Callum AI · internal briefing

The holding-pattern plan: ten working days that don't wait for Meta

What we can ship while the review runs, who actually owes what, and the two builds that change what this product is.

The short version
  1. The backlog is real and written down in docs/PLAN.md, untouched since mid-September. Almost none of it waits on Meta. It waits on Mediaelx, Tom, Adam, and two decisions of Stevan's.
  2. Two builds are genuine 10x levers: real stock in replies and portal emails becoming conversations on their own. Both are startable now.
  3. "Without regressing" is already engineered: 287 tests, like-for-like graded sims on 12 real personas, deterministic checks, a deploy gate and a rollback snapshot. Nothing ships past that uninspected.
  4. Everything below survives approval landing mid-stream. Nothing is throwaway, and nothing touches the app under review.

1The window we're planning inside

The App Review went in on 1 October. Meta's wording is "most submissions are reviewed within 20 days", and decisions often arrive inside a week, so the realistic window for this plan is zero to nine more days. That cuts one way: prefer work that is still valuable the day after approval lands. All of it below is.

2The two 10x levers

Everything else on the list makes the product better. These two change what it is.

A

Real stock in the conversation

Today the bot never talks listings, by design: without data, stock talk is how bots lie. Wave 1 flips the weakness into the moat. SHO's Kyero-format feed loads into a matcher (area via gazetteer, beds, type, budget band), and guards allow a property to be named only if it is in the feed block, price and status from the feed alone.

Exit test, from the plan"Send me some 2-beds around Villamartin under €150k" gets real listings, in the sim and on the sandbox.

Startable today: Kyero is a public format, so the loader, matcher and guards get built against a synthetic sample and Mediaelx's real export drops in whenever it finally arrives. It is a month overdue. This also answers Sellebrate's matching module, with truthfulness discipline attached.

B

Portal emails become conversations

Wave 4: lead emails from A Place in the Sun and Rightmove forward to an inbox we read; parse, create the lead record, queue the opener. Plus dedupe, cool-off rules for repeat enquirers, and a scheduler for openers and the 2-day and 7-day nudges. The difference between a chatbot demo and a product an agency forgets is running.

Exit test, from the planA real portal enquiry produces an opener in the queue without a human typing anything.

The parser needs three raw lead emails from Tom. The scheduler, dedupe and cool-off scaffolding need nothing and can be built first.

3The backlog, ranked by wow per unit of risk

Ten items, ordered. Chips show what each one is waiting on.
ItemWaiting onBuild
1Stock feed (lever A)The bot offers real properties, guarded against inventionReady now Mediaelx for live data3 to 4 days
2Lead-email ingest (lever B)Enquiry to conversation with no human typing; closes the loopTom: 3 raw lead emails2 to 3 days
3Backlist importerRevive dead leads; the pilot's commercial proof, built to our opt-in rulesSkeleton now Tom: source + 20 rows1 day
4Wave 2b + Tom's 15 Sep fixesHonour contact preference, hand off dated-trip-less cash buyers, challenge past dates, kill recap openers, La Torre false fallback, money-verdict phrase, question-cap bugReady now1 to 2 days
5Copilot approve queueCallum approves or edits each send from his phone; the safety story for real trafficReady now2 to 3 days
6Marketing site + nameThe sellable surface; its domain doubles as the stable host /onboard needs anywayStevan: name + round-3 notes2 days
7Exec routing + hand-off watcherSheet routed by area, one-tap outcome, re-escalate silent hand-offs: leads never fall into a voidAdam: roster, coverage, hours2 days
8Voice-note handlingBuyers' voice notes stop dead-ending: transcribe, then the normal pipeline. New scopeStevan: green-light1 to 2 days
9Independent review of onboarding codeCommit 01ddf9f creates subaccounts and writes credentials; harden before any agency touches itReady nowDelegated
10Bundled-brief vs one-question A/BAn open product decision, settled with data on the same 12 personasReady nowHalf a day

Deliberately absent: the 1,200 lead-generator cohort stays on hold until the consent answer is in writing, per the standing decision. And nothing here touches the "Agency AI" app while Meta is looking at it.

4Who actually owes what

The scarce resource this fortnight is not build time. It is five people's inputs. Chasing the left four columns is worth more than any single feature.

Ready for me now
Wave 2b + Tom's fixesbehind the sim gate
Kyero loader + guardson a synthetic sample
Importer skeletondry-run mode first
Codex onboarding reviewruns in the background
Question-style A/B simhalf a day
Tom
3 raw portal lead emailsunlocks the ingest parser
Backlist source + 20 rowsunlocks the importer's live run
Sellebrate demo callthe three wiring questions from the companion brief
Adam, via Tom
Coverage list, town by townopen since 12 Sep
Exec roster with numbersunlocks routing to Gill and Simon
Office hours + "exclusive listings" truth
15-minute Facebook login callif the sender pilot is green-lit
Mediaelx
Kyero XML export + refresh ratedue w/c 14 Sep, a month overdue
Stevan decides
The nameYasta vs Estreno, shortlist waiting since 22 Sep
Round-3 homepage notesunlocks the final build
Sender pilot go/no-gothe Twilio path from the companion brief
Voice notes: in or out
Housekeepingdelete the review API key and disposable template

5The ten working days, sequenced

One possible shape, biased to cheap-and-sharpening first, then the levers. Solid bars need nobody. Dashed bars start the moment their input lands, and the dates shift with them.

Buildable solo, no inputs Starts when its input or decision lands

Estimates, not commitments. If approval lands mid-stream, the post-approval steps (Access Verification, the Twilio ticket, signup config) slot in alongside; nothing above gets discarded. The devbox demo is never restarted while Tom is mid-test.

6Why none of this regresses what works

Every build above exits through the same gate the last three waves used:

The real risk isn't regression

It's scope. The discipline for the fortnight: ship the ranked list top-down, chase the owed inputs daily, and let the review land whenever it lands. The product that greets approval day should already qualify harder, know the stock, and have a pilot sender warm.