A business process automation company sells you the engagement. Clone ships the Monday 8am output.
The firms that top every list of business process automation companies sell a 3-6 month engagement: discovery, process mapping, vendor selection, implementation, training, handoff. Clone's homepage already hard-codes the handoff. Open src/components/how-it-works.tsx, scroll to step 04, and you'll see the literal line
4.2 hours of admin completed while you were asleep
. The five checkmarks above it are the deliverables. The product is shaped like the output, not the project.Anchor fact, on the homepage
The Monday 8am runbook is a static code block, because it's the product.
Most BPA company websites describe what they'll build for you after an engagement. Clone's homepage prints what it already runs. Five deliverables, one ritual, every Monday 8am. The code block below is copy-pasted from the rendered homepage; you can diff it against cl0ne.ai yourself.
What Monday 8am actually looks like
Five checkmarks. No kickoff deck. No implementation phase.
The ritual file ~/.clone/memory/rituals/monday-invoice.md encodes the intent; the Computer Agent drives your apps. Timely, QuickBooks, Gmail, HubSpot, Notion. The output is five things done before your first coffee.
The numbers from the homepage
Four numbers that describe the Monday ritual.
“4.2 hours of admin completed while you were asleep.”
how-it-works.tsx, steps[3].code
What Monday 8am touches
Five inputs, one ritual file, four outputs in your apps.
The inputs come from tools you already pay for. The outputs land in those same tools. The ritual file is the only Clone artifact between them. A BPA company would wire this as a BPMN diagram in a vendor cloud; Clone wires it as a markdown file on your Mac.
Inputs → Clone ritual → outputs in your apps
The five SOW-shaped deliverables
Each checkmark would be a line item on a BPA company quote.
Read each card as a deliverable. Imagine the SOW line item a BPA firm would write to produce it: who is involved, how many weeks, what the handoff document says. Now read it as “already running, on your machine, for $0/mo”.
Billable hours reconciled before you open your laptop
Clone pulls last week's time entries from Timely, applies the right rate per engagement, and has the numbers ready. A BPA company's Phase 3 deliverable is a rate-card-aware time-to-invoice pipeline; Clone ships it as step 1 of a five-line ritual.
Six QuickBooks invoices, generated
Not six drafts waiting for you to click Save. Six native QuickBooks invoice rows, with your branding, line items, and rates applied. The QuickBooks integration is the app's own UI, driven by the Computer Agent.
Client email sends, already queued
Each invoice routes to the right contact email in your CRM with a short cover note in your voice. You approve once in onboarding; the Monday run does not ask again.
HubSpot outreach logged, no manual entry
Clone logs the send as an activity on each deal in HubSpot. The Friday pipeline review has a truthful record without you backfilling it on Sunday night.
Friday retro in Notion, drafted
A Notion page with last week's wins, the invoices sent, outstanding follow-ups, and three questions for your Tuesday planning call. You edit; you do not write from scratch.
4.2 hours of admin, done while you slept
The homepage demo prints this as a literal line under the five checkmarks. It is the headline number for the Monday ritual. A BPA company would phrase it as ROI on a slide; the product phrases it as an output on its own homepage.
The 20-week BPA company path
A standard engagement, phase by phase. Clone skips or compresses every row.
Week 1-2: Discovery
A BPA company engagement opens with a discovery phase. Two to four stakeholder interviews, a current-state deck, an outline of pain points. Nothing automates yet. Clone, by contrast, is running by end of week 1 because the trial is a download, not a scoping call.
Week 3-6: Process mapping and tool selection
The BPA firm maps the Monday-invoice process into a BPMN diagram, picks the runtime (Appian, Pega, UiPath, or similar), and quotes a per-workflow license. Clone skips this phase because the process lives as a markdown ritual file; there is no vendor runtime to select.
Week 7-12: Implementation
BPA consultants configure connectors, write process logic in the vendor DSL, and stand up a test environment. The output is one working automation after three months. Clone's step-04 ritual ships five outputs on Monday 8am of week 1.
Week 13-16: User acceptance and training
The BPA firm runs UAT, trains your team on the vendor's UI, and writes a support playbook. Clone's training surface is plain English: the ritual lives in ~/.clone/memory/rituals/monday-invoice.md, and if you can read English you can edit it.
Week 17-20: Handoff and final invoice
The engagement closes. You receive a runbook PDF, a contact for support, and an invoice for the remaining milestone. Clone has no handoff event because it never left your machine; the product and the handoff are the same thing.
Month 6+: Renewal or migration
BPA engagements renew into an MSA with per-workflow or per-CPU licensing. Migrating off requires re-modeling in a competitor's DSL. Clone's renewal is a $49 charge you can cancel from the billing page. The cost of the exit is one click.
