Petline
Software for the people who run pet care businesses.
AI innovation and events Kansas City
Put AI to work in ways that keep getting better.
Cauldron Labs is an AI innovation consultancy and event planning studio in Kansas City. We help companies and their key people build systems that improve every week, not just at every kickoff.
One free hour, no deck and no pitch. The first step of every engagement.
Years before the AI
Twenty-five years shipping inside media, video and live events. The studio is that experience, pointed at a new material.
Ask the studio
A live answer, before you book anything.
It runs on a free model reading this site, so it can tell you how an engagement starts, what we have shipped, or who is behind it. If you want a person, the hour is free.
Ask about the work, the process, the projects or the person. Answers come from this site and a free model.
Answers come from this site and a free model. To talk to a person, book the free hour.
What we do
Five ways in. All of them start with hours, not tools.
The tool is never the starting point. The hours a business already spends are. We build the system that gives them back, then keep it improving.
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001
Self-improving agentic AI systemsAGENTIC SYSTEMS
Custom AI apps and agent stacks designed around how each team actually works, not around a vendor template.
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002
Company brain knowledge basesCOMPANY BRAIN
Capture what a business actually knows, so every project, decision and conversation makes the next one smarter, instead of disappearing into inboxes.
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003
AI assessment flowsASSESSMENT FLOWS
Digital twins of people, processes and operations, so a business can test an idea before committing to it.
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004
Fast website redesign conceptsREDESIGN CONCEPTS
A new direction for the site, worked up fast enough to react to before committing to a full rebuild.
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005
Event planningEVENTS
Events that get teams and communities excited about AI, and ready to put it to use on Monday.
The work
Four live sites you can open right now.
Cauldron Labs is one studio running several products. Some are live and taking customers. Some are still in the lab, and we say so.
Discovery and reasoning for the agentic age.
Government contracting intelligence.
An industry news network, run by agents and edited by a human.
Websites for working DJs.
In the lab
Built or building. No public door yet.
Hearthline
A virtual assistant for home health and family care.
Luminary
Influencer outreach for nonprofits.
Secret Agency
A productized agency built AI-native from the first hire.
9d
Goal boards on the Harada Method, with agents that track the work.
HealOS
An operating system for builders running many ideas at once.
How it works
Crawl, walk, run. Scoped before anything gets built.
Every engagement starts with a free one-hour discovery session, then it is scoped in three phases with clear hour estimates and budgets, so nobody is guessing.
Phase one01
Crawl
Get knowledge out of inboxes into one place, then pick one workflow that costs real hours.
Phase two02
Walk
Give a few key people agents that use that knowledge, and learn from their corrections.
Phase three03
Run
Connect it across teams, so the system improves every week without a new project.
# Scope: Crawl, Walk, Run free one-hour discovery, then three phases with hours attached [u]phase 01[/u] crawl knowledge leaves the inboxes, one place, one source of truth one workflow chosen because it costs real hours hours 40 · budget set before work starts [u]phase 02[/u] walk a few key people get agents that use the knowledge agents learn from corrections instead of resetting [u]phase 03[/u] run connected across teams, improves weekly, no new kickoff # The rule Nothing is built until you have seen the hours.
phase,hours,who crawl,40,one workflow walk,60,a few key people run,scoped,every team hours shown are illustrative, not a quote # The rule The estimate is agreed before the clock starts.
# Budget priced after the free hour, before any work [u]what moves the number[/u] how much knowledge has to leave the inboxes how many people need their own agents how many systems the agents have to reach [u]what keeps it down[/u] one workflow first, proven before the next your people learn the system as it is built # The rule No invoice until you have seen the hours.
Illustrative scope documentKansas City · 2026
- 01
A company putting AI to work for the first time, and wanting to get the foundation right.
- 02
A team that already has the tools but no system holding them together.
- 03
A leader who needs their own key people fluent, not just a vendor who is.
- 04
An organization planning an event, a launch or a room full of people they need to move.
Capital
A new way to back a studio.
Venture usually asks you to bet on one idea and wait. We are asking you to back the method that makes the ideas, and to get paid when it keeps working.
The usual bet
One idea, one app, one shot.
- A check written against a single thesis.
- Everything depends on that one market landing.
- You wait, and you find out late.
- Proof arrives in a board deck.
The factory share
A studio that already ships.
- Several products, each one documented and demonstrable.
- The method gets used every week on client work as well as our own.
- You can open the output and judge it yourself, today.
- Cash rights, with a scheduled path to more equity.
Range is the strategy.
Many projects is not a failure to pick one. It is proof the method works more than once. A single product is a bet on a market. A portfolio of working products is a bet on a way of working, and that bet gets stronger with every line we finish.
Competence is rewarded.
A studio that keeps shipping earns more of itself. That is the mechanism, stated plainly, built so the incentive and the outcome point the same direction.
Complacency is expensive.
A studio that coasts pays for that choice instead of being excused for it. We would rather be measured on the first than forgiven for the second.
The difference matters after the first year, when a lottery ticket is still a piece of paper and a factory has revenue, a pipeline and a reason to keep going.
If you want the structure, the terms and where the portfolio stands, ask for the memo. It goes to people who have read the work.
Ask forThe memoThis is not an offer to sell securities.
The studio
Built from twenty-five years of publishing, video and events.
Cauldron Labs is Justin Gardner. He spent 25 years in media and marketing, most recently as Chief Content Officer at Everhance, where he led publishing for a network reaching 30M+ followers and putting out 1,200+ posts a month, and used AI to model acquisitions, build performance algorithms and find new revenue in the data.
Before that: social media at AMC Theatres, an award-winning video team later acquired by Collider, and years of events and screenings at Film Society KC.
Many of my best ideas about AI started with conversations in a room full of builders.
Justin Gardner, founder
Start here
One hour to find where AI actually helps.
Tell us what is taking the most time. We will spend an hour on it, free, then tell you plainly whether there is a project worth doing, and what Crawl, Walk and Run would cost.