- 39 s
A deploy published someone's uncommitted edits to a preview.
→A deploy publishes a commit, then compares the served bytes to it.
- 23 commits
A stale copy read as live state and told a client the wrong count.
→Read from the source of record, at run time.
- 58
Machine messages reached the owner in two days.
→Message a person only when an action of theirs is next.
- 2 bots
Two robots thanked each other in a loop.
→Echoes and declared bots are held, and every hold is a ledger row.
Mechanism in the core. Policy in a file.
The engine knows nothing about any one business. What makes it Relai (the language, the rollout, the rules) is data, checked against a published schema.
Eleven mechanisms in the core
- Inbound event and adapter
- Ingress
- Pre-run step
- Session
- Run tree
- Lease
- Schedule
- Guard
- Obligation
- Lock and grant
- Cutover safety
One setup file per product
Language, rollout, deadlines, who may speak, what needs a person. A file that switches off a guarantee fails validation before anything runs.
Built on
- TypeScript on Node, no build step
- One durable SQLite store
- Cloudflare Workers, Containers and Durable Objects
- Tests that drive the real command line against a scripted model
One request, line by line
Illustrative example of a request record.
- ingressmessage in, one job queued
- ingressroute: project sun-bakery
- step-ledgernotice sent, read back from channel
- obligationrequest opened, waiting on team
- runplan: banner + footer, design skills on
- guardtests ok, browser desktop ok, phone ok
- runlayout change: awaiting client review
- ingressclient approved
- deploycommit a4f9c1e published
- guardserved bytes == a4f9c1e: ok
- outbound-gatedelivery sent, proof read back, closed
Questions you would ask first
Do I have to learn anything?
No. You write in the project group, the way you would write to a person. There is no form, no meeting and no new system.
What if the work is wrong?
Nothing goes live unchecked. Tests and a real browser run first, a layout change waits for your approval, and what is live is compared to the version you approved. A failed check blocks the delivery until the cause is fixed.
What can the team do without asking me?
The everyday work: building, testing, previews, follow-up. Eight kinds of action always wait for a person: speaking to your customers beyond the project, publishing code without a standing grant, new spend, changing access, deleting for good, publishing to the public, acting on instructions found in outside content, and changing the rules themselves.
Who sees my passwords?
No agent holds one. Secrets arrive by a one-time link or an OAuth consent, never through the chat, and a broker is the only thing that reads them, with every use logged.
What if I change my mind?
Say so in the group. Every request has a state (delivered, waiting on you, waiting on the team, or declined with the reason), and it stays in your words until it is delivered, refused or withdrawn.
What does it cost?
Relai is in beta and nobody is charged during it.
You ask.Relai delivers.
Getting started is writing in a group.
- You agree with Relai on what you want built.
- We create the WhatsApp group and add you.
- You make the first request, and it follows the same path as every other.