Singapore maritime
Demo guide & executive summary
A working prototype for the two places a ship loses money in Singapore — and the paperwork that hides both.
They lose money twice on the same ship — waiting to get in, and buying fuel nobody checks. We price both from their own paperwork, and a person signs everything.
Everything below this line is detail. If you read nothing else, read this.
A working prototype — sixteen screens, one fictional Singapore operator, a frozen clock. Two engines genuinely compute in the browser while you present, so it is not a slideshow.
A ship loses money twice on one visit: burning fuel to arrive early for a berth that is not free, and buying fuel nobody checks against the paperwork. A third loss sits between them — a part that misses her sailing.
Fleet operations managers at six fuel buyers and one marketplace. Someone measured on the ship, not on the line item.
Built, live and presenter-proof. A 31-step guided walkthrough drives it if you would rather not click — narration is recorded but off by default. Synthetic data throughout, disclosed on its own screen.
A bulk carrier calls at Singapore for about four days. In that time she is handled by three different desks who do not compare notes: operations watches the arrival, bunkering buys the fuel, procurement buys the parts. Each one does their job. The money leaks in the gaps between them.
Everything below is one real vessel in the prototype — MV Kestrel Bay — on one visit.
Every figure here is computed by the prototype from the vessel's own charter, speed and paperwork. Drag the speed dial in the demo and the first one moves while you watch.
When a barge pumps fuel into a ship, four records are created by four different parties: the buyer's nomination, the barge's metering ticket, the supplier's delivery note, and the invoice. They should all say the same number.
On this delivery the meter measured 1,442.318 tonnes and the delivery note was written up as 1,450 — a round number, copied by hand. The invoice followed the note, not the meter. The gap is half a percent, which is why nobody catches it, and $4,801, which is why it matters.
Then the laboratory certificate arrives three days later and almost nobody reads it against the standard properly.
Fuel burn rises roughly with the cube of speed. Going one knot faster costs far more than it saves in time — and if the berth is not free when she gets there, she has bought nothing at all. She anchors and burns more fuel waiting.
Slowing down does not delay her. She berths in the same slot either way. It is close to free money, and almost nobody takes it, because nobody puts a number on the alternative.
We do not predict when the berth will be free. The slot comes from her agent and the terminal, as it does today. What we compute is what the resulting wait costs — which holds however the slot moves.
Her chief engineer needs a fuel-pump plunger set — because the last fuel delivery came back with cat fines near the limit, and cat fines are what destroy fuel pumps. Two suppliers quoted. Every procurement system in the world ranks those two quotes by price.
Both bars are on the same scale. The saving is 1.2 % of the exposure. This is the screen that makes a fleet-operations manager sit forward, because it is the only one that speaks in their currency — the ship, not the line item.
Roadstead reads the paperwork an operator already has and turns it into three things they can act on today: a verdict they can defend, a clock they cannot ignore, and a price on a decision they are making anyway.
It is not a slideshow. Two engines genuinely compute in the browser while you present — the four-record reconciliation, and the fuel-specification verdict with its tolerance band. So do the wait-pricing maths and every countdown. Change a number and everything downstream moves. Document reading and the assistant's answers are staged, and the prototype says so on its own Sources screen.
Every fuel test has a published reproducibility — the spread you get when two competent laboratories test the same sample. A result inside that spread is one a second lab could have passed.
So when a number lands near the limit, calling it off-spec is not rigour. It is how you accuse a supplier, lose the argument, and lose the supplier. Every other product on the market gives you pass or fail.
Ours gives three outcomes and shows the band it used. Amber never means the AI was unsure — it means the standard itself says this one is arguable.
Under the standard bunker terms a quantity claim must be raised within 14 days. The sealed samples that prove it are kept for 90.
So for seventy-six days you are holding the evidence and no longer hold the right to use it. Nobody argues the samples were gone. They argue the claim was late — and that is how most of this money is actually lost.
Roadstead counts it down on every delivery, and tells you which files to build first.
This is the one that cannot be copied, and it is worth slowing down for in the meeting. Bunker tools do not know about the port call. Port-call tools do not know about the fuel. Neither of them knows a spare part is about to miss the ship.
Every buyer in this market has now sat through a demo where software promises to act on its own. The question underneath the polite nodding is always the same one: what does it do when I am not watching?
The Governance screen answers it with a count rather than a promise. Every decision the system took this week, sorted by who was allowed to take it — computed on its own, waiting on you, signed by you, and sent by itself. The fourth bucket is drawn as an empty slot rather than left off the chart, because a zero nobody can see is not an assurance.
Then it does the thing a log cannot: you can act from it. Approve, hold or override, each one recorded against a name, each one with the evidence it was built on and the clause that says a person decides it. A claim approved over on the Verdict screen lands in the same ledger.
