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Project kickoff decisions: how the workflow works
Short answer
At project kickoff the system links an email thread, a PDF and the note from the opening meeting into a plan in which every finding has a source. When two documents give two start dates, the conflict stops the plan from closing until a person decides. At Syntalith an automation costs from €3,000 net, and with 40 projects a month at 120 minutes each it pays back in 1.5 months.
How we workDetails ↓
- 01Call30 minutes with an engineer, free
- 02PrototypeA working system on your process and data, free
- 03ImplementationTarget and fixed price in the contract; 50% at signing
- 04Acceptance50% once the agreed target is met
- analysis with an engineer and a free prototype
- €0
- team in ChatGPT or Claude, up to 10 people
- from €1,150
- automation, agent or application for one process
- from €3,000
We belong to the OpenAI and Anthropic partner programmes and learn through their official courses. What this means ↓
Author: Syntalith · 3 min read
Statistics
Projects and AI: statistics 2026
1.5 mo.
payback of a €3,000 automation at 40 projects a month: €2,792 of work today, €841 with checking and the model. Scenario.
509 ms
According to the Syntalith demonstrator (2026), 3 answers prepared locally for a project kickoff pack had a median of 509 ms, with no fees for an external API.
90%
According to the European Commission (2026), 90% of companies using AI say people take the decisions, and 2% of decisions are fully automated.
Source: European Commission, Flash Eurobarometer 578 (2026) ↗
25.1%
According to a Harvard Business School study (2023) of 758 consultants, tasks within the model's capabilities went 25.1% faster with AI.
20.0%
According to Eurostat (2025), 20.0% of EU companies with at least 10 employees used AI.
Source: Eurostat, 20% of EU enterprises use AI technologies (2025) ↗
Figures checked: 22 October 2026
Two documents, two start dates
A kickoff pack is an email thread with a copy of a forwarded message, a PDF attachment and the note from the opening meeting. The project manager tells an approved fact from its source and from an issue that waits for a decision. In the example the email gives one start date and the PDF another.
In our demonstrator a deterministic gate stops the date conflict before the model sees anything: the plan will not close with two dates. A person decides and puts their name to the date. Every finding leads to a specific file or passage, and the history shows any later change to the record. Three answers prepared locally had a median of 509 ms, with no fees for an external API.
- 01Packemails, a PDF and the meeting note
- 02Findingseach with a link to a file or a passage
- 03Conflicttwo dates stopped by the gate before the model
- 04Decisiona person chooses the date and signs
- 05Historya later change to the record stays visible
- One kickoff pack, without spreadsheets, encrypted PDFs or several languages
- The three prompts are an integration test and make no claim as a model benchmark
- A rule detects the date conflict, and the model takes no part in it
- A pilot needs roles, retention and manual approval before the plan is saved
What fact provenance at project kickoff costs and when it pays back
- Today
- 40 projects × 120 min = 80 h × €34.90 = €2,792
- With the system, a person checks the output in 30% of the time
- €838
- Model, 3 calls per case, Claude Sonnet 5.5
- €3
- Cost of one case
- €69.80 today, €21.02 with the system
- Saving
- €1,951 a month
Payback of €3,000
1.5 months
The volume, the time and the checking share are the scenario's assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat. Model: 10,000 input tokens and 1,000 output tokens per call at Anthropic's rates, converted at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
The count covers the work around a case: searching, reading, writing and passing it on. What stays is the time to check the output, 30% of today's work in the scenario. Before we quote, we measure both times on 20 to 100 cases your team has already handled, in a €0 test that takes 5 working days.
The scenario assumes 40 project kickoffs a month with 2 hours of assembling findings from documents each. We leave 30% in the count for checking the plan and deciding on conflicts.
When a template and a note are enough
For a simple project with one kickoff document, a plan template and the meeting note are enough. A system makes sense when findings are scattered across threads, attachments and notes, and the manager has to reconstruct where a date or a scope came from. Start with a template for one type of project, and set the sources of decisions, the owner of discrepancies and the condition for accepting a new version of the plan. Recording an agent's steps and sources is easier with tracing in OpenAI Agents. Materials for decisions are described in AI for managers and boards.
One kickoff document
a plan template and a note
no build
Findings in emails, PDFs and notes
a plan system with sources and a conflict gate
from €3,000
Many projects and changes after kickoff
an agent that tracks changes to findings
priced after the review
Where to start
The first trial covers one type of project and the packs from recent kickoffs. To prepare: examples with an agreed correct result, a decision owner, and data sources with a defined scope of access. We build this kind of rollout as part of AI automations. For the free process review, a description of one case from recent weeks and the tools it went through is enough. You do not need to send confidential documents, and you get a written plan within 2 working days.
Worked example · Scenario
How we count the payback: project kickoffs
We run the same count for your projects in the free process review.
€1,675
a month for preparing 12 management reports
Payback: 2.1 mo.
4 hours to prepare a management report and checking in 15% of the old time are our assumptions. €34.90 an hour is the EU average hourly labour cost for 2025 according to Eurostat, for companies with 10 or more employees. Model cost: checking the commentary in our reporting system (about €0.0002) plus compiling the data (Claude Sonnet 5.5, about 30,000 + 2,000 tokens), at the ECB rate of 1.1205 USD per euro on 22 October 2026.
See the full calculation →
