sulla — agent
$ sulla init --project acme
Scanning project structure...
Found 847 files, 12 services
✓ Agent initialized
$ sulla plan "add auth"
Generating execution plan...
✓ 14 tasks queued
docker-stack — build
$ docker compose up -d
Creating nginx_1 ... done
Creating php-fpm_1 ... done
Creating waf_1 ... done
Creating siem_1 ... done
✓ Stack healthy on :443
protocol-ci — deploy
$ git push origin main
Running pipeline...
Lint .......... pass
Test .......... pass
Build ......... pass
✓ Deployed to production
launchpad — saas starter
$ launchpad new my-saas
Scaffolding: Laravel 11
Modules: auth, billing, teams
Ready: production-grade
✓ SaaS scaffold complete

We Build the Software
Your Business Actually Needs

We build it faster because we use AI. You pay less. You own it at the end—not another agency you’re locked into.

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Merchant Protocol LLC · Coeur d’Alene, ID · Founded 2008 merchantprotocol.com (208) 215-7734
Act I — Manifesto

We build and deploy reliable, custom AI software that integrates deeply into your Agency, SaaS, e-commerce, or enterprise operations—so you can serve customers smarter, automate lead generation and sales outreach, handle support at scale, and drive real revenue growth.

We Build What
Off-the-Shelf Can’t

Every day, business owners tell us the same thing: “I need software that works exactly how my business works.” Not a SaaS product that almost fits. Not a tool they have to bend their whole process around. Software built for the specific way they quote jobs, manage clients, track their team, or run daily operations.

Most agencies sell you on a platform and hand you a login. Most developers quote six figures and six months. And if you’ve tried building it yourself with Cursor, Lovable, or Claude Code—you either hit a wall at 80% or shipped something that keeps breaking in production.

That’s the gap we fill. We’re a custom software development company. We use AI as our build engine, which is why we move fast and cost less than traditional dev shops. But you’re not buying AI—you’re buying a finished system, owned entirely by you, built for your business.

“If you’re doing something manually every day that software could handle—we build that thing.”

Here’s the work we actually do:

Custom Business Software — Quoting tools, client portals, job management apps, internal ops dashboards, industry-specific platforms. If no off-the-shelf product does exactly what you need, we build it from scratch. You own it outright—no recurring SaaS fees, no vendor lock-in.

Rescue & Completion Work — Built 80% of something with Cursor, Lovable, Bolt, or Claude Code and can’t get it over the finish line? We take it from stuck to shipped. Clean code, proper architecture, deployed to production. Your vision, finally working.

AI Features Built Into Your Software — Chatbots trained on your business, document processing, automated workflows, custom AI agents. We build these as features inside your software—not as separate subscriptions you’re duct-taping together.

We’ve been building production software since 2008. We’ve worked with American Express, H&M, Papa Murphy’s, and dozens of small businesses across the Inland Northwest. The work speaks for itself. You talk directly to the developer who builds your project—not an account manager, not a rotating team, not a chatbot.

American Express
Body Glove
H&M
Papa Murphy's
Relief Factor
Alien Gear Holsters
Five Star Marketing
Launchpad
// Flagship Product

We Have Engineered
the Way AI Thinks

Zapier moves data between apps. Make runs sequences. Sulla makes decisions. You define the boundaries and the goals — Sulla reads everything coming in, figures out what matters, and acts. No rules to maintain. No triggers to babysit. You set the intent once; it handles the rest.

Flagship

Your AI Agent,
On Your Terms

Plugging ChatGPT into your business and hoping for the best isn’t a plan. Your processes took years to build — the exceptions, the edge cases, the rules that aren’t written down because they live in your head. A generic AI doesn’t know any of that. Sulla does, because you teach it. You set the parameters. It works inside them. If something falls outside what you’ve defined, it doesn’t guess — it stops and asks.

  • Simple UI for designing complex AI workflows
  • 300+ integrations—and builds its own on the fly
  • Self-trains on conversations to improve over time
  • Train on your business docs for smarter customer answers
  • Create specialized agents for specific tasks across your org
>_ Get Started — Book a Call
Integrations

More Than 300+ Integrations
Automate Anything.

No need to map data fields, fight configurations and monitor when they break.
The AI makes the call and process the data without you ever having to configure anything.