The part worth slowing down for is the ledger's refusals — it held a verdict open because a certificate had not arrived, declined to raise contestable results as defects, and declined to compute a carbon figure with nothing behind the bio stamp. Anybody can show you what their software did. Showing what it refused to do is the harder sell and the more convincing one.
Say it like this: “Everything it did this week, sorted by who was allowed to do it. The fourth box is empty on purpose — that is the count of things it sent by itself.”
This table is a screen in the prototype. Knowing it cold is what lets you stay relaxed when challenged — and it is the screen that turns “nice demo” into “these people will tell us the truth in a project”.
| Status | What |
|---|---|
| Real | The four-record quantity reconciliation, to three decimal places. |
| Real | The specification verdict on every certificate parameter, against the published test tolerance — including the contestable case. |
| Real | The claim clock against the 14-day bar and the 90-day sample retention. |
| Real | The wait-pricing arithmetic, and every purchase-order clock against her sailing. |
| Real | Provenance on every verdict — document, page and line for each figure. |
| Real | The decision ledger and its gates. Approve, hold or override genuinely changes state, moves the counters and writes the row — in the browser, with no model involved. |
| Staged | Reading a document and extracting its fields. The values are authored, not parsed. |
| Staged | The covering letter's wording, the evidence-pack assembly sequence, and any answer the assistant gives. |
| Out | Live AIS, weather and congestion feeds. |
| Out | Forecasting a berth wait — named as the first Phase 1 capability, not abandoned. |
| Out | Filing a claim to a counterparty, or booking anything with a terminal. |
| Out | Any action taken without a person approving it first. |
Lead with the fuel. It is the half where the arithmetic is defensible end to end and a sharp buyer can push on it without hitting an absent capability. The waiting lands second, as the bigger picture.
Every line below is already printed at the top of its own screen. Say it as the screen lands, then stop talking and let them ask.
Alerts — the first screen
Every morning it opens on one screen: what will cost money today, what can wait, and what looks alarming but is not. $22,793 of it is inside a deadline that has not passed.
Do not explain the chart. Let them read the five rows. The point is that every row names a deadline and says what to do about it — this is a worklist, not a dashboard of things to admire.
Stems → Verdict · the centre of the demo
Four documents describe the same delivery of fuel and two of them disagree. $4,801 billed for fuel the meter never measured.
Click through the three document tabs — metering ticket, delivery note, certificate — and show that every boxed figure traces to a page and a line. Then the findings on the right: one hard conflict in red, one contestable in amber. Say it plainly: “Amber does not mean the AI was unsure. It means the standard says this one is arguable, so do not accuse your supplier on it.”
Claim clock → Evidence pack
Fourteen days to claim, ninety days of stored samples. The proof outlives the right to use it — which is how most of these are lost.
Press Build the pack and let it assemble. Six documents, one claim file, a drafted letter marked not sent. End on that line: “A person presses send, or nobody does.” It defuses every autonomy worry in the room, and it is true.
Arrivals → Port call
Ships race to Singapore and then sit outside doing nothing. $32,333 of fuel burned this week getting somewhere early.
On the board, the amber part of each bar is time at anchor doing nothing. Click the top ship, then drag the speed dial. That is the moment the room realises the maths is live — same berth time, less fuel, $8,687.50 on one ship.
Purchase orders
Every order on this call runs on one clock — when she sails. The cheaper quote for the part she needs arrives after she has gone, and the order to the one that fits is still waiting for a signature.
Two things to point at. Why the line exists — the chief engineer raised it because the fuel certificate came back with cat fines near the limit; a purchasing system cannot draw that line, because it never read the certificate. Then the trade at the bottom: $680 cheaper, landing 74 hours after she sails, which would cost $56,733 to wait for.
Governance
Everything the system did this week, and the four things it will never do alone.
Point at the bar first, then the empty fourth slot: “that is the count of things it sent by itself.” Then press Approve on any row and let them watch the counter move — the queue drops by one, the money at stake falls, and the row writes itself into the ledger under her name. Press Undo afterwards so the next meeting starts clean. If somebody asks about user accounts, the honest answer is that roles are Phase 1; this is one owner's view, on purpose.
Sources — end here
Be straight in the room: the arithmetic is real and runs in the browser. Reading documents is staged. Live feeds are not in scope.
Ending on the honesty screen is a strength, not a retreat. Nobody in maritime has been under-promised to lately.
Press ▶ Story in the top bar, or open roadstead.prototype.embiggenx.ch/?story and it starts on its own. A 31-step guided walkthrough moves the screens for you, spotlights whatever it is talking about, and writes every line on screen. Space advances, Esc leaves. Add ?story=12 to start at a given step.
The voice is off by default. You are talking live over a screen-share and a second voice is worse than none — one click on the speaker turns it on and the choice is remembered. The last three steps have no recording, so they run silent even when the voice is on; the words are still on screen.
