# Associative Trails

> Associative Trails is a boutique internet consultancy based on the high-speed rail link in East Kent, UK. We take pride in crafting web and mobile applications that save time and make money for our clients.

Associative Trails is the practice of Matt Perdeaux. We help professional services firms — architecture, engineering, law, insurance — work out where AI can help, where it can't, and what knowledge and judgement sit underneath both. For twenty years we have built systems that help firms capture, structure and use knowledge; those same foundations now decide whether AI adoption succeeds.

- Canonical site: https://www.associativetrails.com/
- Contact: https://www.associativetrails.com/contact/
- Full URL index: https://www.associativetrails.com/sitemap.xml
- Every page listed below is HTML; append no extension. Titles and summaries are taken from each page's own metadata.

## Core pages

- [Home](https://www.associativetrails.com/): We help professional services firms work out where AI can help, where it can't, and what knowledge and judgement sit underneath both.
- [About us](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/): We know what it takes to get a firm's knowledge into usable shape, what that effort is worth, and, just as importantly, when it isn't worth doing.
- [Blog](https://www.associativetrails.com/blog/): A selection of thoughts, notes on other people's thoughts, experiences with APIs, tips, tricks, and other stuff.
- [Contact us](https://www.associativetrails.com/contact/): Get in touch by emailing us or filling in our contact form.
- [Hello](https://www.associativetrails.com/hello/): All about Matt Perdeaux and Associative Trails.
- [Our work](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/): Successful AI depends on understanding where knowledge lives, how decisions get made, and what should remain human judgement.

## Services

What we do, and the technical ground it is built on.

- [Android developers based in Kent](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/androiddeveloperskent/): We develop and maintain Android applications for clients based in Kent and London.
- [Content Management System (CMS) development](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/cmsdevelopment/): We develop and maintain intranet applications for clients based in the UK.
- [Coldfusion application development](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/coldfusiondevelopers/): We develop and maintain Coldfusion applications for clients based in the UK.
- [Intranet application development](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/intranetdevelopment/): We develop and maintain intranet applications for clients based in the UK.
- [iPad developers based in Kent](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/ipaddeveloperskent/): We develop and maintain iPad applications for clients based in Kent and London.
- [iPhone developers based in Kent](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/iphonedeveloperskent/): We develop and maintain iPhone applications for clients based in Kent and London.
- [Python & Django web application development](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/pythondjangodevelopers/): We develop and maintain Python & Django web applications for clients based in the UK.
- [Responsive design for mobile devices](https://www.associativetrails.com/about/responsivedesign/): We design and build web applications with responsive interfaces for mobile devices.

## Case studies

Projects delivered for client firms, mostly knowledge, workflow and intranet systems in professional services.

