From Canned Spaghetti to Sunday Sauce: The Rise of Tradecraft AI

Why the next wave of AI innovation will come from software that thinks like a master craftsman, not a generic assistant.

In a world awash in AI hype, the next meaningful wave of innovation won't come from general-purpose tools, but from a new class of deeply specialized applications designed to embed expertise directly into workflows. We call this emerging category "Tradecraft AI."

Tradecraft AI is the fusion of applied domain knowledge and AI technology. It doesn't just assist professionals in generic ways. Instead, it captures the tacit, apprentice-learned knowledge traditionally acquired through years of experience and embeds it into software that executes with the precision, nuance, and adaptability of a seasoned expert.

What Is Tradecraft AI?

Think of a veteran underwriter, an experienced analyst, or a seasoned enterprise banker. These professionals don’t just follow checklists. They apply deep judgment, pattern recognition, and learned instincts to complex, variable situations. Tradecraft AI aims to replicate and scale that kind of professional decision-making.

At its core, 'tradecraft' is about the human element—the honed skill set of an expert who has lived the nuances of their craft. There’s a difference between canned spaghetti and your grandmother’s slow-simmered Sunday sauce. Both are technically a plate of spaghetti, but they’re… not the same. Grandma’s cooking isn’t just about ingredients; it’s about timing, feel, and subtle adjustments made without conscious thought. That’s tradecraft. And that’s the essence of what this new generation of AI must capture.

Tradecraft AI isn’t just data-fed software—it’s a digital master craftsman, using AI that’s trained by observing the masters and built to carry forward their instinctual judgment and excellence, at scale, through an application layer that makes it easy for people to use.

Isn’t this just Vertical AI? No, its deeper.

What sets Tradecraft AI apart from traditional vertical AI is its depth of specialization. Vertical AI typically refers to models or applications tuned for a specific industry—banking, insurance, healthcare, etc. But within each industry, there are dozens of sectors, each with layers of complexity, subtleties in workflows, and niche domains that vertical AI often fails to reach today, and might not have the master craftsman training data to reach in the future.

Tradecraft AI digs deeper. It captures the embedded expertise, context sensitivity, and situational nuance that even many vertical AI systems overlook. It doesn't just understand the industry—it understands the job. And it translates that understanding into software that thinks, recommends, and acts like a domain expert is working the job to be done. In doing so, Tradecraft AI has the potential to be even more transformative than broader vertical AI by unlocking value in the long tail of tasks and decisions that require mastery, not just information.

Unlike horizontal AI platforms (e.g., chatbots, summarizers, generic assistants), Tradecraft AI is hyper-verticalized. It is tailored to a specific job family within a specific domain. Examples include:

• A credit memo generator that writes like a seasoned JPMorgan Chase credit officer

• An LLM-powered deal sourcing engine that understands your fund's thesis and flags high-potential opportunities

• Treasury management automation software that mimics the judgment of a seasoned corporate treasurer with 20 years in global markets

This is not "AI that can do a task" in the abstract. This is AI that understands the job because it's been trained, shaped, and constrained by tradecraft.

Why Now?

Several forces are converging to make Tradecraft AI not only possible but inevitable:

• Maturing LLM infrastructure makes it feasible to encode complex patterns and nuanced judgments

• Vertical SaaS incumbents have mapped the workflows, but lack AI-native interfaces

• FS professionals are overwhelmed by manual, fragmented processes ripe for intelligent automation

And perhaps most importantly, the market is ready. The financial services industry is defined by apprenticeship, manual workflows, and regulatory burden—a perfect breeding ground for productivity tools that can offer both speed and precision.

Benefits for Financial Services Professionals

Professionals stand to gain immensely:

• Efficiency: Automate 80% of the rote, manual work that consumes bandwidth with the intelligent decision making of a skilled expert craftsman.

• Effectiveness: Elevate the quality of analysis and decision-making with expert-level AI assistance

• Scale: Replicate expertise across teams without scaling headcount

This doesn't mean job displacement. It means allowing professionals to focus on high-value work, and bringing sophisticated decision-making to a broader range of organizations.

Benefits for the End Consumer

The downstream effects of Tradecraft AI are profound:

• Faster loan approvals with less bias

• Smarter recommendations tailored to real financial goals

• More personalized, proactive financial wellness tools

• Deeper market research to understand nuance and avoid false positive signal, delivered in minutes

By embedding AI into the fabric of financial services, institutions can deliver better outcomes, at lower cost, with greater transparency.

Why This Is a Compelling VC Theme

Tradecraft AI sits at the intersection of three powerful investment theses:

1. Vertical SaaS: These companies are application-first and built for workflows, not just data.

2. Applied AI: The firms that apply AI to real, valuable problems will extract significant economic rent.

3. Financial Services Reinvention: Financial services remains largely untransformed by modern software—especially in its operational guts.

We're already seeing startups emerge across domains like underwriting, KYC/AML, financial advisory, asset management, and back-office operations. The winners will be those that build with empathy, partner closely with experts, and understand the "how" as well as the "what."

If this sounds like what you’re working on, we’d love to hear from you.

Final Thoughts

Tradecraft AI isn’t a buzzword. It's a shift in how software will be built and delivered. It's a belief that expert systems can be more than brittle rule engines—they can be adaptive, empathetic, and effective.

For founders, this is a greenfield opportunity to reshape industries from the inside. For investors, it's a category that combines deep moats, real workflows, and massive market need. For practitioners, it’s a productivity revolution wrapped in software that finally understands your job.

And for the end consumer? It's the beginning of better service, better outcomes, and a more human financial system—powered by machines that finally know what they're doing.