Platform overview
Licensed modules. Three layers. One closed loop.
IT consultancies lose margin in the gaps between tools — decisions in chat, specs in document editors, tasks in project trackers, hours in spreadsheets, and client status in email threads. KernelWork eliminates those gaps with integrated licensed modules, structured around the three layers of a consultancy engagement.
Deployment is a procurement choice: self-hosted under your license is the standard path for full control; we operate dedicated or shared infrastructure when that fits better.
Layer 1 · Execution
LiveDoing the work — where delivery actually happens.
The three Execution modules are live today. They replace the fragmented stack most consultancies currently operate: separate chat platforms, project trackers, and document tools that never share context with each other.
Module 1 · Chat, Video Calls & Calendar
Structured communication — indexed by engagement, not by time.
Pain: Separate chat workspaces per client mean separate logins, separate billing, and context that fragments the moment a team member switches engagements.
- Dedicated spaces per client engagement — one workspace, zero workspace-hopping.
- Files, links, and decisions stay pinned beside the conversation your PM monitors daily.
- Controlled guest flows: invite client stakeholders into scoped channels without exposing other engagements.
- Scheduled meetings attach to calendar events — join links live in-thread, not orphaned in separate apps.
- Recordings land in object storage you document and control.
Engagements
Acme Corp
# delivery
# sprint-4
# design-review
Vertex Group
# uat
# design
Nordic Fintech
# discovery
# acme · delivery
Sarah 09:14
SOW v2 approved by legal ✓ — pinned above. Kick-off call still on for Monday.
Kick-off call · Acme Corp
5 participants · 00:18:42
+1 guest stakeholder
Tom 09:31
Recording will land in vault automatically. Sprint 4 board is ready when you are.
Message # delivery…
↵Module 2 · Agile Boards
Sprint boards beside the stand-up channel.
Pain: A separate project tracker per client means separate admin, separate billing, and sprint boards your PMs open in a different tab from where the stand-up conversation is happening.
- Sprint boards and backlogs live beside the channel the team uses for daily stand-ups.
- Turn the Agile module off for content-only or light-touch retainers — fewer moving parts.
- Delivery leads get full kanban and sprint views without a separate vendor login.
- Ticket context surfaces directly in threads — no copy-pasting tracker links into chat.
Acme Corp
# delivery
# sprint-4
# design-review
Stand-up
AUTH-14 unblocked, moving to review
Need design sign-off on AUTH-17
To do
2AUTH-19
Rate-limit login endpoint
BackendAUTH-20
Refresh token rotation
BackendIn progress
2AUTH-14
SSO integration — SAML 2.0
BackendFE-22
Login page redesign
FrontendReview
2AUTH-17
MFA enforcement policy
SecurityFE-19
Avatar upload flow
FrontendDone
3AUTH-11
Password complexity rules
BackendAUTH-12
Session timeout logic
BackendFE-18
Dark mode tokens
FrontendAUTH-14
In progressSSO integration — SAML 2.0
In-context thread
Metadata mapping done, testing IdP handshake now
PR up — needs review before EOD
Reply…
↵Module 3 · Living Documentation
The source of truth — always current, always in-context.
Pain: SOWs on shared drives, runbooks in external wiki tools, architecture decisions buried in email threads — no single source of truth, and none of it lives beside the actual delivery work.
- Long-lived reference material — SOWs, runbooks, handover docs — in the same tenant as delivery.
- Real-time collaborative editing so specs evolve with the engagement, not behind it.
- Permissions inherit from your workspace model — no separate docs tool to administer.
- Docs link directly from channel threads and agile tickets — no context switching.
- Search stays inside the tenant boundary you define and sell to clients.
Acme Corp · Living Docs
Statement of Work — Phase 2
Last edited by Sarah · 2 hours ago
1. Scope of Delivery
This engagement covers the design, development, and handover of the authentication module (SAML 2.0 SSO, MFA enforcement) and the client-facing portal for Acme Corp. Work is governed by the rates and milestones defined in Schedule A.
Timeline: Phase 2 runs 6 April – 30 June 2025. Delivery lead confirms scope is fixed after SOW sign-off.
2. Commercials
Fixed-fee engagement: €60,000 exc. VAT. Payment in three milestones: kick-off (30%), mid-sprint review (40%), final acceptance (30%). Expenses capped at 5% of total fee without written approval.
Out-of-scope requests will be raised as change requests and agreed in writing before work commences.
Comments
Sarah
09:14
Confirm Phase 2 end date with client — June 30 still holds per last call.
Tom
ResolvedExpense cap updated to 5% per legal.
