What is the AI Stack Audit?
The AI Stack Audit is a tool audit for small business teams, played as a game on your phone. It answers one question: do your people have the right tools for their jobs? You stack the tools you use into two towers, raise your jobs as buildings, and power each one with the tools you actually used. Then you watch what lights up. Carrie, AI Actualized’s digital employee, facilitates every game. She is an AI agent with a defined job, the same kind of digital employee we build for small businesses.
It audits the tools, never the person. There are no wrong answers.
What are the two stacks?
A business that uses AI runs on two stacks, and the audit looks at both and how they connect:
- The SaaS stack is the software where the work lives: the office suite (Google Workspace or Microsoft 365), customer and sales tools (HubSpot, Salesforce, GoHighLevel), and money and operations tools (QuickBooks, Slack, Canva).
- The AI stack is what thinks, writes, makes, and moves the work: assistants (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot, Perplexity), specialist AI (meeting notetakers, image tools), and automation (Zapier, Make, custom agents).
Most jobs need both. The email lives in Gmail; the draft comes from the assistant. An assistant that cannot see your email and files leaves someone pasting things in by hand.
When is having two AI tools smart, and when is it waste?
Two AI tools on one job are smart when each does a part the other cannot, and wasteful when either one would do. The audit calls the first a Specialist Pair and the second a Double Draw. Claude is strong at long documents and careful writing, but it does not generate photos or illustrations; ChatGPT makes images. Using both on a social post is a Specialist Pair. Paying for both to answer the same email is a Double Draw.
The audit also finds Untapped Power: AI that comes with a tool you already pay for, like Gemini in Google Workspace or Copilot Chat in Microsoft 365, sitting unused.
What leaks does the audit find?
The audit finds five leaks and logs each one with the job or tool it turned up on:
- Dark Job: a job with nothing behind it, done by hand or fought through.
- Double Draw: two tools doing the same thing, so you pay twice.
- Shadow Line: work running through a personal account the business does not control.
- Dead Battery: a tool you pay for that nobody opens.
- Broken Wire: retyping between tools, or AI that cannot see your email and files.
What is Stack Power?
Stack Power is the share of your work your tools actually power, shown as a percent. Every job you pick is a building. A job you play through counts as it went: lit up is 100, flickered is 60, went dark is 10. The rest count by how much of what they need your two stacks cover. The grades are Fully lit, Mostly lit, Flickering, and Brownout. Leaks are counted on their own, so you can see both how much of your work runs on your stack and what it is costing you.
How do you play the AI Stack Audit?
You play it in four quick phases, right on this page or on your phone:
- Build your stack. Tap the tools you use and watch them drop into your SaaS and AI towers. Say whose account each AI tool is on.
- Pick your jobs. Your jobs rise as buildings in a skyline. Pick the three that eat most of your week.
- Power up. For each of those jobs, wire up the tools you used the last time, say whether it lit up, flickered, or went dark, and sort any two AI tools into a Specialist Pair or a Double Draw.
- Leak check. The tools you never open, and whether your AI is wired into your email and files.
The clock is on screen the whole time, no question is asked twice, and nothing stops you from moving on. If time runs out, you still get your read from what you answered. When it ends, the skyline lights up, Carrie closes with what your stack shows, and your report goes to your email.
Can I assign the AI Stack Audit to my team?
Yes. Assign the AI Stack Audit to your team by entering your business name and how many people you expect to play, and you get a team link to share. Each person plays on their own and gets their own report. Their results come to you: the team’s Stack Power, which tools are in use in each layer of both stacks, the leaks across the team, AI on personal accounts, and each person’s run. Team members are told up front that their results go to the owner.
Why audit the tool stack before buying more AI?
Auditing the stack first shows what the business already owns, what goes unused, and where people are working around their tools, before any money goes to a new one. Organizations leave an average of 36 percent of their SaaS licenses unused, according to Zylo’s 2026 SaaS Management Index, and 80 percent of AI users at small and medium-sized companies bring their own AI tools to work, according to Microsoft and LinkedIn’s 2024 Work Trend Index. The AI a team already has is often not connected to the tools where the work lives. That is why the first fixes to look at are cancellations, consolidations, and connections, before any new purchase.
How does the AI Stack Audit fit with the AI Audit?
The AI Stack Audit is an exercise in the AI Audit, and it looks at tools: whether each person has the right ones for their jobs. AI Land, the AI skills assessment, looks at people: how effectively they use AI. The two are scored separately. Together they show the owner where the business stands on the way to putting AI to work. You can play the AI Stack Audit on its own, and nothing about it obligates you to a next step.