A personal aviation workbench, built for the person doing the work.

Why I built Avioverse instead of another aviation SMS

We started by building the next aviation safety management system. After months of iteration I was still filling the holes myself. I configured custom agents for the aviation work I do. I moved from ChatGPT to Perplexity to Claude, depending on which one was more capable that month.

Every week I had to remind the tool what my risk assessment work is. What the complete context behind an audit finding is. Which EASA document to consult. I experimented with context windows, tool use, everything — on a personal laptop, fighting both the aviation software we already had and the procedures around it.

Aviation certificates belong with the professional

Then someone asked me for my certificates. Some were in iCloud. Some sat on the company server. Some were in OneDrive. At organisational level I had what the organisation required. At personal level I had copies here and there.

That is when I realised we should not build another product solely for company use. Another organisation-only aviation app would expand the drift already in the community. For many operators it would also trigger a management of change — one more system to absorb, one more set of procedures to rewrite.

An EASA audit by day, a workbench by night

I was abroad for an audit when this became obvious. In the morning I did the audit. In the afternoon I typed into software what I had logged on an iPad. At night I designed the spec of the next module.

I was also running an open-source agent on my own laptop, paying only for the model usage. I could text it from my phone while walking the dog: check this in the EASA regulation, update my notes, add it to a risk assessment. That is the colleague I wanted other aviation professionals to have, without them having to build it.

A free EASA regulation library, and a place that is yours

For years I had been collecting and combining information — EASA standalone publications, forums, my own notes, UK CAA CAPs.

I was not familiar with open source as a movement. What I remembered was a presentation at the Hellenic Air Force Academy about why it matters. The point was not fashion. In a force, a method you cannot inspect is a method you cannot trust. Knowledge that lives in one person's drawer dies when that person posts out. Open source is that idea applied to software.

I wanted the aviation version of the same middle ground: a regulation library anyone can read, and a place each professional can make their own. Gather certifications and work in one account. Feed an agent that already knows the context — the finding, the risk assessment, the document — instead of starting from zero every time.

Built for individual aviation professionals first

So we decided Avioverse should not target large organisations first. It should target aviation individuals who want to supplement the apps they already have, expand their knowledge, and find the information they need.

Access to EASA regulations and aviation reference should remain free and unrestricted.

We put a lot of work into making the agent capable on cheaper models, so people who cannot afford expensive AI subscriptions still get dependable work out of it. A cabin crew member, a pilot or an engineer should be able to ask: “Is this event reportable? Help me write a hazard report.”

Safety management for teams — without migrating your SMS

Thanos called and said he would feel more comfortable if we added a way for teams to work together. He was right.

In many organisations an SMS app is treated as a luxury. People are forced onto Word and Excel templates. Those files drift. After a few years they become impossible to manage.

Avioverse can be used by one aviation professional, by a safety or compliance team, or across a whole organisation that already pays for SMS software. Configured with the right workspaces and roles, it serves a large operator as well as one person. Nobody has to migrate. They can run us in parallel. We also built things I keep noticing are missing from most aviation software — custom safety performance indicators among them.

AI builds the workbench. It does not run it.

I am a heavy user of AI and agents. I build with them every day. But AI is generative: ask it the same question twice and you can get two different answers. Aviation work cannot run on that.

So I use AI to build, not to be the system. Every part of Avioverse that has to give the same result every time — the regulation library, the risk assessments, the trackers, the certificates — is deterministic software, the kind we relied on before AI. Metis sits on top of that base. It retrieves, quotes and points at the record. It does not become the record.

AI cannot replace the person who writes the finding

I have stopped using AI to compose any email. I still believe the human reading of context, EASA regulations and procedures will not be replaced.

I have not found any app that drafts an audit finding better than a person who was in the room. I do not believe one will. The useful job is to gather the context, hold the workflow, and recall what we missed. The interpretation stays human.

An aviation community people can trust

We will keep deepening the personal aviation workbench — memory, EASA-grounded answers, and the modules people already use beside an existing SMS. The longer aim is a community where aviation professionals can discuss findings and risk assessments comfortably, even anonymously, and ask colleagues who have done the same work. No date on that. It has to be a place people trust.

Thank you for taking the time to read this. We are always open to your thoughts on how to make Avioverse better.