It now covers every screen, including purchase orders and Governance. Those two were built after the audio was cut, which is why they are the silent ones.
Six fuel buyers and one marketplace: Maersk · MOL · Gearbulk · Evergreen · Carnival · Princess · ShipServ. The person on the screen is a fleet operations manager — someone measured on the ship, not on the line item.
Roughly 3 million tonnes of bunkers a year and about $2bn of annual fuel spend, with a 2026 carbon bill projected near $170M. At that scale, half a percent of unverified quantity stops being a rounding error. From public filings — for your own preparation only. It is on no screen, and the demo never uses a real company's data.
It is a marketplace, and since 2023 it has been owned by Marcura — who also sell port disbursements, laytime claims and drydock management into the same buyer. Do not show them the same demo. They are a channel, and the honest pitch to them is integration, not replacement.
“Is this connected to anything? Is it live?”
No, and we say so on the Sources screen. The arithmetic is real and runs in front of you — you can drag the speed dial and watch it recompute. The company, the ships and the clock are invented, because we are not putting a real operator's fuel bill on a laptop.
“Do you predict when the berth will be free?”
Not today, and that is a choice rather than a gap. The berth window comes from their agent and their terminal, the way it does now, and we price what the wait costs and what slowing down saves — which is the half that holds however the slot moves. Predicting the slot itself is the first capability Phase 1 proves, and it needs their own berth history, because no public feed carries it. If someone pushes: we will not draw a prediction we cannot yet stand behind, and we have told you exactly what it would take.
“How is this different from what we already buy?”
Three things nobody else does together. A result inside the test tolerance is called contestable, not failed, so you do not accuse a supplier and lose them. A claim has a clock on it, and the clock is the thing that actually loses the money. And the same visit that has the fuel problem also has the waiting problem and the purchase-order problem, so it is one screen instead of three vendors.
“We already run a bunker platform.”
Then the reconciliation is not new to you, and we should not pretend it is. What is new is the third verdict and the claim clock — the difference between knowing a delivery was short and still being inside the window to do something about it.
“We already buy through ShipServ.”
Good, and we are not trying to be a marketplace. They have the supplier network and the price history and we will not beat either. What their system cannot see is the ship: a purchase order there runs against a delivery date somebody typed, not against the hour she sails — and it can never raise a requisition because a certificate of quality failed.
roadstead.prototype.embiggenx.ch — any modern browser, nothing to install, no login. It works on a phone, but it was designed for a laptop on a screen-share.
Opening the link shows a short card — what this is, what is real, what is invented — then Open the desk. It appears once per browser session and never during the walkthrough. Reading those three lines aloud is thirty seconds that buys you the whole meeting; it is the difference between invented figures landing as claims and landing as a scenario. What’s real? in the top bar goes to the same answer in full, any time somebody pushes.
The walkthrough has narration but it starts muted, deliberately — you are talking over a screen-share and a second voice is worse than none. Turn it on from the walkthrough bar if you would rather let it drive. The last three steps have no clip yet, so they run silent.
The toggle in the top bar hides the working behind every figure — roughly five hundred numbers across the demo. Simple is the default and the right setting for a first meeting. Switch to Full only if someone technical asks to see the references, then switch back.
Refresh at any time, or press the reset button top right. Every screen is reachable from the left rail and none of them are dead ends, so clicking around mid-conversation is fine.
Everything is dated against 11 September 2026, 22:00 Singapore time, stated in the status bar. Countdowns do not drift between rehearsal and the meeting, and the same numbers appear every time.
The operator is Meridian Bulk Carriers; the ships, suppliers, laboratory and prices are fictional, and the banner across the top says so. Never imply it is a customer's data. The honesty is a selling point, and pretending otherwise is the one thing that could cost us a deal.
“It predicts when the berth will be free.” It does not, deliberately. Say it prices the wait, and that predicting it is Phase 1 and needs their berth history.
“The AI read these documents.” Document reading is staged. Say the arithmetic is real and the extraction is a designed sequence — the Sources screen backs you up.
“It files the claim for you.” It drafts and assembles. A person sends. That distinction is one of the reasons this lands with people who are nervous about autonomy.
Verdict, then Port call, then Purchase orders. The short delivery and why one finding is amber; drag the speed dial; then $680 against $56,733. That is the whole product in three screens.
The disc-and-bar is the load line — the limit painted on every hull in the world, and the one maritime graphic a mariner reads without being told. It says what the product does: a limit somebody signed for, painted where everyone can see it. The browser tab carries it now, so do not apologise for the tab. The full sheet — construction, lockups, colour, what not to do — is roadstead-identity-v0.1.html, in the same folder as this guide.
Patrick Zulueta for anything about the meetings, the positioning or this guide. The prototype itself can change — figures, wording, the order of the walkthrough — so if a meeting turns up a question it answers badly, that is useful. Send it back rather than working around it.