- [Arup Website Technical Realignment](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/arupcms/): A bespoke content management interface that maintains thousands of web pages, accommodates hundreds of authors and publishes standards-compliant code.
- [Arup Collateral Store and Branded Products Shop](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/arupcollateral/): An intranet application for sharing marketing collateral and internal ordering.
- [Arup Contacts and Events Database](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/arupcontacts/): An intranet application for managing client contacts and organising events.
- [Collaboration](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/collaboration/): A central repository for geographically-dispersed team to record contacts, appointments, documents and other information.
- [Croxley Rail Link CMS](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/croxleycms/): A bespoke CMS retro-fitted to an existing static site.
- [Eckersley O'Callaghan Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/eckersleyocallaghanintranet/): A self-populating technical library that grew into a comprehensive company-wide information portal for one of the UK's most accomplished engineering specialists.
- [Ellipse Website and CMS](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/ellipsecms/): Slick content management with YouTube, Wufoo and PDF generation.
- [Gallerysmith](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/gallerysmith/): A fully-featured content and customer relationship management system for art galleries, including automatic image optimization.
- [Grant Thornton Events Management System](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/grantthorntonevents/): Full lifecycle event management - attendee registration, mailshots, table plans and name badges.
- [Heatherwick Studio Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/heatherwiki/): A bespoke company intranet for one of the UK's top design studios.
- [London Business School Knowledge Capture](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/lbsknowledge/): Knowledge capture and sharing with a difference
- [Last.fm Normaliser](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/normaliser/): A little application to rank your favourite artists and albums by an estimation of how long you have spent listening to them.
- [Old Arupians Community Website (2019)](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/oldarupians/): A thorough refresh of one of our most venerable and successful projects. Now fully responsive and even easier to use.
- [Old Arupians Community Website (2006)](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/oldarupians2006/): A thorough refresh of one of our most venerable and successful projects. Now fully responsive and even easier to use.
- [Ashridge Business Perspectives](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/perspectives/): How we used open-source software and open data standards to help a leading business school extend its offering.
- [Safetime CBC - Android App and Web Portal](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/safetimecbc/): Android App and Web portal for a multiple award-winning construction site safety monitoring system.
- [Scott Brownrigg App for iPad and iPhone](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggapp/): A stylish portable portfolio of award-winning architecture projects, available via iTunes for iPad and iPhone.
- [Scott Brownrigg Compass](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggcompass/): An updated bespoke company information portal. Fully responsive, very well-connected.
- [Scott Brownrigg Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggintranet/): A vibrant, design-led company intranet that is viewed and maintained using a standard web browser - no technical skills required.
- [Scott Brownrigg Spider](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/scottbrownriggspider/): Building a bespoke CRM system to sit proudly at the centre of an award-winning architecture practise.
- [Sheppard Robson CRM](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/sheppardrobsoncrm/): How we helped a leading architect manage their customer relationships.
- [Sheppard Robson Intranet](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/sheppardrobsonintranet/): How we delivered a fully-featured company intranet with Active Directory integration in double-quick time.
- [Sling](https://www.associativetrails.com/work/sling/): A flexible and innovative workflow building tool enabling companies to set up and administer approval workflows for business development, procurement, and all sorts of other key processes.

## Writing

Essays and notes on AI readiness, knowledge management and professional practice. Newest first.