Open Source

Built in the Open,
Trusted by Production

Protocol CI/CD is the fastest way to get your app live and keep it running. One command and your site is deployed, secured, and monitored—no DevOps team required. It handles the security, the compliance paperwork, and the server management so you never have to think about it. Your business stays online, stays protected, and you get to focus on what actually makes you money.

  • Deploy with one command—no DevOps team required
  • Security, compliance, and monitoring handled automatically
  • SOC 2 Type II audit-ready out of the box
  • Your business stays online and protected 24/7
  • Open source—you own your stack completely
  • Hardened by real-world usage and community audits
protocol — start
$ protocol deploy 'v1.2.0'
 
[protocol] Scanning codebase......... OK
[protocol] Infrastructure provision.. OK
[protocol] Container build & start.. OK
[protocol] Security audit........... PASS
[protocol] SOC 2 compliance......... PASS
[protocol] Health checks............ PASS
 
✓ Deployment complete. All systems operational.
Environment production
Strategy release (7b2c16d)
Secrets encrypted
Containers 1/1 running
Watchers release watcher running
Crontab installed
Completed in 14.2s
 
$
Explore Protocol

Meet the Open Stack

Five products. One ecosystem. Hover to explore each layer of infrastructure.

protocol-cicd
Protocol CI/CD
Zero-config continuous integration and deployment. Push to main and your code is live in minutes. Lint, test, build, deploy—all automated.
$ git push origin main
Pipeline triggered...
Stage 1/4: lint .... pass
Stage 2/4: test .... pass
Stage 3/4: build ... pass
Stage 4/4: deploy .. pass
CI/CD Zero Config Auto Deploy
docker-containers
Docker Containers
Production-grade Ubuntu 24.04 container with Nginx, PHP 8.2-FPM, ModSecurity WAF, and Wazuh SIEM. SOC 2 Type II compliant out of the box.
$ docker compose up -d
nginx ........... healthy
php-fpm ......... healthy
modsecurity ..... active
wazuh-agent ..... active
Ubuntu 24.04 Nginx PHP 8.2 SOC 2
launchpad
Launchpad
Laravel SaaS Starter Kit with authentication, billing, team management, and admin dashboards baked in. Go from idea to production-ready SaaS in hours.
$ launchpad new my-saas
Framework: Laravel 11
Modules: auth, billing, teams
Admin: dashboard ready
Status: production-grade
Laravel SaaS Starter Full Stack
consentguard
ConsentGuard
Drop-in privacy consent management. GDPR, CCPA, and ePrivacy compliant. One script tag, full compliance. Customizable banners and preference centers.
$ consentguard status
Regions: EU, US, UK, CA
Consent rate: 97.4%
Violations: 0
Last audit: 2 days ago
GDPR CCPA Privacy
sulla-desktop
Sulla Desktop
Easy AI workflow orchestration with a simple UI. 300+ integrations, self-training on your conversations, and specialized agents for every task in your org.
$ sulla train --docs ./knowledge-base
Indexing 2,847 documents...
Integrations: 312 active
Agents: 8 specialized
✓ Self-training complete
300+ Integrations Self-Training AI Agents
Feature Merchant Protocol · Issue XVIII · Page 03 03
Feature Article

How We Use AI to
Blitzscale Productivity
and Profit

By Jonathon Byrdziak · 12 min read · Coeur d’Alene, ID

I bet you've never heard the term "context collapse"... but if you've ever tried running an AI agent for more than a couple days, you've almost certainly felt it.

One minute your agent is crushing it—following instructions perfectly, making smart calls, getting real work done. The next? It just... breaks. For no obvious reason. It stops taking action, starts hallucinating nonsense, ignores rules it was nailing yesterday, or flat-out freezes up like it's drunk or suddenly stupid. You tweak the prompt, restart the session, nothing helps. The whole thing collapses into a useless mess.

This isn't random bad luck—it's a real limitation of how today's AI agents and large language models actually work. The AI has hard limits. This is why even the most powerful models flake out on sustained, real-world tasks.

It happens when you give the AI too much at once—too many instructions, too many tools to choose from, too big a prompt, too much history piling up. The model gets overwhelmed, can't decide which path to take, so it falls back to its raw, untrained instincts. One tiny straw breaks the camel's back, and suddenly nothing works anymore. It doesn't just pause; it unravels. Hallucinations kick in, consistency vanishes, productivity dies.

And it hits at the worst possible time. You've invested hours (or days) training it, adding skills, seeing real results... then bam, 3 to 7 days in, it stops being productive. Stops being creative. Stops doing anything useful.

