Do you have an apprentice?
Extended Systems Intelligence Corporation (XSI) today introduced XSI Apprentice™, a governed programming-by-demonstration tool: a worker shows it a repetitive task once, and Apprentice learns to do it. Most automation makes you choose between brittle macros that break the moment a screen changes and unsupervised bots that act without anyone watching. An apprentice is the third option. You train it, and you sign off on its work, and it earns trust the way a person does.
A worker demonstrates the task once. Apprentice synthesizes that demonstration into a workflow graph on the Microsoft Agent Framework. From then on, the workflow never runs on its own. Two human gates stand between a demonstration and a result that ships: a worker approves the workflow before it goes live, and reviews the work product on every run. And Apprentice keeps the books — it tracks the hours it gives back.
The word is the design.
An unsupervised bot asks you to trust it on faith. An apprentice asks you to train it and check its work, and it stays under your hand. That is the difference between automation a regulated team can actually adopt and automation it has to fear.
Apprentice is the first of XSI's agentic applications for XSI-AIMS — tools built for the virtual worker and governed by the standard. Because Apprentice registers through XSI-AIMS, every step it takes is witnessed and governed, and the humans who run it see and steer the work through one pane of glass, XSI Helm.
The governance came first and is built — the capture-and-synthesis path that powers the live demonstration is still maturing, and this announcement stands on what is governed and shipping, not on a finished claim. Apprentice removes the repetition, not the judgment — the human stays the master. And programming-by-demonstration is for repetitive, demonstrable work. Novel work still goes to a person.
"Everyone wants to automate the boring, repeating parts of the job. What's stopped them is the choice on offer — a macro too brittle to trust, or a bot too autonomous to trust," said Rhyan J. Neble, founder of Extended Systems Intelligence. "An apprentice is neither. You show it the work once, you sign off until you trust it, and it tells you how many hours it gave you back. You're always the master."
XSI Apprentice is introduced in preview as of July 7, 2026. Scope and availability are subject to change during preview. See it at the "Do you have an apprentice?" landing page. Request access at the waitlist.
Extended Systems Intelligence Corporation (XSI) is an AI research and product development company. XSI authors XSI-AIMS, an open standard for governing autonomous AI agents, and builds the XSI LodeStone sovereign agentic platform. XSI is based in McCall, Idaho. xtendedsystems.com.
Media contact: press@xtendedsystems.com
XSI, XSI-AIMS, and XSI LodeStone are trademarks of Extended Systems Intelligence Corporation. XSI Apprentice™ is a trademark of Extended Systems Intelligence Corporation (application filed). Microsoft and the Microsoft Agent Framework are trademarks of the Microsoft group of companies. References to third-party names are descriptive and imply no endorsement.