Agnes — A 24/7 Digital Employee for Heartland Merchants
Who this is for
A heartland merchant has no marketing team, no ops manager, and no time between 11:00 and 14:00. What they have is a phone, a Google Reviews page they check when someone complains, and a volunteer roster in their head.
Agnes is a digital employee for that person. You talk; she works. There is no dashboard to learn, because the whole premise is that learning a dashboard is the thing that never happens.
What she does
Reads the room. "Agnes, check my customer reviews." A sentiment gauge, the top themes as clickable chips — great coffee, long wait, friendly staff — and a seven-day trend line.
Drafts in your tone, not hers. "Help me reply to the negative review about wait times." The reply comes back apologetic, specific about what changed, and it never promises a refund — because the merchant's Soul config says so, not because the model felt like being careful. Edit, approve, reject. Nothing is posted without a human pressing something.
Finds the pattern you already half-know. The weekly trend report says peak is Fri–Sun 11:00–14:00 and 19:00–21:00, average transaction $8.50 and up 5%, garlic pork ribs at 32% of sales, Mon–Thu footfall 40% lower. Then it says the useful part: prep more ribs on Friday, demand spikes about 18%.
Watches your screen when you ask. "Monitor my screen and tell me what you see." Three new positive reviews, one mentioning an out-of-stock spice mix, competitors pricing a similar drink lower. Should she draft responses?
Handles the bad morning. "Health inspector just arrived." The checklist card flips from opening prep to crisis protocol — chiller temps, under-sink storage, food handling, photograph every label and temperature log, notify the volunteer coordinator, log findings to a shared file.
The design bet
Everything routes through one voice channel and a small set of cards that animate in and out. Wake word, live transcription bottom-left, an orb that pulses when she is listening.
I spent more time on the approval surfaces than on the model prompts. Every outbound message — WhatsApp, Telegram, SMS — is a draft with edit, approve and reject buttons. An assistant that posts on your behalf without asking is not an employee; it is a liability with a microphone. For a business where one bad public reply costs real customers, the correct autonomy level is "does the work, asks before it speaks."
Built for Sup' Hackathon 2026 with a demo you can walk end to end in about twelve minutes.