He no longer enters or retrieves data in Cinode. Claude does it for him.

Øystein Kopstad still uses Cinode every day. He checks utilization, reviews reports and moves assignments forward in the pipeline. But there’s one thing he no longer does: manually entering or retrieving data. Claude takes care of that for him, connected to Cinode via MCP.

– Reports and dashboards are really important. The structure matters. But when I just need to enter or retrieve information, I’d rather use Claude, says Øystein.

Øystein is CEO of Commit, a Norwegian IT consultancy, founded in early 2025. Today, the company has 27 consultants. Commit is built around an ownership model that is unusual in the consulting industry: everyone owns an equal share. The person who joined most recently owns the same percentage as the founders.

– We started Commit because we wanted to build a consulting company owned by everyone. I own exactly the same share as the person who joined most recently, says Øystein.

The ownership model shapes the entire business. Transparency isn’t just a value on a wall – it’s a requirement. Everyone has visibility into the company’s finances, hourly rates, assignments and salaries. Much of that transparency is managed in Cinode.

January Marked a Turning Point

Claude was already a natural part of everyday life at Commit. The consultants used it in their development work, while Øystein himself enjoyed spending his free time building and experimenting with new things. But at the beginning of the year, things took a clear step forward.

– Around January, Claude became much better at actually doing work instead of just answering questions. And that changed everything, says Øystein.

That’s when they started exploring which systems could be connected to the new generation of AI tools. Cinode quickly emerged as an obvious candidate. Before the official MCP solution was available, Øystein even built his own integration with Cinode’s API. Once the MCP server launched, he switched to that instead.

At first, the integration was simply about retrieving information. Now, it actually gets work done.

Why The Last 10 Percent Matters Most

This is central to how Commit works – and an important point for anyone who thinks AI is simply about pressing a button and letting it take care of the rest.

When Claude has written a CV, completed a proposal or updated a skills matrix, Øystein estimates that the work is typically 85–90% done. The final 10% is where human expertise comes in.

– The final part requires my experience as a salesperson. I get to the part that actually requires expertise much faster, without having to open multiple systems or spend time copying and pasting.

Øystein’s point is clear.

– I don’t want it to take over my expertise. I want it to bring me to the point where my expertise is needed, so I can do the final part of the work.

Quality assurance remains a natural part of the process. They are well aware that AI can make mistakes. At the same time, they have built workflows where Claude reviews and quality-checks its own output before it is used, helping to reduce the risk of errors.

To tie the workflow together, Commit uses a dedicated skill that connects Claude to Cinode. This enables the model to quickly find the right information while also following Commit’s own processes and ways of working.

When Doffin Meets Cinode

The most tangible example involves public tenders. In Norway, all public tenders are published on Doffin, the Norwegian government’s procurement portal. The information is free and publicly available, but actual bids are submitted through a wide range of different systems. Many have no API at all, or hide access behind expensive licences designed for larger companies.

Commit has built its own Doffin monitor. Øystein describes it quite frankly as an enhanced Excel spreadsheet. He and his colleague Robert use it to keep track of the dynamic purchasing systems and framework agreements they are part of, as well as what they can deliver through them.

Then the workflow begins.

When a new request comes in, they export a JSON file from the monitor and send it to Claude, which is tasked with preparing the tender. Because the systems often lack APIs, Claude works directly in the browser to retrieve the information it needs. Once it has an overview of the customer’s requirements, it goes into Cinode and downloads the most relevant consultant profiles. It then completes the tender documents and uploads the files, using information pulled directly from Cinode.

Øystein has recorded the workflow in action. The video shows how Claude identifies the most relevant profiles in Cinode, matches them against the required skills, prepares the tender documents, completes the skills matrix and uploads everything directly to the customer’s portal. See the full workflow here.

There is an important distinction here. When it comes to individual tenders, Commit rarely misses the right consultant because the company is small enough to have a clear overview of its people. Framework agreements are different, however. When they need to provide sample profiles and CVs, it is easier for something to be overlooked when the process is handled manually.

– Claude goes straight into Cinode and identifies the most relevant profiles, he explains.

The Daily Security Check

Another use case is about avoiding costly mistakes. Every day, Commit runs a job in Claude that checks whether three sources are consistent: the contracts in local files, Cinode with bookings and hourly rates, and Tripletex, the company’s accounting system.

Øystein has seen the problem before. Someone updates a rate, but only in the accounting system. Or a rate is supposed to be adjusted for indexation according to the contract, but the update is forgotten.

– At other consulting companies I’ve worked for, there were often just Excel spreadsheets showing when rates were due to be adjusted. You’d check the spreadsheet from time to time and try to remember. Things were easily missed.

Now, the connection between Cinode and Claude detects discrepancies and flags anything that doesn’t match. It’s a simple safety net that could potentially save the company a lot of money, particularly when it comes to rate adjustments that take effect at different times across different contracts.

Transparency That Consultants Actually Use

Commit’s culture of openness is built around the idea that every consultant should have full visibility into the company. But some information is buried in the accounting system and only accessible to administrators. To address this, they built a project finance dashboard that pulls data from both Cinode and Tripletex.

There, each consultant can see their own situation: which assignment they are working on, their role, how long the contract runs, their hourly rate and how their rates have changed over time. The profile images are pulled directly from Cinode.

It solves a familiar problem. Consultants rarely log into their CV systems, regardless of which platform they use.

– We’d love for them to update their CVs more often than they do. So we push the most relevant information to a dashboard they check regularly, while also reminding them to log into Cinode.

Claude can also communicate directly with consultants through Discord, which Commit uses instead of Slack.

What Comes Next

Øystein sees two clear next steps, both focused on taking the combination of Cinode and Claude even further.

The first is to make consultant profiles available to customers. Today, Commit sends PDFs when a customer wants to see a selection of consultants. The goal is instead to give customers access to relevant profiles, filtered by tags, without exposing the rest of the organisation.

The second is to expand their work with public tenders. Commit is highly effective at delivering consulting hours, but today rarely delivers complete systems. To start competing for that type of business, they need a better overview of what they are capable of delivering. The vision is to combine an MCP connection to Doffin with Cinode’s MCP, matching tenders against the company’s areas of expertise.

– If we start there, the volume of Cinode MCP usage will increase significantly. We’d be using it for opportunities with a much higher failure rate, where the amount of paperwork is also much greater.

At the same time, Øystein is humble about the fact that Commit is a small company, and believes the potential is even greater in larger organisations.

– If we were 200 consultants, we’d be using this much more. I hope more companies start using it.

For Commit, the direction is already clear. People bring the expertise. Claude takes care of the administrative work.