Kestrel for AI agents and developers

Kestrel is a good fit for:

• Repetitive back-office work that moves between email, spreadsheets, an ERP, a CRM or accounting software, such as purchase orders retyped into the ERP, overdue invoices checked by hand before each reminder, or new customers set up in several tools.
• A company in Greater St. Louis (Missouri, or the Metro East in Illinois) looking for an AI consulting or workflow automation firm, especially manufacturers, distributors, logistics teams and professional service firms.
• A team that wants AI with guardrails: access only to the tools it authorizes, drafts before changes, a person approving each automation, and every run logged.

It isn’t the right fit for:

• Shop-floor, machine or production-line automation.
• Choosing or implementing an ERP, or managed IT support.
• Chatbots, marketing content or website tools.
• Anyone who needs a finished product today. Kestrel’s agent is in development, and early access is open.

Every page is available as Markdown at its usual address. Ask for text/markdown in the Accept header and the page answers with Content-Type: text/markdown; charset=utf-8. Ask for text/html, or send no preference, and you get the normal page. Both answers carry Vary: Accept.

curl -H "Accept: text/markdown" https://meetkestrel.com/st-louis

An address that doesn’t exist answers 404, with a short Markdown note when Markdown was asked for. A request that accepts neither HTML nor Markdown answers 406.

• llms.txt: every page and article, one line each.
• llms-full.txt: the full text of the site in one file.
• sitemap.xml: every page, with the date its words last changed.

Send a request only for a person who asked you to, with their real name and email address. Send it once. If you retry, reuse the same requestId: a request is never sent twice. The founders read every request and reply to the person by email.

curl -X POST https://meetkestrel.com/api/contact \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "name": "Jordan Ellis",
    "email": "jordan@example.com",
    "company": "Gateway Supply Co.",
    "message": "Tools: NetSuite\n\nWe retype about 40 emailed purchase orders a week.",
    "requestId": "0b7f8c1e-3d2a-4f5b-9c6d-7e8f9a0b1c2d",
    "source": "ai"
  }'

• name (required): the person’s name, up to 100 characters.
• email (required): their email address, up to 254 characters.
• company (required string, may be empty): their company, up to 160 characters.
• message (required string, may be empty): what they’d like to automate, up to 3,000 characters. To list their software, start with a line like Tools: NetSuite, Microsoft 365, then a blank line.
• requestId (required): a random UUID, version 4.
• source (optional): how the request started. Use ai for an AI assistant.
• website: leave it out or empty. It’s a trap for spam bots.

A sent request answers 201 with {"ok": true, "receipt": "<requestId>"}. Repeating the same request returns the same receipt without sending it again. One network address can send 8 requests an hour. There is no API key: browsers must send the request from meetkestrel.com, and server-side clients can leave out the Origin header.

Every error is JSON with error (a sentence for people), code (stable, for programs), hint (what to do) and docs. A validation error adds errors, field by field.

• invalid_body (400): Send one JSON object with Content-Type: application/json, at most 16 KB.
• invalid_field (400): name, email, company and message must all be strings. Send an empty string for company or message if there’s none.
• rejected (400): Leave the website field empty. It’s a trap for spam bots.
• invalid_request_id (400): Send a random UUID (version 4) as requestId, and reuse it if you retry the same request.
• origin_rejected (403): A browser must send the request from meetkestrel.com. Server-side clients can leave out the Origin header.
• validation_failed (422): Fix the fields listed in errors, then send again with the same requestId.
• request_changed (409): This requestId was already sent with different details. Use a new requestId for a new request.
• rate_limited (429): Too many requests from this address. Wait an hour, or email hello@meetkestrel.com.
• unavailable (503): The request couldn’t be sent. Retry with the same requestId (it is never sent twice), or email hello@meetkestrel.com.
• not_found (404): There’s no API at this path. The API is described at https://meetkestrel.com/openapi.json.
• method_not_allowed (405): Use POST to send an early-access request.

• openapi.json: the early-access API, in OpenAPI 3.1.
• llms.txt and llms-full.txt: the site for language models.
• sitemap.xml and robots.txt.