The system Tim Barker built to run 5 people like 25. Now on GitHub.

At Business of Software Europe 2026, Tim Barker walked a room of software founders through the company operating system he built from scratch – the one that let a 5-person team do the equivalent work of 25 to 35 people.

He put the whole thing on GitHub. Here it is.

“I left BoS inspired to take Tim’s bootstrap kit back to the business. We’ve been using it ever since – it’s now our core context. Every conversation we have points to it. The most crucial thing it does is alignment. It keeps everyone on the same page and lets you sense-check when you’re veering off course.”

Dom Reed, Co-Founder, Replacer

What’s Inside

This is the exact system Tim built and has been running for seven months. Five folders, a handful of plain text files, and a logic that ties them together. Copy it, fill it in with your own context, and you have the foundation of a company operating system that any AI tool can work from.

The Folder Structure

Strategy, agents, missions, artefacts, and state. Five folders. Everything in its place. The structure is the system – once it exists, every session starts in the same place and ends with something captured.

The constitution (CLAUDE.md)

The first file any AI reads each session. It defines your company’s context, your hard constraints, and where to find everything else. The thing that stops AI wandering off and doing whatever it feels like.

Strategy Documents

Values, brand, growth logic, and decision governance – written in plain markdown, built to be edited to fit your business. Not Tim’s strategy. The shape of a strategy, ready for yours.

Agent Specs

The roles Tim’s 5-person company actually uses – with defined boundaries, escalation rules, and decision authority built in. What separates a system from a collection of prompts.

Session State

How to open a session, capture what was decided, and close without losing context. The thing that makes it compound over time rather than reset every Monday.

NON-TECHNICAL REASSURANCE

It’s a folder structure and a set of plain text files. No code. No installation. No developer required. Open it, read it, copy it into your own setup and start filling it in. That’s the whole thing.

AI IN YOUR BUSINESS: WHERE TO START WORKSHOP

Want yours built, not just downloaded?

The bootstrap kit gives you the structure. The AI in Your Business: Beginner Workshop gives you two working sessions to fill it in – with Mark Littlewood facilitating and a room of founders doing the same work in parallel.

This workshop is the starting point. In two sessions across one week, you’ll see how a company OS gets built in practice, then build a first version for yours. Not a framework to think about later. A concrete start.

Register Now

The BoS No Quibble Guarantee applies: if you attend and feel you didn’t get value, we will refund your workshop fee.