# Associative Trails

> Associative Trails is an AI advisory practice for professional services firms. We help firms work out where AI can help, where it can't, and what knowledge and judgement sit underneath both.

Founded by Matt Perdeaux in 2005 and based in Ramsgate, Kent, UK. For twenty years the work has been building the systems that hold professional services firms' knowledge: technical libraries, intranets, and tools for curating and sharing expertise, for architects, engineers, business schools, law and insurance practices. We now advise on what has to be structured before AI can help, what should remain human judgement, and what isn't worth automating.

## Services
- [The model gets the attention. The foundations decide the outcome.](https://www.associativetrails.com/index.md): We help professional services firms work out where AI can help, where it can't, and what knowledge and judgement sit underneath both.

## About
- [About us](https://www.associativetrails.com/about.md): We know what it takes to get a firm's knowledge into usable shape, what that effort is worth, and, just as importantly, when it isn't worth doing.

## Work
- [Our work](https://www.associativetrails.com/work.md): Successful AI depends on understanding where knowledge lives, how decisions get made, and what should remain human judgement.
- [Eckersley O'Callaghan Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/eckersleyocallaghanintranet.md): Eckersley O'Callaghan · Intranet — A self-populating technical library that grew into a comprehensive company-wide information portal for one of the UK's most accomplished engineering specialists.
- [London Business School Knowledge Capture](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/lbsknowledge.md): London Business School · Web application — Knowledge capture and sharing with a difference
- [Heatherwick Studio Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/heatherwiki.md): Heatherwick Studio · Intranet — A bespoke company intranet for one of the UK's top design studios.
- [Sling](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/sling.md): Scott Brownrigg · Workflow — A flexible and innovative workflow building tool enabling companies to set up and administer approval workflows for business development, procurement, and all sorts of other key processes.
- [Arup Website Technical Realignment](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/arupcms.md): Arup · CMS — A bespoke content management interface that maintains thousands of web pages, accommodates hundreds of authors and publishes standards-compliant code.
- [Arup Contacts and Events Database](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/arupcontacts.md): Arup · Intranet application — An intranet application for managing client contacts and organising events.
- [Arup Collateral Store and Branded Products Shop](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/arupcollateral.md): Arup · Intranet application — An intranet application for sharing marketing collateral and internal ordering.
- [Scott Brownrigg Compass](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggcompass.md): Scott Brownrigg · Intranet — An updated bespoke company information portal. Fully responsive, very well-connected.
- [Scott Brownrigg App for iPad and iPhone](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggapp.md): Scott Brownrigg · Mobile app — A stylish portable portfolio of award-winning architecture projects, available via iTunes for iPad and iPhone.
- [Scott Brownrigg Spider](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggspider.md): Scott Brownrigg · CRM — Building a bespoke CRM system to sit proudly at the centre of an award-winning architecture practice.
- [Sheppard Robson Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/sheppardrobsonintranet.md): Sheppard Robson · Intranet — How we delivered a fully-featured company intranet with Active Directory integration in double-quick time.
- [Sheppard Robson CRM](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/sheppardrobsoncrm.md): Sheppard Robson · CRM — How we helped a leading architect manage their customer relationships.
- [Ellipse Website and CMS](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/ellipsecms.md): Ellipse · CMS — Slick content management with YouTube, Wufoo and PDF generation.
- [Grant Thornton Events Management System](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/grantthorntonevents.md): Grant Thornton · Event management — Full lifecycle event management - attendee registration, mailshots, table plans and name badges.
- [Ashridge Business Perspectives](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/perspectives.md): Ashridge Business School · News portal — How we used open-source software and open data standards to help a leading business school extend its offering.
- [Old Arupians Community Website (2019)](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/oldarupians.md): Old Arupians · Community website — A thorough refresh of one of our most venerable and successful projects. Now fully responsive and even easier to use.
- [Collaboration](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/collaboration.md): Associative Trails · Web application — A central repository for a geographically-dispersed team to record contacts, appointments, documents and other information.
- [Croxley Rail Link CMS](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/croxleycms.md): Arup · CMS — A bespoke CMS retro-fitted to an existing static site.
- [Gallerysmith](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/gallerysmith.md): CMS — A fully-featured content and customer relationship management system for art galleries, including automatic image optimization.
- [Last.fm Normaliser](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/normaliser.md): Associative Trails · Web application — A little application to rank your favourite artists and albums by an estimation of how long you have spent listening to them.
- [Old Arupians Community Website (2006)](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/oldarupians2006.md): Arup · Community website — A thorough refresh of one of our most venerable and successful projects. Now fully responsive and even easier to use.
- [Safetime CBC - Android App and Web Portal](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/safetimecbc.md): Mobile app and portal — Android App and Web portal for a multiple award-winning construction site safety monitoring system.
- [Scott Brownrigg Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggintranet.md): Scott Brownrigg · Intranet — A vibrant, design-led company intranet that is viewed and maintained using a standard web browser - no technical skills required.

