Episode 75 · Season 1
The Artifact Ladder: 5 Tiers From PowerPoint to Full AI-Built Apps
Your team is generating more with AI than ever, and most of it still lands in a slide deck or a long email that nobody has time to read. Cirrius Solutions COO Tim Harting and Head of Custom Development Gavin Franklin lay out The Artifact Ladder, five tiers for sharing AI-built work, from a plain Excel sheet to a full application with its own database, and the use case that fits each rung.
What you’ll learn:
- Where each of the five tiers fits: native Office files, static HTML, a public hosted page, an access-controlled site, and a full application with a backend
- Why agents produce richer output for fewer tokens in HTML than in PowerPoint or Word, and why Tim now builds most documents in HTML and saves them to PDF
- How collaboration changes once an artifact is hosted: GitHub branching for internal teams, and a backend database capturing client input at the application layer
Who it’s for:
Technology executives, engineering leaders, and consultants deciding how AI-generated work gets shared, versioned, and governed. Also anyone who has lost an afternoon making fonts match across forty slides.
Guest + credibility:
Tim Harting is COO of Cirrius Solutions, a former Army infantry officer who has built more than his share of PowerPoint decks in the military and in business, and who calls the shift to AI-built artifacts one of the biggest benefits AI can offer. Gavin Franklin is Head of Custom Development at Cirrius Solutions, pulled the Artifact Ladder together, and makes the case that this tier five is going to be the next major milestone for how AI is used within businesses.
Primary CTA:
Listen, then put the artifact you are building this week on the ladder and decide which rung it has actually earned.
Recommended Links & Resources:
Tim Harting on LinkedIn
Gavin Franklin on LinkedIn
The Ladder Companion Artifact
Greg Banks on LinkedIn
Jason Fowler Music
Cirrius Solutions
Agentic AI Episodes
Any Questions: Reach out to us at CirriusTalk@cirriussolutions.com
We cover
- The Evolution of AI in Business
- Understanding the Artifact Ladder
- Tier 1: Native Office Artifacts
- Tier 2: Static HTML Files
- Tier 3: Public Hosted Pages
- Tier 4: Access Controlled Sites
Chapters
- 0:30The Evolution of AI in Business
- 2:58Understanding the Artifact Ladder
- 5:27Tier 1: Native Office Artifacts
- 7:40Tier 2: Static HTML Files
- 10:30Tier 3: Public Hosted Pages
- 13:02Tier 4: Access Controlled Sites
- 15:22Tier 5: Full Applications
- 18:04Collaboration in the Age of AI
- 20:53The Future of AI Artifacts
Resources and downloads
The artifacts Greg’s team built for this episode, free to download.
The Artifact Ladder: Five Tiers of AI-Generated Artifacts, From File to Application
Five tiers of AI-generated output, from native Office files to static HTML, hosted pages, access-controlled pages, and full applications that write back to a live database or CRM. Shows what each tier trades in simplicity for reach, why the jump from tier one to tier two is the biggest, and why the practical rule is to start at the lowest tier that does the job.
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