StoryJun 28, 20261 min read

Why we built SDL AI Studio

It started with two problems every small business runs into with AI: the bill grows with your people, and your work lives on someone else's servers.

We did not set out to build an AI product. We set out to use AI in our own small business, and we kept hitting the same two walls.

The two problems

  • The bill grows with every person who joins. Per-seat pricing punishes you for growing.
  • Your prompts, drafts, and client work sit on someone else's servers by default. You cannot always see where your data goes.

Neither of those sat right with us. We did not want a tool that got more expensive the more our team grew, and we did not want private work leaving our machines just to use a chat window.

What we wanted instead

We wanted a workspace that runs on our own computer first, that we pay for once, and that is honest about what it does and does not do. When we could not find it, we built it.

That tool became SDL AI Studio. This blog is the story of how it came together, feature by feature, and the reasons behind each decision.

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