Upstream Studios

Understand your system
before you automate it.

Most businesses adopt AI by starting with the tools. We start with the question the tools are supposed to answer. Strategy, workflow architecture, and implementation for companies that want to get it right, not just get it fast.

The problem

The cost of building is collapsing.
The cost of building the wrong thing isn't.

AI tools are extraordinary. You can automate a workflow in an afternoon for twenty euros in API calls. Production is no longer the bottleneck. Knowing what to produce is.

We see it constantly. Businesses that automated first and asked questions later. The workflow ships. Six months later, it gets rebuilt. Not because the engineering was bad, but because nobody mapped the process well enough to know what should have been automated in the first place.

The expensive mistake is never choosing the wrong tool. It's skipping the step where you figure out what the tool is for.

How we work

Three ways in, depending on where you are.

Every engagement starts with understanding what your business actually does day to day, where the friction lives, and whether AI is the right answer or a distraction. Sometimes we recommend a tool you can buy off the shelf. Sometimes it's a custom build. Sometimes it's "don't automate this yet."

Map

Workflow Audit

We map your actual workflows, not the aspirational ones, and assess where AI genuinely fits. You get a clear report: what to automate, what to leave alone, which tools already exist for your needs, and what order to move in. No jargon and no upsell into a build you don't need.

2–3 weeks · Fixed fee

Build

Custom Workflow Implementation

When off-the-shelf tools don't cover it, we design and build AI workflows specific to your business. Content pipelines, document processing, client-facing tools, internal knowledge systems. Built around your data and integrated with what you already use. Strategy first, then engineering.

4–8 weeks per workflow · Scoped project

Partner

Ongoing AI Strategy

For businesses that have been through the audit and the first builds, and want someone holding the long view. New tools emerge monthly. Needs change. Someone needs to keep the whole system coherent as it evolves. We stay on as a fractional AI strategy partner.

Monthly retainer · Flexible scope

Who it's for

Businesses that build things and want AI to actually work.

We work best with companies between 5 and 50 people. Large enough to have real workflow complexity, small enough that getting it right matters more than getting it trendy. The common thread is people who make things and are trying to figure out where AI fits without wasting six months finding out the hard way.

Creative studios and agencies Content production, client workflows, project management, AI-assisted creative. Where most of our current work lives.

Architecture, engineering, and design firms Proposals, compliance, cost estimation, document processing. We come from architecture, so we know the workflows and the resistance.

Professional services Consultancies, advisory firms, specialist practices. Knowledge-heavy businesses drowning in documents and coordination.

Product and SaaS companies AI integration into existing products, internal workflow automation, content and marketing pipelines.

About

Two people. Strategy and engineering.

Jo Petroni

Systems architecture · Strategy

Second-generation architect turned systems thinker. Twenty years of international practice taught me that the expensive problems are never technical. They're about people building before they've figured out what they're building. I bring the same upstream discipline to AI workflows. Map the system, find the misalignment, structure what needs to happen.

Alex Petroni

Full-stack development · AI engineering

Forestry engineer turned web developer turned AI engineer. Builds the things I architect. Custom automations, integrations, pipelines, tools. When the strategy says "build," Alex makes it real. Clean, maintainable, production-grade.

Based in France. Working across the US and Europe. Small by design. We work with a handful of clients at a time and give each one our full attention.

Understand your system
before you automate it.

The cost of building is collapsing.
The cost of building the wrong thing isn't.