You're left staring at your screen thinking: How are all these influencers getting their bots to do incredible things while mine can't even stay awake?

The dirty secret? Those flashy demos are usually one-trick ponies—simple, single-task setups shown off in a fresh session. They're not running real, ongoing business workflows like you are. When you try for actual productivity—day-after-day automation, complex decisions, long-running tasks—the collapse happens fast. That's the big, unspoken problem with AI agents today: getting tangible, sustained productivity out of them is brutally hard.

We refused to live with that.
So we built something that actually fixes it.

Instead of one big, fragile agent trying to juggle everything (and inevitably collapsing under the load), we use a mixture of agents: a team of smaller, specialized sub-agents, each laser-focused on one thing, all coordinated by a single primary orchestration agent that you talk to directly. Your orchestration agent acts like your personal chief of staff—it decides what needs doing and delegates to the right specialist without overwhelming itself or any single piece.

But we didn't stop at multi-agent basics. We went further than almost anyone else has dared.

While most in the AI world cling to "pure AI" and hope the model figures everything out, we did what feels like heresy in some circles: we blended rock-solid, tried-and-true technology with AI intelligence. We fully merged AI decision-making with structured workflows to create what we call an AI Directed Acyclic Graph (our proprietary orchestration engine).

Think of it as giving your AI a cheat code for reliability.

The results speak for themselves:

  • Perfect memory that lasts days or weeks, not minutes—because we keep the context clean and focused instead of letting it bloat and rot.
  • No more overwhelm—the graph protects short-term memory, delegates heavy lifting to sub-agents, so the main agent stays sharp and makes truly intelligent choices without drowning in options.
  • You stop wasting time teaching at runtime—no endless prompt battles to force behavior. The graph enforces rules, policies, and sequences automatically, so the AI only has to handle the decision right in front of it.
  • Smarter, more consistent decisions over long periods—it can run complex, multi-day tasks reliably, staying creative and on-point without drifting or hallucinating.
  • Zero configuration headaches—no mapping variables, no fragile chains to debug, no constant maintenance. You describe the goal in plain language; the graph engineers the success path behind the scenes.

Thought multi-agent setups or fancy prompts were exciting? Wait until you experience an AI Directed Graph in action. It's like upgrading from a shaky bicycle to a self-driving car—smooth, predictable, powerful.

In game theory terms, if winning means getting reliable results in business, then cheating the system (in the best way) is how you win. We just built the cheat code everyone else is still searching for.

Our flagship Sulla Desktop brings this exact system to you as an open-source desktop app—install it, give it context and a goal, and watch reliable, long-running productivity unfold. For teams needing it scaled and integrated, we deploy custom versions wired into your full stack.

If you're done with agents that tease big wins then collapse when it matters... let's build something that actually lasts.

Book a call—tell me where your current setup is falling apart, and I'll show you how our approach stops the collapse cold.

Quick Read
What is an AI Agent?
Unlike a chatbot or copilot, an AI agent operates autonomously. It reads context, plans actions, executes code changes, runs tests, and submits results—all without human intervention. Sulla Desktop is a fully autonomous AI agent.
Timeline
Key Milestones
2008 — First commit, Magento extensions
2012 — E-commerce platform launch
2016 — Docker containerization begins
2020 — SOC 2 compliance framework
2023 — AI agent development starts
2025 — Sulla Desktop public release
2026 — Full platform integration
Open Source
Apache 2.0 License
All core products are released under the Apache 2.0 license, ensuring unrestricted commercial use, modification, and distribution. View the full source at github.com/merchantprotocol.
sulla — agent.log
[sulla] Scanning repository...
[sulla] 47 files analyzed
[sulla] Planning refactor...
[sulla] 12 changes staged
[sulla] Tests passing: 94/94
[sulla] PR #847 submitted
  1. The first Merchant Protocol repository was created on GitHub in 2008, making it one of the earliest commercial open-source projects on the platform. The company has maintained continuous open-source contributions for 18 years.

Recent Projects

25+ years of builds. E-commerce platforms, custom software, emergency recoveries, and everything in between.