Business process automation company vs. Clone
Eight dimensions where buying an engagement differs from paying for software.
| Feature | Typical BPA company | Clone |
|---|---|---|
| What you buy | An engagement: 3-6 months of discovery, mapping, implementation, training, handoff. The contract is for a team's time and deliverables. The automation exists at the end. | The automation itself, running from trial day 1. The product and the deliverable are the same object. You pay $49/mo for the software, not for a firm's time. |
| Who does the work | An analyst, an implementer, a project manager, optionally a trainer. A four-person team loaded at blended rates. The largest line item is labor. | Three software layers (Planner, Computer Agent, Memory) running on your Mac or PC. No human team on the vendor side. The price reflects software economics, not services economics. |
| Time to first working automation | Typical Phase 3 implementation delivers the first working workflow around week 8-12. Before that, you have a process map and a Gantt chart, not a running automation. | First Monday of the trial, the ritual runs end to end. Five deliverables, 4.2 hours reclaimed, invoices in QuickBooks. Trial day 1 to working output is under a week. |
| How many automations you get | One to three workflows per engagement is typical. Each additional workflow is a change order, scoped and priced separately. Scope is finite and procurement-heavy. | Unlimited plain-English tasks per the Solo tier. Add a Tuesday ritual by typing 'every Tuesday, do X'. The sixth ritual does not cost more than the first. |
| Cost for the Monday-invoice runbook specifically | A five-output Monday runbook built by a BPA firm is typically a $25K-$75K first-year engagement (discovery + implementation + training + handoff), plus per-seat or per-workflow licensing. | $49/mo, month-to-month. The five outputs are the product's homepage demo because they ship in the box. |
| Where the process lives | In the vendor's platform, modeled in their DSL. Portable to a different BPA company only by re-modeling. Exit cost grows with scope. | ~/.clone/memory/rituals/monday-invoice.md on your disk. Plain markdown, editable in any text editor, committable to git. Portable by design. |
| Who owns the runbook | The engagement deliverable is often a runbook PDF handed to your team at closeout. The PDF documents the runtime; the runtime itself stays in the vendor platform. | You own the runbook because the runbook IS the runtime. There is no separate PDF. The ritual file describes what runs, and running it is executing that file. |
| Fit for a solo consultant | Not a fit. A BPA company engagement is priced for enterprise finance and procurement cycles. Solo consultants are outside the ICP. | Solo tier is the default tier. $49/mo flat. Trial is self-serve. No procurement, no SOW, no 3-6 month runway before the first invoice goes out. |
Numbers are from public list prices and mid-market SOWs for Appian, Pega, UiPath, Nintex, and boutique SI quotes. Your firm's quote will differ in specifics; the direction of the difference is consistent across the category.
Why this framing matters for a solo consultant
The hard part of a BPA company engagement is not the automation. It's the engagement.
Twelve weeks is not a long time to build five automations. Twelve weeks IS a long time to not have them running. Clone's Solo tier at $0/mo is priced like software because the delivery is software. The implication: a solo consultant who would never call a BPA firm (too small, too procurement-shy, too price-sensitive) gets the same Monday 8am output a mid-market operator would have paid a five-figure engagement for.
“The BPA firm quoted me $34K for a Monday invoicing workflow. Clone ran mine on the Monday of the trial. I cancelled the discovery call.”
Bring the BPA firm quote. We run the Monday ritual on the call.
Twenty minutes together. We install Clone, run one weekly ritual against your apps, and leave the markdown file on your disk. Bring the engagement SOW so we can compare line by line.
Frequently asked about BPA companies vs. Clone
What do people mean by 'business process automation company'?
Usually one of two things. (1) A BPA platform vendor: Appian, Pega, UiPath, IBM Watsonx Orchestrate, Camunda, Nintex, Automation Anywhere. (2) A consultancy or systems integrator that implements one of those platforms: Accenture, Deloitte, Cognizant, and a long tail of boutique firms. In both cases the customer is buying an engagement (a team and a timeline) that ends with a working automation. The word 'company' in the query reliably signals a firm-shaped purchase, not a self-serve tool.
Why does the Monday 8am runbook show up as a demo on the homepage?
Because the five-line runbook in src/components/how-it-works.tsx step-04 is what Clone ships. Most homepages demo a concept; this one demos the delivered output. If you open cl0ne.ai and scroll to 'How It Works', step 04 prints: pulled billable hours from Timely, generated 6 invoices in QuickBooks, sent them via email, logged outreach in HubSpot, drafted Friday retro in Notion, 4.2 hours of admin done while you slept. Those are the five SOW-shaped deliverables. The fact that they live in a static code block instead of a marketing promise is the point.
Why doesn't Clone call itself a 'business process automation company'?
Because it is not a company in the sense the query implies. A BPA company sells you a team and a timeline. Clone is software you download, pay $49/mo for, and run on your Mac. There is no engagement motion, no kickoff deck, no handoff document. The closest analog is 'a BPA engagement, productized' or 'the handoff, pre-shipped'. Neither phrase ranks, so the page uses the query you searched while describing what the product actually is.
What would a BPA company quote for the five deliverables in step-04?
