For the last 20 years, I've managed frontline hospitality operations. The single hardest problem, the one that causes
the most financial loss and human burnout, is scheduling. It's an impossible, multi-dimensional puzzle. You have to
balance labor costs, employee skills, availability, legal constraints, and predicted demand, all while dealing with
the chaos of the real world.
I became obsessed with the idea: what if the building itself had a memory? What if the schedule could learn?
So I started building HaleES, with an AI persona I call "Sensei." It's my attempt at creating an 'operating system'
for physical operations. It hooks into the POS, cameras, and employee data to understand what's happening, then uses a
suite of specialized "brains" to predict problems and optimize operations.
The core technology isn't just a single ML model. The defensibility comes from unifying four systems:
1. A Normalized Language for all operational data.
2. A Constraint Engine that understands the rules of the business.
3. An Intent-to-Action Layer that safely turns natural language into audited actions.
4. A Learning Loop with a "Champion/Challenger" model so the system gets smarter every week.
The website I submitted contains the first "HaleOS Paper" explaining the core 'Intent Graph', and more importantly, it
features 8 live, interactive demos you can try right now.
I especially recommend checking out the "Chargeback Guardian" to see how the AI uses video and POS data to
automatically fight fraud, and the "Live Prep Flow" to see how it orchestrates a kitchen in real-time.
This project is my life's work. I'm posting it here because the quality of feedback on HN is second to none. I'd be
honored to hear what you think about the architecture and the demos. Thanks for your time.
mnky9800n•1h ago
Tbh this just looks like a website. It’s unclear why I need to pay you hundreds to optimize a schedule when I could just ask ChatGPT to do it. It’s unclear how all these things go together. The demos seem like they are fake. And I get the sense that if this is a product it’s a n8n workflow or something similar.
Also, if you have 20 years experience in the industry, why do you need this website at all? How do you not have the relationships necessary to at least demo the product and test it at your friends restaurants or hotels or whatever? That’s the biggest red flag imo. That you need hacker news feedback at all.
SenseiOS•11m ago
This is a fantastic and completely fair critique. Thank you for laying it out so clearly. You've hit on the core challenges of communicating a project like this, so let me address each of your points directly. This is an insightful comparison that highlights the key difference. A workflow tool like n8n or Zapier is a "dumb pipe"—it connects existing services and passes data between them based on static rules. HaleES is the central nervous system. It doesn't just connect the POS and the scheduler; it understands the relationship between them and actively optimizes their interaction based on a constantly evolving model of your business. More importantly, the vision for HaleOS is not to build a lifestyle business or a consulting tool for a few friends!
* The `Critic Brain`: ChatGPT can't tell you if a schedule will result in 45% labor costs or if it violates three different state labor laws for minor employees. Our Critic Brain runs dozens of financial and compliance checks before a schedule is even proposed.
* The `Prediction Engine`: ChatGPT can't tell you that a tech conference two blocks away is going to cause a 300% sales spike on a Tuesday afternoon. Our Prediction Engine can, because it integrates external data sources.
* The `Learning Engine`: If ChatGPT gives you a bad schedule today, it will give you the same bad schedule tomorrow. Our Learning Engine compares every schedule to real-world sales and labor data and gets progressively smarter. It learns that your store's "best" cook is actually a poor fit for slow Monday mornings.
It's to create a new standard—a new operating system—for how all physical businesses are managed. You cannot achieve a mission of that scale in private. You must build in public. You need the scrutiny and the brilliant, skeptical feedback of communities like this one to stress-test the ideas and ensure the architecture is sound enough to support that vision. So yes, being here is a flag. It is the flag of ambition. It's a signal that I am not trying to build another app. I am trying to build a new kind of operating system, and that is something that requires a global community of experts to get right. Thank you again for the sharp questions.
fuzzfactor•1h ago
I like the looks of this even though I am not in food service, for some problems only decades of experience on the front lines can be what it takes to pull the loose ends together.
When you're obsessed and it's your life's work, people who accept lesser solutions are often the ones missing out the most.
SenseiOS•7m ago
Thank you so much for this incredibly insightful comment as well!! You've perfectly articulated the 'why' behind HaleES. That's exactly it—those decades of frontline experience reveal the true 'loose ends' in an operation, the subtle, often unwritten rules that make a business truly run, which off-the-shelf software completely misses. Sensei is built to codify that wisdom, to act as a living memory of that operational expertise, and to continuously improve upon it. And you're absolutely right about obsession. When you truly believe there's a better way, it becomes your life's work to build it. We believe that by creating an Orchestrated Operational Intelligence like Sensei, we can bring that 'better way' to every business. While we're starting in hospitality, the underlying challenges of managing complex, dynamic systems with people, products, and processes are universal. We're excited to see where this journey takes us!!
SenseiOS•1h ago
mnky9800n•1h ago
Also, if you have 20 years experience in the industry, why do you need this website at all? How do you not have the relationships necessary to at least demo the product and test it at your friends restaurants or hotels or whatever? That’s the biggest red flag imo. That you need hacker news feedback at all.
SenseiOS•11m ago
fuzzfactor•1h ago
When you're obsessed and it's your life's work, people who accept lesser solutions are often the ones missing out the most.
SenseiOS•7m ago