Practice
Brothers' practice
Dossier · 01 · Apr 2026
Herselman & Agents.
An agentic AI practice run by two brothers. We design, build, and operate AI agents for enterprises that intend to own them — agents that earn their wages, hammer your edge, and refund your hours. Every system carries both our names; every system ships to the client — source, runtime, prompts, and keys.
Agentic AI · Architecture · Build · Operation
Products
02
Engagements
Multi
Studios
Dana Bay · Melbourne
Maker's mark
A Herselman Brothers system.
Stamped·Deliberate·Selfish
§01
Anatomy
Marks of a Herselman Brothers system.
On the work
Spec sheet
Rev. 04.26
Status: Definitive
Rev. 04.26
Status: Definitive
i.
Stamped.
The signature lives in the work, not on the contract.
ii.
Deliberate.
Each part defends itself. Each part is load-bearing. What isn't there was refused.
iii.
Selfish.
The system serves its purpose: your growth, your margin, your edge — and your time.
§02
Statement
A name on the door.
Ownership·Glass-box·Reversible·Operator-run
On the practice
ADR-0001
Rev. 04.26
Status: Active
Rev. 04.26
Status: Active
AI is moving at the speed of light. The vendor decision you make today starts aging the moment you make it. There has never been a time in commercial history when the wrong stack was so easy to land on by accident.
Within a few years, AUM — Agents Under Management — will be a primary value engine of every business that competes seriously. These are your digital employees. They sit on your data, handle your customers, execute your workflows, carry your operational memory. They also have a mind — the software that decides what they do, the prompts that shape how they reason, the runtime that remembers what they've done. Owning that mind is what owning your AUM actually means.
Most agentic AI is sold from behind two layers of opacity. Above, a firm name with no signature on the work — when the vendor pivots, your platform dies. Below, the agent's mind — its orchestration, its prompts, its runtime — is a black box: code you don't own, decision logic you can't audit, memory you can't move. You are not buying a digital employee. You are renting access to one whose mind belongs to the landlord.
Herselman & Agents is the opposite bet on both counts. We sign the work — the principals design the system, lead the build, and stay accountable to the engagement. You own the system — we built our delivery stack, Roark, after years of shipping agents on runtimes that weren't ours and watching what that costs. The version you commission is the same stack we trust ourselves with: yours to operate, audit, fork, or fire. Source, runtime, database, prompts, traces, keys — the software your agents are made of, the data they remember in, and everything they've ever done. The architecture we design is the architecture we run, and the architecture you keep.
AUM is hiring, not procurement. Their mind has to be yours. The work has to pay.
Principle I — Ownership
The system is the client's. Their database, their runtime, their
keys. We operate; they hold the title.
Principle II — Glass-box
Every conversation, tool call, and workflow is captured for
review. No black boxes, no mysteries.
Principle III — Reversible
Every change is staged in isolation and ships through review.
Production is for production.
Principle IV — Operator-run
The architect of the system is accountable for it in production.
No hand-off, no support queue.
§03
Agents
Selected agents, in the field.
Legend
OP Practice product
LIVE Production agent
PILOT Pilot delivered
Lead architect
Routing
Practice products at top.
Production engagements
in the middle. Pilots
delivered at the foot.
Production engagements
in the middle. Pilots
delivered at the foot.
OP · SaaS · Global
ClerkiQ
Bank statement extraction · clerkiq.io
0%Extraction accuracy
OP · Data infra · Live
Enviro-D
Property risk intelligence · enviro-d.com.au
1,100+Sources unified
LIVE · FMCG · Loyalty
Coca-Cola Peninsula
AI Solution Architect · 2024 → 2025
0×Loyalty conversion uplift
LIVE · Automotive · Sales
Hyundai South Africa
AI Solution Architect · May → Nov 2025
0×Revenue uplift on channel
LIVE · Retail · Consent
Foschini Group
AI Solution Architect · Late 2024 → Apr 2025
0×Marketing consent uplift
LIVE · Retail · Service
Decofurn
AI Solution Architect
0×Web engagement uplift
PILOT · Insurance · Multimodal
Momentum Insure
AI Solution Architect · 2025
02Agents delivered
PILOT · Energy · Multi-agent
ADNOC
AI Solution Architect · 2025
02Agents delivered
§04
Engagement
Engagement, on terms.
On Roark
Brief no. 04.26
Status: Selective
Mechanism: revealed in qualified conversation
Status: Selective
Mechanism: revealed in qualified conversation
i.
What we take on.
Production-bound
Agentic systems where the decision authority is in the room,
the problem is worth an architect's time, and AUM at scale
would materially change the business. Advisory for enterprises
running or about to run agentic programmes. Implementation
where the client owns the stack and the outcome.
ii.
What we decline.
Said upfront
Proof-of-concepts built for a deck. Engagements where the
architect is a cheap pair of hands on someone else's strategy.
Mandates that rule out the stack before the problem is
understood.
iii.
How we work.
Roark · Supabase · Fly · LangGraph
Engagements run on
Roark — the practice's proprietary
delivery stack. Every customer gets an isolated runtime, their
own database, a human-review portal by default, and a workflow
layer designed to be reversible. Roark is opinionated by
intent — that's how the practice ships sound systems,
efficiently. The deviation worth naming: Roark is not
AWS-native or on-prem. If those are non-negotiable, the
engagement isn't a fit, and that's said upfront.
iv.
How few.
Selective intake
The practice takes a select number of engagements each year.
We design every system personally; the bench scales delivery.
What gets shipped belongs to the client — source, runtime,
prompts, traces, keys — so the system survives its architects.
If procurement is running this as a comparative bid, the
practice will decline.
§05
Provenance
Two formations, one practice.
By the hands of
Ivan Herselman
Fred Herselman
Architects of record
Both brothers, both signing
Fred Herselman
Architects of record
Both brothers, both signing
Two brothers came to agentic AI by different routes. The practice runs on both kinds of training because the work asks for both.
Ivan. Law before architecture — LLB Pretoria, admitted advocate, then seven years drawing enterprise systems for Capitec, Foschini, Hyundai, and Coca-Cola Peninsula. Multi-cloud Salesforce programmes at R45M+, designs held at architect review. The discipline of an answerable argument — every component is something you would defend in front of a tribunal.
Fred. Operations before data — SABMiller logistics, then $30M in pricing optimisation and APAC's first IoT-enabled supply-chain analytics at Anheuser-Busch InBev, then Group Head of Data at DuluxGroup, then GM Enterprise Data, Decisioning & AI at PEXA Group. The discipline of an operator — a system's worth is what it does on a Wednesday morning, when a real number on a real P&L moves.
Together. The two arcs converge in ClerkiQ — the bank-statement-extraction agent the brothers built and scaled to 2,500 accountants in nine months, the first system the practice signed. Roark, the delivery stack, is built around what each formation learned to demand: production-grade traceability that an operator will trust, drawn through an architecture an architect will defend.
Correspondence
The practice takes a select
number of engagements each
year. Clients and the practice
qualify each other — neither
benefits from a bad fit.
Reply within 24h.
number of engagements each
year. Clients and the practice
qualify each other — neither
benefits from a bad fit.
Reply within 24h.
Commission the practice.
StudiosDana Bay, ZA · Melbourne, AU
PracticeHerselman & Agents · Brothers'
practice
Field notes@HerselmanI on X →