Questions, answered.
The questions that come up in conversations. If yours isn't here, get in touch.
What Ardesia is, and where it stands today.
Does Ardesia replace my gestionale?
No, and it doesn't plan to. Your gestionale keeps the record of transactions: invoices, stock, accounts. Ardesia keeps the record of the relationship: what was asked, offered, promised and agreed, read from your email and WhatsApp. When a quote is accepted, it goes to your gestionale. Accounting, warehouse and electronic invoicing stay where they are.
Who is Ardesia for?
Companies where the owner is the brain of the business: an office of three to fifteen people, and knowledge that lives in one head and one inbox. It fits best where each sale is put together for the order: conveyor belts, metal fabrication, plant building, integration, installation. The quickest test: when you prepare a quote, is the product already in your price list, or do you put it together each time? If it's the second, Ardesia is built for you.
Where does Ardesia stand today?
Ardesia is in development, with design partners. We build it against the daily work of real offices, and we'll tell you plainly what works today and what is still being built.
What's a "design partner"?
One of a small number of companies we work closely with while Ardesia is being built. Design partners run it in a real office and tell us what works, what doesn't, and what's missing. In return the product comes at favourable terms, and what they need gets built first. The slots fill in conversations rather than through a form.
What it reads, and how it starts.
What does getting started involve?
Three steps, in this order. First, your reference data: catalogue, price lists and customers, from Excel files or an export of your gestionale. Argo recognises the columns and proposes the mapping; the values are copied by code, and you confirm a preview before anything is imported. Second, you connect the mailboxes you choose. Third, Ardesia reads your archive and builds the memory: the last five years, not just what arrives from today.
What does Ardesia read, and can I choose?
Email, both what arrives and the archive, WhatsApp, and the attachments in them: PDFs, documents, spreadsheets, images, and audio, which is transcribed. You choose which mailboxes and which folders it reads. If you'd rather decide message by message, Ardesia can have its own address that your mail client forwards to, as long as the forward keeps the original headers and includes your sent mail.
Does Ardesia write in my mailbox?
No. It reads your mail; it never writes in it. Argo can prepare reply drafts, and they wait inside Ardesia for you to use. Anything that reaches a customer, you send yourself.
Pricing and getting in and out.
How is Ardesia priced?
We're finalising the structure, but the shape is straightforward: a one-time onboarding fee, plus a monthly subscription that depends on the plan. Each plan includes an amount of storage, in gigabytes, because attachments take space. No per-quote pricing, no AI minutes, no surprise charges based on how much you use it. Get in touch and we'll walk you through the current rates.
What if I stop using Ardesia? Can I get my data out?
Yes. Your knowledge is yours. The memory exports as a folder of plain markdown pages, and your structured data (customers, price lists, quotes) exports with it. If exit terms are a deciding factor for you, raise it early and we'll cover it in writing.
Where the data lives, and what the AI does with it.
Where is my data stored, and who can see it?
On our own servers in the European Union. Each customer's data lives in its own space: no shared tables, no queries across customers. Inside Silica, only the people who support you can see your data, and that access is logged.
Does my data go to an AI provider?
No. Ardesia runs open models on our own servers. Customer data never passes through a third-party model provider, and it isn't used to train a model that serves anyone else.
Who in my office sees what?
You decide. Roles are sets of permissions you define: who reads the memory, whose notes count as authoritative, who can change prices, who approves what moves into the company memory. Argo follows the same rules: it sees what the person talking to it can see. Sensitive figures like margins live in the database, never in the memory's prose, so a permission can actually protect them.
What if the memory gets something wrong?
Every statement carries its source, and sources are checked when they are written: if the quoted passage isn't in the message, the statement is flagged. A page that is wrong gets corrected the next time Ardesia reads something about that customer, and a note from someone with authoritative notes weighs more than what the model inferred. Knowledge only moves into the company memory after someone approves it.
What happens to old messages and attachments?
Ardesia keeps everything it reads, because a message on its own isn't enough to understand it. If you need space, you can have Ardesia delete what the memory doesn't cite. It keeps every cited message with its whole thread, and every cited attachment. That deletion can't be undone, and it needs its own permission.
Do I have to use Argo?
No. The memory builds itself from what Ardesia reads, and you can open any customer page, quote or price list yourself. Argo is there when asking is faster than looking.
The basics.
What languages does Ardesia support?
The interface is planned in Italian, English, French and German, and Argo works in the same four: write to it in any of them and it answers in the same one. Quotes follow your account's default language and can be produced in another when the customer is abroad. Support is in Italian and English.
Not finding your question?
Tell us what you'd like to know. We'll get back to you within two working days, and most likely with a useful answer.