Perspective · A field note
Excelling at AI takes two kinds of judgment that rarely live in one head.
Boardroom fluency and engine-room skills - and why real return from AI needs both at once.
Read the field note→
Building and advising at the
intersection of AI and domain expertise.
I'm Robin Hutchinson - operator, former EY Global Partner, and self-confessed AI obsessive. For 28 years at EY I paired AI with hard-won domain expertise - software development, commercialization, risk management, offshoring, and building global businesses - to turn complex problems into products that ship.
- 28 years at EY
- Chief Technology Officer
- Security founder & exit
- Studying AI since 1988
Boardroom fluency.
Engine-room skills.
I build and operate businesses at the intersection of AI and security - two domains that increasingly define how enterprises manage risk, protect data, and scale technology. Self-confessed AI obsessive.
For 28 years I was a partner at EY, most recently as Global CTO & AI Officer for Client Technology, where I led the commercialisation of the firm's global technology portfolio - platforms, AI, and digital products - across a $2B+ P&L. I also led the Enterprise Risk practice and conducted the enterprise risk assessment for the global firm, reporting to the Global Executive Committee. Before EY, I ran and sold a security software company, and earlier still helped build firewall technologies through a startup that was acquired. I retired from the partnership in June 2026.
I studied AI at the University of Texas at Austin from 1988 to 1991 - three decades before the current wave - so the technology side of this work isn't abstract to me. I'm still a daily hands-on builder.
Based between Toronto and London. The story →
- Robin Hutchinson
Perspective · A field note
Embassy Rules
Camp one flatters the machine. Camp two swears at it. A note on memory, social scores, and why I keep embassy rules with the agents.
Read the field note→Perspective · A field note
Your Token Bill Is Lying to You
Uber burned a year's AI budget in six weeks - not from failure, but from adoption. Seven things a CFO should have on the radar before the token bill does the same to you.
Read the field note→Work in motion.
A portfolio of products spanning AI, security, and the tools I wished existed.
SaaS · Experiment
Project ARC
Ask a multinational who owns a given compliance obligation, and the honest answer is a shrug - it's buried in someone's spreadsheet, or nobody's. Project ARC centralizes every legal, privacy, and security requirement across every jurisdiction you operate in and routes each one to its owner. One map - obligations, owners, status - instead of a chase across inboxes and trackers. Built on Next.js, TypeScript, and Prisma.
SaaS · Near launch
WellKept
What was prescribed, what's in your hand, and how you're actually taking it - most trackers blur all three into one number. WellKept keeps them distinct: snap a photo of a vial, patch box, or pill bottle to log the regimen in one tap, see a deterministic view of where you sit in your dosing curve alongside plain-language interaction warnings, and track only the signals you care about - sleep, mood, energy, side effects. Refill math tells you the exact date you'll run out. Built multi-party from day one for caregivers and a read-only doctor view; a wellness tool, never medical advice.
SaaS · In development
Numara
Your net worth lives in a dozen logins and a spreadsheet you update twice a year, if that. Numara photographs the statement - bank, brokerage, mortgage, crypto - and extracts balances and holdings into one continuously updated picture of what you own and owe, with no manual spreadsheet upkeep. Sensitive values are encrypted with a key held separate from the database by design, and every model call runs through OpenRouter so you stay model-agnostic. Installable as a PWA for a private, phone-first view of your whole financial position.
SaaS · In development
HippoOS
Everything you've read, written, or been sent already contains the answer - you just can't find it, and it can't find you. HippoOS compiles emails, documents, and files into a portable, backlinked markdown wiki that an agent navigates - the files are the ground truth, the database just a rebuildable index over them. Every statement carries provenance back to its source with the cited span highlighted, an owner-authored correction overlay lets you fix what a source got wrong, and a built-in MCP server passes that grounded context to any agent. Reachable from the web, your desktop, or your phone.
SaaS · Internal tool
Soul System
Most builds start with no design system at all - which just means the agent decides, page by page, what a button looks like this time. Soul System replaces that improvisation with a 13-step wizard - vibe, color, modes, rules, components - that outputs a structured prompt Claude Desktop builds straight from: CLAUDE.md, DESIGN.md, tokens, per-component specs, a light/dark mood board. One decision made upfront, instead of sloppy code, inconsistent buttons and pages, and hundreds of hours of rework later. Save components once to a reusable library, and each future system takes 10-15 minutes instead of a day.
SaaS · Internal tool
Photo Seeder
When you're building an application, profile-driven apps need real-looking people in real-looking moments - and most builders have one stiff headshot and a stock photo library to work with. Photo Seeder turns one reference photo into 36 identity-consistent lifestyle shots of the same person - wine bar, hiking trail, gym, beach, dinner party, café morning - using any image model on OpenRouter. Drop in a face, pick a model, and walk away: results stream live into the browser and land directly in your filesystem. Open source, model-agnostic, local-first.
Let's build something.
Interested in collaborating, or curious about any of these projects? I'm always glad to talk.
rh@pklabs.ca