## Tools
- [Tools](https://www.associativetrails.com/tools.md): We build small tools to do our own work better, then publish them. Take them, adapt them, tell us where they fall short.
- [Roundtable](https://www.associativetrails.com/tools/roundtable.md): Roundtable is a free, open-source panel of AI critics. It reviews a document, problem or decision from four to six points of view before you commit, and records where the critics disagree.

## Contact
- [Contact](https://www.associativetrails.com/contact.md): enquiries@associativetrails.com, or the enquiry form on the page.

## Writing: AI
- [The free retry](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/10/15/the-free-retry.md) (2026-10-15): Maths and code give AI something many professions still lack: a way to check an answer and try again safely.
- [Your second brain will not scale](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/08/27/your-second-brain-will-not-scale.md) (2026-08-27): A folder of markdown files will run a one-person business. It will not run a practice of fifty.
- [Cast in place](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/08/06/cast-in-place.md) (2026-08-06): Your instructions, your model and your file format change at different speeds. One interface locks them together.
- [Everyone adopted, nobody designed it](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/07/30/everyone-adopted-nobody-designed-it.md) (2026-07-30): AI reached almost every firm and changed almost nothing, because it arrived one person at a time.
- [Borrowing against the day a client asks why](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/07/23/borrowing-against-the-day-a-client-asks-why.md) (2026-07-23): Polished AI output no longer means good thinking. The gap between what your team ships and what it understands is quietly compounding into debt.
- [Model churn is not your problem](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/07/16/model-churn-is-not-your-problem.md) (2026-07-16): Once your playbooks are written down, the leaderboard can flip as often as it likes.
- [Introducing Ookbook - data that knows how to fetch itself](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/07/09/introducing-ookbook.md) (2026-07-09): A markdown file that carries both data and the instructions to recreate it
- [The canary in your context window](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/07/02/the-canary-in-your-context-window.md) (2026-07-02): A half-second check that catches silent instruction drift in long AI sessions.
- [I thought the post was finished. My readers disagreed.](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/06/18/i-thought-the-post-was-finished.md) (2026-06-18): One AI asked to review your writing will catch a weak sentence. It will not tell you which reader stopped halfway through and why.
- [The Effort Dividend](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/06/11/the-effort-dividend.md) (2026-06-11): Professional trust was backed by visible work. AI has just taken it off the gold standard.
- [Introducing Roundtable - A panel of experts that never clocks off](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/06/04/introducing-roundtable.md) (2026-06-04): Previous posts diagnosed the problem and described the countermeasures. This one delivers the tool.
- [What to Write Down (And What to Protect)](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/05/28/what-to-write-down.md) (2026-05-28): Writing down what your firm knows is essential preparation for AI. It can also quietly erode the most valuable knowledge you have.
- [What your AI tools are missing](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/05/21/what-your-ai-tools-are-missing.md) (2026-05-21): AI is only as good as the context it receives. Most firms don't have that context in any usable form.
- [The yes-man in the room - how to design sycophancy out of your AI workflow](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/05/14/the-yes-man-in-the-room.md) (2026-05-14): Your AI will validate whatever you bring it. Here is how to build systems that make disagreement structural, not optional.
- [Agents cannot do osmosis](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/05/07/agents-cannot-do-osmosis.md) (2026-05-07): AI tools are getting faster and more capable. But the failures are increasingly subtle, technically plausible, contextually wrong.
- [Tacit debt and the verification gap](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/04/30/tacit-debt-and-the-verification-gap.md) (2026-04-30): Y Combinator thinks the company brain is a frontier problem. After 25 years building them, I think they're wrong about what's been holding it back.
- [The next bottleneck](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/04/23/the-next-bottleneck.md) (2026-04-23): AI has sped up the build, but project timelines haven't moved. The constraint didn't disappear - it just moved downstream.
- [Something Worth Manipulating](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/04/16/something-worth-manipulating.md) (2026-04-16): The notes were always worth keeping. Now there's something that can actually use them.
- [The agreement incentive](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/04/09/the-agreement-incentive.md) (2026-04-09): AI is your most capable thinking partner - and your least honest one.
- [Human in the loop](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/04/02/human-in-the-loop.md) (2026-04-02): The machine writes the code, the human takes the blame. Welcome to the Reverse Centaur.
- [AI agent skills as pluggable knowledge](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/03/26/ai-agent-skills-as-pluggable-knowledge.md) (2026-03-26): AI agent skills turn expert knowledge into reusable, executable workflows anyone can apply instantly without coding