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“Out of all the gurus, he's the best. If you're even thinking about working with Jonathon in some capacity, I highly recommend.”
Nico — Marketing Agency
“Create your message and stand out. You're pretty much sold the job before you've even gone and bid it.”
Colton — Roofing Industry
“Finally got rid of my scripts. Jonathon's innovative approach to lead generation has been a game-changer for our agency.”
Robert — Media Spearhead
Interviews Merchant Protocol · Issue XVIII · Page 05 05
The Interviews

An Interview with
Jonathon Byrdziak

CEO, Merchant Protocol
Of all the projects you've worked on which was the one that stands out to you the most?
The procrastinator's... That's what we called his project. I actually relate with it the most, is why. It was a real estate agent that believed he was a big procrastinator. He worked like 20 hours a day slept four hours a night and believed that he wasn't productive enough. He wanted an AI assistant so that he could feel more productive in his agency.
What was he doing that took 20 hours a day?
Oh, He wasn't making the kind of money he needed, so he fell into that trap of working all day on a plan rather than working on implementing the plan. At face value you think oh yea, the AI is going to do more work thus end his procrastination, but I actually think it was the type of work that he needed help with more than just more work. If he could get the AI to take the uncomfortable action that he couldn't take himself, then that was going to be his win.

“it was the type of work that he needed help with more than just more work.”

What was it that he didn't want to do? That he planned on the AI doing for him?
It was the typical, "I want AI to do cold calling, cold emailing, finding leads, do cold outreach, etc.." I think he wanted it to create videos too. He couldn't bring himself to do the outreach consistently because it's a rejection heavy job. You gotta remember what separates us business owners from being employees is our ability to find clients, and when we aren't doing the work to find those clients we have to go back to being employees.
So that's what you setup the AI to handle for him, direct outreach? That's what most people want right?
It is what everybody seems to want. But Our approach is different. What we have found that works better is to have AI do outreach to expand your network rather than try to expand your client base directly. The amount of effort required to get one new customer from AI is really high and really risky. But the amount of effort to get a coffee meeting with a local loan officer is insanely easy and low risk. And the number of customers you'll get from a good referral source is more than one. It's compounding with no real rejection. A good SEO strategy and Social strategy along with expanding your network locally means you've just created a system where clients come to you. Now AI followup is a perfect companion to a warm inbound flow.
So how did that play out for him?
Oh it's great, he has such an awesome schedule now, I was a bit jealous at first. His AI handles all of this online presence, posting to social, posting to his website, following up with comments, responding to inquiries. It delivers for him the morning news along with scripted content for him to post. And then it maintains his CRM and profiles on all the local individuals that have been identified as being valuable to his network. It's sending birthday cards, anniversaries, and other personal touches that make him look good and keep relationships alive. It then reaches out over email and books him appointments to meet with people in his network and new people he hasn't met before. I don't think he spends much time in the office anymore, he's going from meeting to meeting all day long, between clients and individuals in his network. You can see the change in his personality, he's so much happier and I'm confident he's making a lot more money than he did before.
· · ·
About
Jonathon Byrdziak
Founder & CEO of Merchant Protocol. 20+ years building production infrastructure, e-commerce platforms, and AI agents. Based in Coeur d’Alene, ID. Open-source advocate and SOC 2 compliance specialist.
By the Numbers
Career Highlights
Years shipping 18
Open-source products 10+
Integrations 300+
Vendor lock-in Zero

“You should not have to think about deployment. You should just ship.”

The Stack
Products Mentioned
Sulla Desktop Protocol CI/CD Launchpad ConsentGuard Docker Containers
Engagements Merchant Protocol · Issue XVIII · Page 06 06
Choose Your Path

Pick the Path That
Fits Your Business

Whether you need AI wired into your daily operations, custom software built from scratch, or just an honest conversation about what’s possible—we’ve got you.

For Any Business Size

Custom Business Software

If no off-the-shelf tool does exactly what your business needs, we build it. Quoting systems, client portals, job management tools, internal ops apps, industry-specific software—built for how your business actually works, not how a SaaS vendor assumes it does.

  • Built in weeks, not months—AI-powered delivery means faster timelines
  • No recurring SaaS fees—you own the software outright
  • Integrates with your existing stack—CRMs, APIs, e-commerce, databases
  • Talk directly to the developer who builds it—no middlemen
Book a Call →
Most Popular
Project-Based or Retainer

Finish My Project

Built 80% of something with Cursor, Lovable, or Bolt—and now it won’t deploy, keeps breaking, or hit a wall your AI can’t get past? We rescue stalled builds, fix broken AI-generated code, and ship the thing you started. Your code, your vision, finally done.

