Laid-Off Developers Build OpenExecutive to Simulate Executive Decision-Making

Summary

Developers who were laid off amid AI-related efficiency savings have created OpenExecutive, an AI tool intended to augment or simulate executive decision-making. Its design uses a virtual board of eight AI agents representing roles including chief strategy, finance, human resources, operations, marketing, product, and board communications, backed by a central executive AI. The agents can use company documents and data, retain their decisions, and provide traceable reasoning for later review. OpenExecutive runs on Anthropic's Claude models, with Claude Sonnet 4.6 as the default and Opus 4.7 for tasks requiring deeper reasoning. The project is released under the Apache 2.0 license, allowing users to modify it, run it internally, or build commercial products from it. The article presents the project partly as satire aimed at executives who have endorsed AI-driven workforce reductions, but also notes possible uses for smaller businesses seeking organizational guidance. Its role remains advisory: it cannot sign documents, carry legal authority, or actually replace decision-making positions. The project therefore illustrates both the potential and limits of using multi-agent AI for leadership work, including the difficulty of reproducing human judgment and taste.