## Writing: Practice
- [The constraints have changed](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/09/17/the-constraints-have-changed.md) (2026-09-17): Frameworks like Bootstrap gave a one-person studio safe defaults in exchange for weight. AI now runs those checks - time to cut the frameworks adrift.
- [Where does the load go?](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/08/20/where-does-the-load-go.md) (2026-08-20): Your practice can keep every graduate post it has and still lose the training pipeline.
- [Experiments in Jupyter](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2023/10/27/experiments-in-jupyter.md) (2023-10-27): Adding a Jupyter notebook to my development stack has really helped my process
- [Streamlining credit checking: How Sling can help](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2023/04/19/streamlining-credit-checking-how-sling-can-help.md) (2023-04-19): Sling's streamlined credit checking provides companies with the information they need to be financially responsible
- [Azure functions help carry the load](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2023/03/08/azure-functions-help-carry-the-load.md) (2023-03-08): Using externally-hosted functions to do data crunching and other processor-intensive tasks.
- [Identify users the Azure way](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2023/02/02/user-sign-in-azure.md) (2023-02-02): How we set up an Azure-hosted web application to authenticate and identify our users
- [Migrating a Coldfusion application to Microsoft Azure - setting up a data source](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/09/29/migrating-coldfusion-to-azure-setting-up-a-datasource.md) (2022-09-29): Setting up an encrypted data source for Azure SQL services
- [Classifying content in bulk](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/09/16/classifying-content-in-bulk.md) (2022-09-16): The classification, tagging and metadata management of large content repositories should not be a chore
- [Dealing with short signoff delays in Sling](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/09/08/dealing-with-signoff-delays-in-sling.md) (2022-09-08): A short delay in signing off needn't bring the whole process to a grinding halt
- [Responding to prospective client emails promptly and with confidence](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/06/20/responding-to-prospective-client-emails-promptly-and-with-confidence.md) (2022-06-20): Sling gives you immediate access to all the important information, without leaving Outlook
- [Deep Learning Architect - Classification for Architectural Design through the Eye of Artificial Intelligence (2018)](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/05/02/deep-learning-architect-classification-for-architectural-design-through-the-eye-of-artificial-intelligence-2018.md) (2022-05-02): Notes on a 2018 paper by Yuji Yoshimura, Bill Cai, Zhoutong Wang, and Carlo Ratti
- [Architectural Drawings Recognition and Generation through Machine Learning (2018)](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/05/01/architectural-drawings-recognition-and-generation-through-machine-learning-2018.md) (2022-05-01): Notes on a 2018 paper by Weixin Huang and Hao Zheng
- [OPTIMISING IMAGE CLASSIFICATION - Implementation of Convolutional Neural Network Algorithms to Distinguish Between Plans and Sections within the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry (2019)](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/04/30/optimising-image-classification-implementation-of-cnn-to-distinguish-between-plans-and-sections-2019.md) (2022-04-30): Notes on a 2019 paper by Alessandra Fabbri, M. Hank Haeusler, and Yannis Zavoleas
- [Drawing Recognition. Integrating Machine Learning Systems into Architectural Design Workflows (2020)](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/04/29/drawing-recognition-integrating-machine-learning-systems-into-architectural-design-workflows-2020.md) (2022-04-29): Notes on a 2020 paper by Lachlan Brown, Michael Yip, Nicole Gardner, M. Hank Haeusler Haeusler, Nariddh Khan, Yannis Zavoleas, and Christina Ramos
- [Classification of Building Information Model (BIM) Structures with Deep Learning (2018)](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2022/04/28/classification-of-bim-structures-with-deep-learning-2018.md) (2022-04-28): Notes on a 2018 paper by Francesco Lomio, Ricardo Farinha, Mauri Laasonen, and Heikki Huttunen

## Writing: Consultancy
- [Quiet demotion](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/10/01/quiet-demotion.md) (2026-10-01): Your AI rollout plan tracks licences, logins and hours saved. It has no column for "feels quietly sidelined".
- [Why hard things look easy](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/09/03/why-hard-things-look-easy.md) (2026-09-03): TikTok removes 178 million videos a quarter. It still cannot reliably tell you whether a car is driving on the wrong side of the road.
- [The Deliverable Fallacy](https://www.associativetrails.com/writing/2026/06/25/the-deliverable-fallacy.md) (2026-06-25): The deck is what the client pays for. It was never what actually changed things.

## Optional
- [Full text](https://www.associativetrails.com/llms-full.txt): the services, about, contact and work pages, every case study, the tools pages and every post, as plain text.