Linked tickets
Permissions
Delivery lead
Full editConsultant
CommentGuest (client)
View onlyVersion
v3 · current
v2 · Apr 12
v1 · Apr 3
Layer 2 · Governance
In productRunning the business — where margin is won or lost.
Governance ships inside the same tenant as delivery: engagements with budget and member rates, time entry and approval, invoicing from approved hours, realtime burn and portfolio views, bench and capacity planning — plus enterprise-grade SSO, audit logging, and a secure vault for credentials. This layer is in product today and continues to deepen (integrations, analytics, and policy knobs vary by plan).
Talk to sales for a walkthrough against your engagement model and procurement checklist.
Steering committee reports & delivery
Client-ready PDFs — generated, branded, and repeatable.In product
Stop rebuilding the Friday deck by hand. KernelWork renders steering-grade PDFs from live engagement data — cover pages, budget and burn, hours, invoicing, sprint velocity where agile is enabled, plus tenant-wide portfolio margin and capacity & bench reports. Successful renders persist to your object store with time-limited share links. Draft mode can gate the first approvals per engagement; scheduled delivery emails those artefacts on a cadence you control, using provider or SMTP transport — with sensible fallbacks when corporate gateways cap attachment size.
Module 4 · Financial Oversight
Real-time budget vs. actual — before scope creep becomes an invoice problem.In product
Pain: External time sheets require consultants to reconstruct their day from memory at month-end. Billable hours slip, invoices run late, and no one can see utilisation against delivery scope until it is already too late.
- Log hours against the channel, ticket, or doc you are actively working on — no context switch.
- Budget vs. actual updates live as hours accrue — not at month-end when the damage is done.
- Project leads see utilisation against scope and get alerts before overruns happen.
- Invoices built from approved, billable time for the engagement — with optional agile task context on line items.
- Time data stays in your tenant alongside delivery artefacts — not in a third-party service.
Active timer
Acme Corp
# delivery · AUTH-14
1:23:04
Today
5h 12m
This week
22h 40m
Billable
18h 55m
Budget vs. actual
Acme Corp
€38.4k / €60k
64% consumed
Vertex Group
€21.6k / €24k
90% consumed · review scope
Nordic Fintech
€5.4k / €18k
30% consumed
Utilisation — this week
Tom R.
36h
Sarah M.
32h
Ali K.
28h
Jana P.
16h
Module 5 · Resource Planning
Bench capacity, allocations, and upcoming rolloff — visible before you sign the next SOW.In product
Pain: Capacity decisions get made in spreadsheets and hallway conversations. By the time a project lead realises the team is overcommitted, the SOW is signed and the client is expecting delivery on a timeline that is no longer achievable.
- High-level capacity planner that answers: who is available for the next engagement, at what capacity.
- Bench view across all active retainers — not per-project silos that miss cross-engagement load.
- Allocation against sprint commitments surfaced alongside the agile board.
- Operations and finance directors see bench health without interrupting delivery leads.
Bench capacity — across engagements
Tom R.
Backend
15% free
Sarah M.
Delivery lead
20% free
Ali K.
Frontend
20% free
Jana P.
DevOps
40% free
Chris B.
Backend
100% free
Acme Corp
Vertex Group
Nordic Fintech
Bench (unallocated)
Upcoming availability
Chris B.
Available now
Jana P.
Free from Jun 2
Ali K.
Free from Jul 1
Allocation gap
Nordic Fintech engagement starts Jun 15. Backend capacity not assigned — 2 weeks until gap.
Module 6 · Secure Asset Vault
Project secrets — encrypted and scoped, not passed around in messages.In product
The vault ships as a first-class module; exact policies, rotation UX, and compliance mapping depend on your plan and deployment — confirm with sales for procurement packets.
Pain: API keys, environment configs, and client credentials travel through chat messages, shared spreadsheets, and email. Every consultant who has ever forwarded a staging password knows the security exposure this creates.
- Encrypted storage for project secrets: API keys, credentials, environment configs — scoped to each workspace.
- Access control inherits from your workspace permissions — no separate secrets tool to administer.
- Audit log for every secret read or rotation — evidence for client security reviews.
- Searchable via Unified Search — find a credential as fast as you find a message.
Acme Corp · Vault
Name
Value
Access
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
sk_live_••••••••••••••••••••••••
Delivery leadDB_PASSWORD_PROD
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
Delivery leadSAML_IDP_CERT
-----BEGIN CERT•••••••••••
BackendSENDGRID_API_KEY
SG.••••••••••••••••••••••••
BackendS3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
••••••••••••••••••••••••••
DevOpsAccess log
Tom R. Read
DB_PASSWORD_PROD
09:14
Ali K. Read
SAML_IDP_CERT
08:52
Sarah M. Rotated
STRIPE_SECRET_KEY
Yesterday
Jana P. Read
S3_SECRET_ACCESS_KEY
Yesterday
Permissions per role
Delivery lead
Read + RotateBackend
Read (scoped)DevOps
Read (scoped)Consultant
No accessGuest
No accessLayer 3 · Transparency
ExpandingThe client experience — professional by default.