- [Why hard things look easy](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/09/03/why-hard-things-look-easy.html): 2026-09-03 — TikTok removes 178 million videos a quarter. It still cannot reliably tell you whether a car is driving on the wrong side of the road.
- [Your second brain will not scale](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/08/27/your-second-brain-will-not-scale.html): 2026-08-27 — A folder of markdown files will run a one-person business. It will not run a practice of fifty.
- [Where does the load go?](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/08/20/where-does-the-load-go.html): 2026-08-20 — Your practice can keep every graduate post it has and still lose the training pipeline.
- [Cast in place](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/08/06/cast-in-place.html): 2026-08-06 — Your instructions, your model and your file format change at different speeds. One interface locks them together.
- [Everyone adopted, nobody designed it](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/07/30/everyone-adopted-nobody-designed-it.html): 2026-07-30 — AI reached almost every firm and changed almost nothing, because it arrived one person at a time.
- [Borrowing against the day a client asks why](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/07/23/borrowing-against-the-day-a-client-asks-why.html): 2026-07-23 — Polished AI output no longer means good thinking. The gap between what your team ships and what it understands is quietly compounding into debt.
- [Model churn is not your problem](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/07/16/model-churn-is-not-your-problem.html): 2026-07-16 — Once your playbooks are written down, the leaderboard can flip as often as it likes.
- [Introducing Ookbook - data that knows how to fetch itself](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/07/09/introducing-ookbook.html): 2026-07-09 — A markdown file that carries both data and the instructions to recreate it
- [The canary in your context window](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/07/02/the-canary-in-your-context-window.html): 2026-07-02 — A half-second check that catches silent instruction drift in long AI sessions.
- [The Deliverable Fallacy](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/06/25/the-deliverable-fallacy.html): 2026-06-25 — The deck is what the client pays for. It was never what actually changed things.
- [I thought the post was finished. My readers disagreed.](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/06/18/i-thought-the-post-was-finished.html): 2026-06-18 — One AI asked to review your writing will catch a weak sentence. It will not tell you which reader stopped halfway through and why.
- [The Effort Dividend](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/06/11/the-effort-dividend.html): 2026-06-11 — Professional trust was backed by visible work. AI has just taken it off the gold standard.
- [Introducing Roundtable - A panel of experts that never clocks off](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/06/04/introducing-roundtable.html): 2026-06-04 — Previous posts diagnosed the problem and described the countermeasures. This one delivers the tool.
- [What to Write Down (And What to Protect)](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/05/28/what-to-write-down.html): 2026-05-28 — Writing down what your firm knows is essential preparation for AI. It can also quietly erode the most valuable knowledge you have.
- [What your AI tools are missing](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/05/21/what-your-ai-tools-are-missing.html): 2026-05-21 — AI is only as good as the context it receives. Most firms don't have that context in any usable form.
- [The yes-man in the room - how to design sycophancy out of your AI workflow](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/05/14/the-yes-man-in-the-room.html): 2026-05-14 — Your AI will validate whatever you bring it. Here is how to build systems that make disagreement structural, not optional.
- [Agents cannot do osmosis](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/05/07/agents-cannot-do-osmosis.html): 2026-05-07 — AI tools are getting faster and more capable. But the failures are increasingly subtle, technically plausible, contextually wrong.
- [Tacit debt and the verification gap](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/04/30/tacit-debt-and-the-verification-gap.html): 2026-04-30 — Y Combinator thinks the company brain is a frontier problem. After 25 years building them, I think they're wrong about what's been holding it back.
- [The next bottleneck](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/04/23/the-next-bottleneck.html): 2026-04-23 — AI has sped up the build, but project timelines haven't moved. The constraint didn't disappear - it just moved downstream.
- [Something Worth Manipulating](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/04/16/something-worth-manipulating.html): 2026-04-16 — The notes were always worth keeping. Now there's something that can actually use them.
- [The agreement incentive](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/04/09/the-agreement-incentive.html): 2026-04-09 — AI is your most capable thinking partner - and your least honest one.
- [Human in the loop](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/04/02/human-in-the-loop.html): 2026-04-02 — The machine writes the code, the human takes the blame. Welcome to the Reverse Centaur.
- [AI agent skills as pluggable knowledge](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2026/03/26/ai-agent-skills-as-pluggable-knowledge.html): 2026-03-26 — AI agent skills turn expert knowledge into reusable, executable workflows anyone can apply instantly without coding
- [Experiments in Jupyter](https://www.associativetrails.com/tips/2023/10/27/experiments-in-jupyter.html): 2023-10-27 — Adding a Jupyter notebook to my development stack has really helped my process
- [Streamlining credit checking: How Sling can help](https://www.associativetrails.com/product-features/2023/04/19/streamlining-credit-checking-how-sling-can-help.html): 2023-04-19 — Sling's streamlined credit checking provides companies with the information they need to be financially responsible
- [Azure functions help carry the load](https://www.associativetrails.com/tips/2023/03/08/azure-functions-help-carry-the-load.html): 2023-03-08 — Using externally-hosted functions to do data crunching and other processor-intensive tasks.
- [Identify users the Azure way](https://www.associativetrails.com/tips/2023/02/02/user-sign-in-azure.html): 2023-02-02 — How we set up an Azure-hosted web application to authenticate and identify our users
- [Migrating a Coldfusion application to Microsoft Azure - setting up a data source](https://www.associativetrails.com/tips/2022/09/29/migrating-coldfusion-to-azure-setting-up-a-datasource.html): 2022-09-29 — Setting up an encrypted data source for Azure SQL services
- [Classifying content in bulk](https://www.associativetrails.com/product-features/2022/09/16/classifying-content-in-bulk.html): 2022-09-16 — The classification, tagging and metadata management of large content repositories should not be a chore
- [Dealing with short signoff delays in Sling](https://www.associativetrails.com/product-features/2022/09/08/dealing-with-signoff-delays-in-sling.html): 2022-09-08 — A short delay in signing off needn't bring the whole process to a grinding halt
- [Responding to prospective client emails promptly and with confidence](https://www.associativetrails.com/product-features/2022/06/20/responding-to-prospective-client-emails-promptly-and-with-confidence.html): 2022-06-20 — Sling gives you immediate access to all the important information, without leaving Outlook
- [Deep Learning Architect - Classification for Architectural Design through the Eye of Artificial Intelligence (2018)](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2022/05/02/deep-learning-architect-classification-for-architectural-design-through-the-eye-of-artificial-intelligence-2018.html): 2022-05-02 — Notes on a 2018 paper by Yuji Yoshimura, Bill Cai, Zhoutong Wang, and Carlo Ratti
- [Architectural Drawings Recognition and Generation through Machine Learning (2018)](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2022/05/01/architectural-drawings-recognition-and-generation-through-machine-learning-2018.html): 2022-05-01 — Notes on a 2018 paper by Weixin Huang and Hao Zheng
- [OPTIMISING IMAGE CLASSIFICATION - Implementation of Convolutional Neural Network Algorithms to Distinguish Between Plans and Sections within the Architectural, Engineering and Construction (AEC) Industry (2019)](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2022/04/30/optimising-image-classification-implementation-of-cnn-to-distinguish-between-plans-and-sections-2019.html): 2022-04-30 — Notes on a 2019 paper by Alessandra Fabbri, M. Hank Haeusler, and Yannis Zavoleas
- [Drawing Recognition. Integrating Machine Learning Systems into Architectural Design Workflows (2020)](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2022/04/29/drawing-recognition-integrating-machine-learning-systems-into-architectural-design-workflows-2020.html): 2022-04-29 — Notes on a 2020 paper by Lachlan Brown, Michael Yip, Nicole Gardner, M. Hank Haeusler Haeusler, Nariddh Khan, Yannis Zavoleas, and Christina Ramos
- [Classification of Building Information Model (BIM) Structures with Deep Learning (2018)](https://www.associativetrails.com/notes/2022/04/28/classification-of-bim-structures-with-deep-learning-2018.html): 2022-04-28 — Notes on a 2018 paper by Francesco Lomio, Ricardo Farinha, Mauri Laasonen, and Heikki Huttunen

