Auburn AI is a Calgary-based AI workflow consulting practice that builds production automation for Canadian small businesses. The work centres on n8n and Claude – real orchestration stacks that run without hand-holding after delivery. No enterprise retainers, no offshore handoffs, no slide decks that end with “next steps TBD.” Just working systems, scoped and priced before anything gets built.
The Person Behind It
Alexander McGregor lives and works in Calgary. He holds a full-time technical role during the day and runs Auburn AI on the side – which is exactly why the practice stays small and honest about scope. There is no team of consultants to bill out. There is one person who builds the thing, tests the thing, and answers your email.
The pull toward AI automation came from necessity, not trend-chasing. Managing several content and affiliate properties at once meant either hiring help or finding ways to get repetitive work done without touching it every time. n8n turned out to be the right tool – self-hostable, inspectable, not locked to a single cloud vendor. Claude turned out to be the right model for text-heavy tasks where tone and judgment matter. Those two tools now run across six production properties and 17 active workflows. Auburn AI is the consulting arm of that same practice.
What Auburn AI Actually Is
Auburn AI is a sole proprietorship registered in Alberta. It is not an agency. Alexander does not subcontract your project to someone else and manage the relationship. The six properties Auburn AI operates – content sites, affiliate builds, niche media – run on the same automation architecture that gets proposed to clients. That is not a marketing angle. It means the workflows have been through real failure modes: broken webhooks, Claude rate limits, n8n version upgrades that quietly changed node behaviour, cron jobs that ran at 3 a.m. and nobody noticed until morning.
When a client hires Auburn AI, they are hiring someone who has already broken these systems in production and fixed them. That is a different thing than hiring someone who has studied them.
Why Canadian SMBs, Specifically
Most AI consulting that reaches Canadian small businesses is either priced for enterprise or built offshore with no real knowledge of the local context. Canadian operators deal with GST/HST logic, CRA reporting cycles, bilingual requirements in some markets, and a general preference for tools that do not route sensitive data through jurisdictions nobody has heard of. Auburn AI scopes work with those constraints in mind from the start, not as an afterthought.
Engagements are fixed-scope and flat-fee. You know the cost before work begins. If the scope changes, the price conversation happens before the extra work does – not on the invoice.
The Six Properties
These are the production sites Auburn AI operates directly. They are the reason the automation practice exists and the reason it works.
- Auburn AI (auburnai.ca) – The consulting brand. AI workflow delivery for Canadian SMBs.
- Tee Snap (teesnap.ca) – Canadian golf content and affiliate. Course coverage, gear, and booking resources.
- Gravel and Grit (gravelandgrit.ca) – Overlanding and off-road travel built around Canadian routes and rigs.
- Calgary Folio (calgaryfolio.ca) – Local Calgary lifestyle, events, and city coverage.
- Prep District (prepdistrict.ca) – Canadian high school and junior sports coverage.
- Canine Country (caninecountry.ca) – Dog ownership, training, and outdoor activities with a Canadian climate angle.
Every one of these properties runs on automated content workflows, scheduled publishing pipelines, and AI-assisted editorial processes built in n8n. They are the test bed. Clients get the version that has already been debugged.
The Operator Kits on Gumroad
For business owners who want to move faster without a full consulting engagement, Auburn AI sells four practical workflow kits through Gumroad. These are documented, ready-to-import n8n workflows with plain-English setup guides – not courses, not communities, not drip email sequences. Just the thing.
- Intake-to-CRM Automation Kit – Connects a web form to your CRM and triggers a follow-up sequence without manual data entry.
- AI Content Brief Generator – Takes a keyword or topic and returns a structured content brief using Claude, formatted for a writer or your own drafting process.
- Invoice Follow-Up Workflow – Monitors unpaid invoices and sends staged reminder messages on a schedule you set.
- Weekly Business Digest Bot – Pulls data from sources you specify and delivers a summarized briefing to email or Slack on a schedule.
The kits are built for operators who are comfortable poking around inside a workflow but do not want to build from scratch. If setup goes sideways, Alexander is reachable by email.
The Honest Version of the Mission
There are a lot of people selling AI strategy right now. Decks, frameworks, maturity models, discovery workshops that lead to more discovery workshops. Auburn AI does not do that. The work is building systems that run after the call ends – systems that save your team hours per week, not systems that require a technical babysitter to keep alive.
The clients who get the most out of working with Auburn AI are the ones who have a specific, repetitive problem they need solved. Not “we should be using AI more.” Something concrete: client intake is manual and slow, content publishing requires too many human touches, follow-up emails are not going out reliably. Those are solvable problems with a defined scope and a real delivery date.
If the problem is too vague for a fixed scope, Alexander will say so before taking the engagement – and usually suggest what to nail down first.
Get in Touch
If you have a workflow problem worth solving, email alexander@auburnai.ca with a plain description of what is broken or slow. No intake form, no discovery call required to start the conversation. If it is a fit, you will know quickly. If it is not, you will get a straight answer on that too.
Have a process you would rather not run by hand anymore? Email Alexander.