  • Rescue stalled Cursor, Lovable, Bolt & Claude Code projects
  • Fix broken AI-generated code and deploy prototypes that won’t ship
  • Clean up the code so it’s maintainable—not a house of cards
  • You keep ownership—we just get it across the finish line
Get Started →
Not a Fit? Reach Out

Let’s Talk Custom

If your use case doesn’t match the above—special project, unique workflow, consulting, open-source extension help, or something else entirely—just book a call. We’re entrepreneurs helping entrepreneurs; no forced fits.

  • Honest advice on whether AI makes sense for your situation
  • Explore hybrid ideas—Sulla Desktop tweaks + custom integrations
  • Access our premium community or guided DIY implementation
  • No-pressure discovery call to map your goals and next steps
Let’s Talk →
FAQ

Frequently Asked

Is this only for tech-savvy people or big companies? I’m a solo operator—will this overwhelm me?

No—everything we do is built for enterprise-level demands (thousands of SOPs, complex tools, long-running tasks), but we design it in easy mode for solo founders, real estate agents, coaches, and small teams too. We know you’re stretched thin and don’t want more tech headaches.

Our custom services are the sweet spot here: We fully set up and integrate Sulla into your workflows (CRM, email, calendar, whatever you use) so it’s completely hands-off. You tell us your goals in plain language, and we handle the orchestration, agents, optimizations, and scaling. No DIY required. Solo operators get the same enterprise reliability without the overwhelm—we’ve done it for one-person shops that now run like well-oiled machines.

· · ·
Do you offer a voice AI agent that can handle my calls? Can you build that for me?

Yes—we offer a full AI voice system that makes outbound calls and handles inbound calls, and we build/deploy it as one of our custom services. It uses our reliable orchestration for context across calls, smart decisions, escalation to you when needed, and consistent performance without dropping threads.

This isn’t off-the-shelf; we tailor it to your business (volume, scripts, integrations, compliance). If phone handling is key (qualification, booking, follow-ups), book a call—we’ll scope it fast and handle everything from build to fine-tuning. Our custom approach ensures it’s secure, reliable, and drives real revenue, not just demo calls.

· · ·
Will this actually scale without breaking? AI stuff always starts strong then falls apart.

We built our systems because enterprise forced us to solve exactly that problem. When we overloaded them with thousands of SOPs, tools, integrations, and long-running tasks, we hit the same context collapse and failure points everyone else does with raw agents. So we engineered everything from the ground up to scale reliably: mixture-of-agents, protected memory, Directed Acyclic Graph workflows for structure/error recovery, proactive triggers, and guardrails that keep it consistent over weeks or months—no drift, no random breakdowns.

This is production-grade because big clients wouldn’t accept anything less. When you work with us on custom integration or software builds, we tailor the scaling to your exact business—monitoring, fine-tuning, and adjustments so it grows with you without babysitting. If issues ever arise (rarely), our team is on it immediately.

· · ·
What if I need support? Will I be on my own after setup?

You’re never on your own—our custom services and expert support are the core of what we offer.

With our paid premium support or full custom packages, you get direct access: setup, integrations, prompt engineering, live troubleshooting, priority responses, and continuous optimizations. We monitor for you, update for new models/features/security, and ensure it’s always tuned to your business. We’re fellow entrepreneurs who stick around—post-launch, we keep it running smoothly so you focus on growth, not maintenance.

· · ·
Are you just using OpenClaw? How does this differ from OpenClaw?

No we did not provide services to set up OpenClaw for customers and we do not include any agent framework other than the one that we have built. Our AI systems are custom designed and built from the ground up without awkward dependencies.

We prioritized security first (enterprise-grade controls, no unnecessary exposures), then reliability (to handle massive scale without collapse), and finally precision in decision-making. We don’t use other agent frameworks like OpenClaw—we engineered our own mixture-of-agents + Directed Acyclic Graph system to enforce structure, protect memory, enable proactivity, and ensure long-term consistency. It’s built for business ops that can’t afford flaky behavior, not just personal assistants. If you want this enterprise-level power integrated and customized for your specific needs, our services make it happen seamlessly—tailored setups, monitoring, and results you can count on.

You Talk to the Developer
Building Your Project.

Not an account manager. Not a project coordinator. Book a 30-minute call with Jonathon directly—tell him what you need, and he’ll tell you exactly how to build it.

>_ Book a Discovery Call See How It Works
Or call us: (208) 215-7734
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