Field Service built an AI chatbot nobody asked for

“We'll add authentication later.”— Group Controller

Reason:

Mainly because the vendor quoted 2 months and a discovery phase. Built in 3 evenings and demonstrated immediately afterwards.

Built by:

Olivier, the management assistant

Build time:

an afternoon, mostly

Built with:

Google Apps Script holding together three departments

Database:

a column called do_not_use that is required

Authentication:

the secret is in Git history, so deleting it felt pointless

Deployment:

using a self-signed certificate everybody has accepted

Responsible:

Marketing Manager, who calls it "the little tool"

Documentation:

a Miro board that takes 8 minutes to load

Security situation:

rate limiting consists of hoping nobody notices

Future disaster:

It will stop working when Anja leaves the company.

Age: 3.5 years · originally expected to last 3 weeks · 3 owners so far · survived 1 reorganisation · last meaningful change 3 days ago

Rated common mostly because: €415k per year, alive 60x longer than intended, 20 users.