A typical BPA firm engagement to stand up a Monday-invoice runbook with five deliverables runs $25K-$75K in first-year fees (discovery + implementation + training), plus per-workflow or per-seat runtime licensing on top (Appian, Pega, and UiPath list price is typically $40-$150 per month per workflow at small scale). The numbers come from public list prices and mid-market SOWs; your firm's quote will differ. Clone is $49/mo flat for the Solo tier and ships the five deliverables as the homepage demo.
Where exactly is the anchor fact in the code?
File: src/components/how-it-works.tsx. The file declares a `steps` array near the top; the fourth entry (`steps[3]`) has step '04', title 'It works while you don't', and a `code` field that is a multi-line template literal. The template literal contains the five checkmark lines ('✓ Pulled last week's billable hours from Timely', '✓ Generated 6 invoices in QuickBooks', '✓ Sent them to clients via email', '✓ Logged outreach in HubSpot', '✓ Drafted Friday retro in Notion') followed by '4.2 hours of admin completed while you were asleep.' The component renders that template literal inside a <pre> on the homepage under the 'How It Works' section. If you view-source cl0ne.ai, the string is in the DOM.
How is this different from Zapier or n8n, which also promise scheduled automation?
Zapier and n8n are closer to 'a platform shaped like a BPA tool' than to 'a BPA company'. You still configure triggers, actions, branches, and error handlers yourself. The five Monday deliverables would be three or four Zaps you build and maintain. Clone's ritual is a plain-English markdown file the product executes against your apps' real UIs, not a DAG of triggers and actions. The relationship to a BPA company is different: Zapier replaces the runtime a BPA vendor would sell you; Clone replaces the engagement a BPA firm would sell you.
Is Clone a fit if I already hired a BPA company last year?
Often yes, for a specific reason. The BPA company's deliverable probably covered 1-3 big workflows (the ones that fit a procurement-scale SOW). The long tail of small weekly rituals (Monday invoicing, Friday retros, kickoff emails, follow-ups) usually does not justify a change order. Clone fits the long tail. The BPA-built workflows keep running; Clone handles the dozen small things that never made it into the SOW.
What happens if the five Monday outputs don't work for my stack?
The step-04 demo assumes Timely, QuickBooks, Gmail, HubSpot, and Notion because those are common for independent consultants. Clone is tool-agnostic by design: swap Timely for Harvest, QuickBooks for FreshBooks, HubSpot for Pipedrive, Notion for Google Docs. The ritual file describes the intent in English ('pull last week's hours', 'generate invoices', 'log outreach'), and the Computer Agent drives whichever app you have installed. No connector rewrite, no change order.
Is there a consulting version of this where someone builds the rituals for me?
The Boutique tier ($129 per seat per month) includes shared playbooks and firm-level rituals, which is the closest thing to a built-for-you path; practices often seed the first few rituals from a reference library and tune them over the first week. For deeper help, the team offers a 20-minute booking call (see the CTAs on this page) where we install Clone, run one ritual end to end against your stack, and leave the ritual file on your disk. It is a call, not an engagement.
How does Clone handle audit and compliance that a BPA company would formalize?
Every Clone action is logged in ~/.clone/logs/YYYY-MM-DD.jsonl as a JSON line. The log is on your disk, owned by you, schema-documented. For enterprises with formal audit requirements, the Enterprise tier supports on-prem or private-cloud deployment with SOC 2 Type II, SSO, SCIM, and bring-your-own-LLM. A BPA company formalizes audit via a vendor-owned log schema inside their cloud; Clone formalizes it via a file on your disk plus optional enterprise controls.
What's the one-line summary for the evaluator comparing Clone to a BPA company?
A BPA company sells you a 3-6 month engagement that ends in a runbook. Clone sells you the runbook itself, executing on Monday morning, for $49/mo, with no engagement in front of it. The five deliverables on Clone's homepage are the ones the BPA engagement would spend three months producing.
What do I need to book the walkthrough?
Nothing. Pick a time via cal.com/team/mediar/clone. Bring one specific weekly ritual you would want to run (Monday invoicing, Friday retro, kickoff follow-up). On the call, we install Clone, run that ritual end to end against your apps, and leave the markdown file on your disk. If it is not faster than an engagement, the trial ends on its own in 14 days and Clone is $0.
More on the same angle, with different anchors
Keep reading
Business Process Automation Companies Own the Platform. Clone Owns a Three-Layer Agent You Can Uninstall.
The plural-vendor angle: platforms vs. a removable three-layer agent. Why the word 'removable' is hardcoded in architecture.tsx.
Business Process Automation Consultants Hand You a Runbook. Clone Ships a Cron Entry.
Runbook vs. cron entry: how Phase 4 Monday invoicing in the consulting workflow becomes an executable ritual.
Business Process Automation Service That Runs the Overnight Shift
The value of a service is the hours a human is not at the keyboard. Monday 8am, Clone did 4.2 hours of admin while you slept.