Relay
Checking Work with Malik

AI operations agent · invoices, emails, tickets

Paper in. Actions out.

Relay reads the supplier invoices and customer emails that land in your inbox, checks them against your own systems, and does the work: bills in QuickBooks, tickets in your helpdesk, a line in Slack. It refuses to guess, retries when an API is down, and hands anything doubtful to a person.

Built on a frontier language model, strict tool schemas, and the boring engineering that keeps agents running at 2am.

  • Checks before it acts
  • Retries when APIs fail
  • Hands doubt to a human

01Demo · run it on a real document

Inbox invoice · invoice-clean

A normal supplier invoice. Expect: vendor matched, no duplicate, bill created, finance notified.

Checking for the backend…

Console no run
Elapsed
00:00.0
Turns
0
Tool calls
0
Retries
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Tokens
—
QuickBooks0idle
Helpdesk0idle
Slack0idle
Review queue0idle

Pick a document and press Run. Or edit the invoice and change a number — Relay will notice.

  1. Reasoning, streamed as it happens
  2. Tool calls with their inputs and results
  3. Retries, with the backoff countdown
  4. A plain-English summary at the end
  • 014 tool calls, typical run
  • 02Retries with exponential backoff, 4 attempts
  • 030 invented numbers: every value traces to the document or a tool result
  • 04Strict JSON schemas on every tool

02Works with the systems you already run

  • QuickBooks Online
  • Xero
  • Zendesk
  • Freshdesk
  • Slack
  • Microsoft Teams
  • Gmail
  • Outlook
  • HubSpot
  • Stripe
  • Shopify
  • Google Sheets
  • Airtable
  • Notion

03Track record

  • 10 yrsbuilding software
  • 210+projects delivered
  • 5.0average client rating
  • 0numbers invented

Every value on this page traces to the document or a tool result. That is what "0 numbers invented" means.

04How it works

From inbox to done in four steps

The same loop runs on every document. Nothing is assumed, and every step leaves a record you can read.

  1. 01

    Read

    The document is parsed, nothing is assumed. Vendor, invoice number, dates, every line item and the stated total.

    What you see: the reasoning stream, word by word.

  2. 02

    Check

    Vendor lookup, duplicate check, line-item reconciliation, approval threshold. Any miss stops the run.

    What you see: one tool card per check, with its result.

  3. 03

    Act

    Bill, ticket, Slack, in parallel when the steps are independent. Retried with backoff when a system is down.

    What you see: the systems strip ticking as each action lands.

  4. 04

    Report

    A plain-English summary and a full event log: every turn, call, retry and result, replayable and auditable.

    What you see: the summary entry and the token and timing counts.

05Guardrails

What it refuses to do

Most of the value of an agent that touches money is in the things it declines to do without a person.

01

The totals don't add up

Line items sum to 6,150. The invoice says 6,450. Relay does not create the bill; it flags the 300.00 gap with the numbers attached and tells #finance.

no bill · flagged · #finance told
02

You've already paid this

A vendor sends a second notice for INV-1042. Relay finds bill QB-1186, paid 12 Aug, and stops.

no bill · duplicate of QB-1186
03

It's over the limit

Anything above 5,000 goes to a person for approval, even when everything else checks out.

held for approval

Guardrails live in code and in the prompt. The model can't skip them.

06What it saves you

Set the sliders to your inbox

Three numbers you already know. The outputs update as you drag.

300
202,000
8
230
$28
$8$120

Your monthly pile300 documents

40Hours back every month
$1,120Saved per month

Model cost, estimated: $15 a month, at about five cents per document. About 1/75 of what it saves.

Typical build: two to four weeks. Pays for itself in the first quarter for most teams above 150 documents a month.

Estimate. Your numbers will differ.

07For the engineer in the room

How it's built

One loop, six tools, an executor that expects the world to fail, and an event log that the console, the tests, and the recorder all share.

  • 01Python, FastAPI, Anthropic SDK; server-sent events to the browser
  • 02Six tools with strict JSON schemas; parallel tool calls when steps are independent
  • 03Transient failures (429/5xx/timeouts) retried with exponential backoff; permanent errors handed back to the model to reason about
  • 04Every run is stored with its full event log: list it, replay it, audit it
  • 05PDFs and scans go to the model as documents; no OCR pipeline to maintain
  • 06Swap the mock systems for real QuickBooks, Zendesk/Freshdesk, Slack APIs: the tool contracts stay the same

08Where it fits

Bring this to your business

The loop is the same whatever the paper is. The tools change to match your systems.

01

AP inbox QuickBooks/Xero

Vendor match, duplicate check, line reconciliation, approval threshold, bill created.

02

Support inbox tickets with priority and summary

Business impact sets the priority. The summary is what an engineer reads first.

03

Orders/POs ERP with duplicate and price checks

Every quantity and price traces back to the document or the price list.

What you get

Four weeks from first call to a running agent

Scope, guardrails and the go-live date are written down in week one, before any code.

  1. Week 1Scoping call and a written plan.
  2. Weeks 2–3Integration with your real systems, guardrails agreed with you.
  3. Week 4Go-live with monitoring and an audit log.
  4. AfterA month of support included, code handed over, no lock-in.

09FAQ

Straight answers

Does it connect to my actual QuickBooks or Xero?

Yes. The demo uses mocks so it runs anywhere; the tool contracts are written for the real APIs and swap in without touching the agent.

What happens when it is not sure?

It stops and queues the document for a person with the reason and the numbers.

Where does my data go?

Documents are sent to the model API for the run and to your own systems. Nothing is stored by Relay beyond the event log you keep.

What does it cost to run?

About five cents per document in model cost at current pricing, plus your hosting.

Can it read PDFs and scanned invoices?

Yes, text and PDF; scans go through OCR first.

Why is the live demo limited?

Every live run calls the model and costs real money. The demo allows a few runs per hour per visitor and a daily cap. Your own deployment sets both in one environment variable each.

Want this running on your inbox?

Malik A. builds AI agents and API integrations for small companies. Ten years of shipping software, 210+ projects, a 5.0 rating.

Work with Malik on Upwork See the code on GitHub