Client-facing surfaces and unified discovery already exist in the workspace. What continues to expand is full white-label packaging, cross-module search depth, and assistive intelligence — ask sales what is enabled for your tenant and roadmap quarter.
Talk to sales about portal branding, discovery scope, and KernelAI availability.
Module 7 · White-Label Client Portal
What clients see — under your brand, not ours.Expanding
Pain: Clients chase status updates by email. Consultancies spend time writing update decks that are outdated the moment they are sent. Neither side has a shared, reliable view of where the engagement stands.
- A client portal experience ships in the product; fully custom domains and end-to-end white-label polish vary by roadmap and plan — confirm before you promise in a client SOW.
- Clients see a curated view: sprint progress, approved documents, and budget health.
- Scoped access — client A sees client A's portal only. No cross-engagement exposure.
- No KernelWork branding visible to your clients — you own the relationship.
Overview
Sprint
Documents
Budget
Sprint 4 · In progress
67%
8 of 12 done
Milestone 1
CompleteMilestone 2
CompleteMilestone 3
In progressApproved documents
Statement of Work v2
Apr 3
Design Specification
Apr 10
Security Assessment
Apr 18
Sprint 3 Report
Apr 28
Budget health
Consumed
€38,400
Total
€60,000
64% consumed · on track
Next invoice
May 31
Payment terms
Net 30
Remaining
€21,600
Module 8 · Unified Search
One search. Every module. Instant answers.Expanding
Unified discovery ships in the admin workspace; coverage across vault, CRM, and every artefact type grows release over release.
Pain: Information is scattered across chat history, document editors, project trackers, and spreadsheets. Finding the right decision, credential, or spec requires knowing which tool it lives in — which is often the thing nobody remembers.
- Cross-module search: find a secret in the Vault, a decision in Chat, a task in a Sprint — one query.
- Results are permission-scoped — consultants only surface what they have access to.
- Search stays inside your tenant boundary — no data leaves your environment.
- Available as a global shortcut in the desktop shell for high-volume delivery environments.
retainer SLA
Chat
3 results# delivery
Apr 12
Sarah: SLA clause updated in SOW v2 — pinned above
# sprint-4
Apr 14
Tom: Client confirmed 99.9% uptime SLA in writing
Docs
2 resultsStatement of Work — Phase 2
Full edit…uptime SLA of 99.9% applies from go-live…
Security & Compliance Policy
View…SLA breach procedure outlined in Appendix B…
Tickets
1 resultMFA enforcement policy — SLA compliance requirement
Vault
0 resultsNo vault secrets match · access not in scope
Module 9 · KernelAI
Intelligence that understands the SOW.Roadmap
Today: the stack includes targeted assist hooks (for example staff-approved weekly engagement summaries where enabled), alongside deterministic risk and forecast signals in reporting. Roadmap: broader “SOW health” panels, spec-from-notes acceleration, and deeper cross-module automation — scope varies by release; treat the mock below as the north star, not a guarantee for every tenant on day one.
Pain: Delivery health is reactive — problems surface in retrospectives or client escalations, not before they affect the engagement. No tool connects the agreed scope to the actual work happening day by day.
- Roadmap emphasis: full “SOW health” panels, faster spec drafting from meetings, and tighter assistive overrun narratives — building on deterministic risk and forecast data you already get in reports today.
- Designed to enhance every module over time — intelligence embedded where the work happens, not a bolt-on chatbot.
SOW health audit
Acme Corp · Phase 2
Scope alignment
92
Milestone pace
74
Budget adherence
88
Risk indicators
61
AI insight
Sprint velocity down 18% vs. agreed pace. Milestone 3 at risk if not addressed this week.
Spec from meeting notes
Kick-off call · Apr 28 · 1h 23m
Generated draft
Objective: Deliver SAML 2.0 SSO and MFA enforcement before go-live on June 30.
Agreed scope: Authentication module only. Billing integration deferred to Phase 3.
Decision: Client to provide IdP metadata by May 5. Delay triggers scope review.
Owner: Tom R. — AUTH-14, AUTH-17.
Budget overrun prediction
Vertex Group · Retainer
At risk
+€3,200
projected overrun by May 31
113% of budget on current pace
Recommended actions
Raise change request for 12h over-scope
Review Ali K. allocation (90% on Vertex)
Flag to client before next billing cycle
North-star mock — panels and depth vary by release and tenant configuration.