The future of business software is custom

Most businesses are stuck choosing between generic SaaS that doesn't fit and custom software they can't afford. They want to become future-proof by allowing AI to replace human labor for efficiency, but demand that a human remain at the helm for critical decision-making. Rishon is an AI-native platform that builds and runs custom business software purposely built to combine human and AI efforts toward the best business outcomes. Rishon is also capable of building true SaaS solutions, making it a perfect fit for entrepreneurs of all walks of life. As a SaaS platform itself, Rishon's cost to create custom business software is a fraction of traditional custom software development, whether it uses AI or flesh-and-blood engineers.

Rishon can be described as an AI Product Agent + an AI Developer Agent + a formal specification language + a Virtual Machine. First, you create a short brief explaining what you want to build, in plain English. Then, you hand it off to the Rishon AI Product Agent, a human expert, or both. They analyze your spec, ask questions, and, at the end, produce a very detailed specification (also in English). You edit and expand it as you see fit, and then the Rishon AI Developer Agent (or a human developer, if you prefer) encodes the spec in the Rishon Language, capturing the semantics of your original idea, but — in contrast with a plain text specification — using a formal syntax, purposely designed for efficient handling by an AI, for ease of reviewing by a human. The Rishon Compiler validates the code for consistency and correctness and converts it into a Rishon Ontology Graph (a machine-friendly representation of the encoded semantics). Rishon Virtual Machine, running in the cloud, interprets the ontology and creates the necessary automations and user experiences. Rishon Virtual Machine combines traditional application functionality with AI automation (including online search, decision-making, agentic phone calls, interactions with other apps, etc.). The end result is no different from finding a SaaS solution that fully addresses your business needs, as outlined in the spec.

In tech jargon, Rishon is an application Platform as a Service (aPaaS) for AI-native custom business software, sitting at the convergence of low/no-code, AI dev tools, custom software development, and agentic software.

Traditional programming languages were intended for human engineers. In contrast, the Rishon Language allows both human and AI agents to be highly productive.

The Rishon Language captures the business intent, not implementation specifics. It describes semantic entities and their attributes, user roles and actions, data and function security access, automations (LLM jobs, automatic phone calling, etc.), and more. It has no loops, variables, database queries, etc. (it doesn't need them).

The Rishon Language enables static validation of correctness — preventing most bugs that plague traditional programming languages. The Rishon Compiler converts a program in the Rishon Language into its binary equivalent, a Rishon Ontology Graph, later used by the Rishon Virtual Machine to determine the database structure, data access algorithms, RAG, tools for LLMs, user interfaces for desktop and mobile, and more. Competitors take an easier approach and generate traditional code rather than bothering with a custom language, ontology, and a virtual machine. Why did we choose another, more complex route? Several reasons:

• We preserve the original intent in the code rather than keeping it in separate documentation files. This is our answer to the AI context window/attention limits, as well as the cognitive load on human reviewers. The code (and its binary twin, the ontology graph) becomes a single source of truth for reasoning, document and diagram production, and even training materials (yes, Rishon can automatically produce training materials and videos for the resulting applications).
• The Rishon Language is constructed to enable complete validation of correctness. In Rishon, there are no bugs caused by improperly coded algorithms — and no testing for such problems is required. Furthermore, the updated code of an application is checked for backward compatibility with the persistent data recorded by older versions, eliminating the usual migration hell. This is hardly possible in traditional languages.
• The Rishon Compiler is built from the ground up to work hand in hand with the Rishon AI Developer. It supports our proprietary, multi-phase development methodology, reducing the complexity of AI reasoning at every design phase.
• The language's grammar eliminates AI slop. There is only one way to code an application in the Rishon Language, unlike gazillions of variations in traditional ones. Both AI and human developers can easily locate, understand, and express themselves.
• Generated code is "frozen" in time and quickly becomes outdated without maintenance. Maintenance introduces bugs and requires end-to-end testing of the entire system. The Rishon Virtual Machine evolves on its own and improve how it implements the same business intent with time, without any effort from application developers. For instance, in one of the early versions, image uploads in Rishon were limited to selecting files from the local file system. Then we added support for mobile cameras, and all applications instantly gained the capability without any modifications to the application code. This trait is typical of SaaS, but is rarely achieved in custom development.

The Rishon AI Product Agent is designed to take your idea, perform online research, ask relevant questions, and develop a detailed product specification in plain English. You can use it for end-to-end specification development, create an initial document and work on it manually afterwards, or do the entire work the old-fashioned way (i.e., manually).

The Rishon AI Developer Agent takes the specification text, regardless of its source, and turns it into a program in the Rishon Language. If the specification has clarity gaps, it asks pointed questions. The Rishon Developer Agent implements a proprietary multi-phase reasoning process that draws on proven Domain-Driven Design (DDD) principles and is natively supported by the Rishon Compiler. The result: every reasoning phase is validated for consistency and completeness, the agent never has to go back to an earlier phase, resulting in fewer errors and cleaner design. Error diagnostics in the Rishon Compiler is also designed to simplify the agent's job.

Once the Rishon Developer Agent has finished its work, you can preview both the resulting application and the generated code with a single push of a button. If necessary, you can instruct the agent to make adjustments, or you can do it manually in the code.

The Rishon Virtual Machine interprets the binary ontology graph produced by the Rishon Compiler from the Rishon Language.

The resulting applications are AI-native — built from the ground up for humans and AI to work side by side. AI agents are first-class participants: they handle phone calls, search the web, interact with third-party software, make decisions (subject to human review), while operating under strict zero-trust security protocols and guardrails set by the business owner.

The Rishon Virtual Machine comes with a built-in Time Machine. Every user action in the application is recorded. If you discover that something went wrong three months ago — a misapplied payment, a miscategorized tenant, a wrong conclusion drawn by AI, or even a change in the business logic that shall apply retroactively — you enter the correction with that past date, and the Time Machine replays everything from that point forward, as if the mistake never happened. Same with software updates - the older input is re-processed by the new version, potentially constructing an entirely new data model. No migration scripts, no manual cleanup. Multiple versions of the software can work concurrently, and can be switched between.

The Virtual Machine also supports sandboxed previews, addressing development needs while avoiding any data corruption by testing activities.

The Virtual Machine is essential to making custom apps available to customers as traditional SaaS. BTW, a custom app deployed on the Virtual Machine can act as a SaaS solution in its own right, making it a perfect tool for entrepreneurs of all walks of life to progress.

Rishon automatically designs User Interfaces for its applications, based on the intent encoded in the Ontology Graph. The user experience is optimized for business use cases and is tuned to the specifics of user devices (phones, tablets, laptops). For businesses that require a custom-tailored front-end, Rishon exposes a secure API, making it a natural complement to popular front-end builders such as Lovable, Bolt, or Replit, while also supporting manual development if desired.

Rishon exposes an API for other apps to call, and can call other apps' APIs. Also, an MCP server and a Zapier integration are in the works.

Rishon is natively integrated with VAPI and Twilio for agentic phone calls and messaging, with Amazon Connect for contact center functionality, with Synthesia for generating training videos, and with several other providers accessed behind the scenes.

For agentic functionality, various Rishon components work with several LLM providers; the choice of LLM depends on the task (ChatGPT, Gemini, Claude Opus, Perplexity), while the agentic harness is proprietary to Rishon.