Built to last. Run with care.

An independent technology studio

We build, we operate, we publish.

Seven Roots ships AI-native products and runs them in production on its own autonomous operations platform. What the work teaches gets published. And because this space is so new, the door stays open to compare notes.

AI-native products Autonomous operations Data and publishing Free tools Research and insights Select advisory
See what we build Compare notes with us
20+
Years of technology leadership behind the studio
4
Products built, shipped, and operating
Select
Advisory engagements, chosen by fit
Builds

What we ship.

Products designed, built, and operated inside the studio. Everything here is live today.

A publication of Seven Roots

The Potomac Ledger

Publicly disclosed stock trades from Congress and senior executive branch officials, collected, enriched, and published. A data platform with a newsletter, a searchable archive, and an interface built for AI agents.

  • Disclosures from both the congressional and executive branch pipelines
  • Party, committee, agency, and sector context on every trade
  • A weekly digest and an archive reaching back decades
  • Free, member, and pro tiers for deeper access
Read The Potomac Ledger
The Potomac Ledger website: a ledger of congressional and executive branch stock disclosures with search and archive.
AI advisory panel

Heartwood

An AI advisory panel for mid-market leaders. Ask a technology question and get back a structured decision brief, tuned to your industry and the size of your business. The studio's judgment, productized.

  • Decision briefs, not chat
  • An industry specialist in every session
  • Scoped to technology strategy only
  • Three questions free, no account required
Try Heartwood
The Heartwood app: a technology question asked and a structured decision brief coming back from the panel.
Free tool

The Seven Roots Diagnostic

Seven short questions about the foundations your technology rests on. Your result draws as a root system, showing which roots run deep and which need attention.

  • Two minutes, no sign-up
  • Direction, vendors, security, systems, team, spend, and AI readiness
  • Retake it anytime and watch the roots change
Take the Diagnostic
A Seven Roots Diagnostic result: the seven-root system drawn beside a plain-language reading of the score.
How it all runs

The operations platform

Every Seven Roots product is monitored, patched, and deployed by an autonomous agent platform, with a human reviewing the digests. It is how a small studio operates like a much larger one.

  • Health probes on every product, with a daily operations digest
  • Weekly dependency patching, with human gates on major changes
  • Deploy rails that refuse to ship unreviewed work
  • Content pipelines with enforced citation checks

A full write-up on how the studio operates is on the way.

run run run run run run run health probes weekly patching deploy rails daily digest

Also in the toolbox: a 100-day M&A technology integration playbook, free to run in the browser.

Built by Seven Roots

Sitting on a hard technology call?
Ask the panel.

Heartwood is an AI advisory tool from Seven Roots. Mid-market leaders ask a technology question and get back a structured decision brief, tuned to their industry and the size of their business.

Try Heartwood free →

Industry specialist included

Every session pulls in a domain expert for your sector, whether that's healthcare, manufacturing, legal, or something else.

Decision briefs, not chat

You get structured recommendations: a clear take, the reasoning behind it, the risks to watch, and what to do next.

Technology strategy only

Scoped to technology decisions. No recipes or marketing copy, just unconflicted advice on how your business runs on technology.

3 questions free

Start with no commitment. No credit card or account required. You give us a work email and your toughest technology question.

See it work. Pick a question mid-market leaders bring to the panel.

Should we move our on-prem ERP to the cloud this year?
Recommendation

Not all of it this year. Move the pieces that are holding you back, and leave the core ledger where it runs until you have a real reason to touch it.

Why

For a mid-market firm, a full ERP cutover is a 12 to 18 month project that pulls your best operators off the business for a year. The cloud version of your platform rarely changes what finance and operations can do day to day, so the spend is hard to justify on capability alone. Lead with the modules where age actually hurts you, usually reporting, integrations, and anything customers or auditors touch.

Risks to watch
  • Custom code and integrations are where these projects slip. Inventory them before you commit to a date.
  • Subscription pricing can land higher than your current run rate once you add the modules you actually use.
  • A big-bang cutover concentrates risk on one weekend. Phase it so no single failure stops the business.
First moves
  • List the top five complaints about the current system and confirm the cloud version fixes them.
  • Ask your vendor for a three-year total cost, including implementation, not just the license.
  • Pick one lower-risk module to move first and treat it as the test of the vendor and your team.

Heartwood tunes this to your industry and size. This is an illustration.

A two-minute read

How strong is your technology foundation?

Seven short questions about the foundations your technology rests on, from direction and vendors to security and AI readiness. The Seven Roots Diagnostic draws your result as a root system, showing which roots run deep and which need attention. No sign-up, and you can retake it anytime.

Take the Seven Roots Diagnostic
About

I've been in this room before.

I'm Matt Smith. More than 20 years of technology leadership inside growing companies: strategy, acquisitions, governance, and lately a lot of applied AI.

Seven Roots is my independent studio. Everything on this page is designed, shipped, and operated here, and running it teaches me more about AI-native operations than any briefing could.

Connect with me on LinkedIn

Grounded in your business

Technology strategy that starts with your goals, not the other way around.

An open door, a small practice

Conversations and traded notes welcome anytime. A few select advisory engagements, taken on where the fit is right.

Practical AI guidance

A vendor-neutral read on where AI helps in your operations today, and where it doesn't yet.

Wisconsin-based, built independently

Rooted in Mequon, publishing and operating on the studio's own time and infrastructure.

What we believe

Growing companies deserve the same quality of technology thinking as the enterprise. Everything we build, operate, and publish works toward that belief.

Advisory

Let's compare
notes.

The AI and agentic space is young, and it is moving faster than any playbook. The best thinking in it is happening in the open. So our door stays open too: to a conversation, a working session, or a note comparing what you are seeing with what we are. We also take on a small number of select advisory engagements, chosen by fit.

1

Trading notes. You are working through AI, agents, or operations questions and want to compare approaches with a studio building in this space every day.

2

The builds. A question about The Potomac Ledger, Heartwood, the Diagnostic, or the operations platform that runs them.

3

Select advisory. A lightweight engagement where senior technology judgment would genuinely help. We take on a few of these, and only where the fit is right.

"We would rather trade notes than trade pitches."

Seven Roots
Please enter a valid work email so we can reply.

Required fields are marked with an asterisk. We usually reply within one business day.