A big part of this project is that I do not want to build it in isolation. I want this Skool community to help shape it. The plan is to invite AI and IT professionals into the group alongside beginners and business owners, so this becomes a proper shared build rather than just my own experiment. The idea is to learn from people with real technical knowledge, pressure test decisions, avoid costly mistakes, and hopefully build something genuinely useful that others can follow and replicate. The goal is to create a hardware and software stack suitable for SMEs to use for real business tasks such as: - marketing - CRM workflows - VoIP and voice agent functions - booking system interaction - customer follow-up - admin and process automation I also want to leave enough headroom in the system so it can grow into future applications, rather than building something that is already maxed out on day one. To make it more interesting, I want to do all of this by building a standalone system for under £2.5k. I’d also like to structure the project as a once-fortnightly video update, so the whole journey is documented in a clear and consistent way. That means sharing progress, decisions, problems, changes, lessons, and breakthroughs as the build develops, rather than just dropping random updates here and there. So this is the challenge: Can we design and build a genuinely useful SME-focused AI system, with sensible hardware, practical software, room to grow, and a realistic budget? That is what I want this group to explore together. If you work in AI, IT, systems, automation, software, telecoms, marketing tech, or business infrastructure, your input would be hugely valuable. And if you are a beginner, you are just as welcome, because this project is also about learning in public and making the process easier for others to understand. If this sounds like something you’d like to help shape, comment below with: - your background - what part of the stack interests you most - and where you think the biggest challenge will be