## Optional

Secondary material — safe to skip if you are working to a limited context budget.

- [Eckersley O'Callaghan Intranet (gallery)](https://www.associativetrails.com/project-galleries/eckersley-ocallaghan-intranet/): Screenshots — Company intranet. Image-led, little body text.
- [Heatherwick Studio Intranet (gallery)](https://www.associativetrails.com/project-galleries/heatherwick-intranet/): Screenshots — Digging that studio scene. Image-led, little body text.
- [Scott Brownrigg Compass (gallery)](https://www.associativetrails.com/project-galleries/scott-brownrigg-compass/): Screenshots — Effective portal enhancement. Image-led, little body text.
- [Sling (gallery)](https://www.associativetrails.com/project-galleries/sling/): Screenshots — Lighweight CRM and BPM. Image-led, little body text.
- [22 April 2026 - Egnyte Mappings (7m) (video)](https://www.associativetrails.com/videos/20260422-egnyte-mappings-1be8b0ec-1b1e-44f3-b77d-2f063aa799d5/): Video walkthrough, no transcript published.
- [Blog by tag](https://www.associativetrails.com/blog/): Posts are also browsable by tag under /blog/tag/{tag}.html and by category (notes, tips, product-features).
- [Sitemap](https://www.associativetrails.com/sitemap.xml): Machine-readable index of every published URL.