MCP-native · works with claude.ai, Claude Desktop & Cursor

The AI harness for strategic steering

LLMs already give consultant-grade advice. Deploying it is another story. The X-Matrix forces every idea to land somewhere real — a quadrant, a correlation, a KPI, a review date. Plug your AI into that harness and you get an executive right hand: strategic thinking at the top, coherent execution below, sense at every level.

claude.ai — hoshin-kanri + linear

You /weekly_sync

Weekly Sync — Mon 09:00

4 initiatives read, 3 linked to Linear

→ « Onboarding revamp » : 68%, 2 blocked issues

1 Linear project maps to no initiative — strategy drift?

Proposed weekly agenda: 2 KPIs off-track, 1 pending decision…

AI made strategy advice free. Execution still dies in PowerPoint.

Ask a frontier model for a strategy and you get a consultant-grade answer in minutes. Three months later, nothing has moved — because advice was never the bottleneck. Deployment is: the discipline that forces ideas into objectives, objectives into initiatives, initiatives into reviewed, measured work. That discipline is a proven framework plus rigor. The framework is the X-Matrix — sixty years of strategy deployment. The rigor used to cost a consultant. Now agents carry it.

One harness, three forcing functions

A framework that forces coherence

The X-Matrix: 3-5 year objectives (North), annual objectives (East), initiatives (South), KPIs (West) — linked by correlation strength in all four corners. Nothing enters the strategy without earning its place in the chain. Board-ready, exportable.

Rituals that force follow-through

A 5-level meeting hierarchy from strategic reviews to daily stand-ups. Agendas, action items and decisions traced from vision to daily work — the catchball, structured. The review is where strategy deploys or dies.

A score that forces honesty

5 computed metrics — coverage, correlation density, orphans, vision-to-KPI chains, leading/lagging indicator balance. One number that answers the only question that matters: would this strategy survive contact with reality?

Plug in your AI. Get a chief of staff.

Hoshin Kanri ships an MCP server with OAuth 2.1: connect it to claude.ai, Claude Desktop or Cursor in two minutes, next to your Linear or Jira MCP. Your strategy becomes your agents' standing context — and the agent applies one simple rule:

Strategy, reviews and KPIs → Hoshin Kanri. Tasks, issues and sprints → your execution tool.

9 MCP tools · 8 guided prompts · idea inbox, deployment diagnosis, matrix visualizations

The weekly_sync prompt, built in

  1. 1Reads your initiatives and their linked execution projects (external_ref)
  2. 2Pulls progress and blockers from Linear or Jira through their MCP
  3. 3Updates initiative statuses and flags strategy drift — untracked work, unlinked initiatives
  4. 4Prepares your weekly cadence agenda: off-track KPIs, blocked initiatives, pending decisions

Clear boundaries, by design

Why & What

Objectives, initiatives, KPI targets, correlations, reviews, decisions

Hoshin Kanri
How

Projects, issues, sprints, assignments, daily tracking

Linear · Jira · Asana
How much

Measurement data, dashboards, time series

Your BI stack

No task management, no Gantt charts, no daily notifications. Ever. That work belongs to tools that do it well — your matrix just stays linked to them.

Per organization. Not per seat.

A steering tool has 5-10 active users — pricing by seat punishes adoption. Every paid tier has a 30-day free trial, no credit card.

Early access: everything is unlocked during the beta — and early adopters keep an advantage when billing starts.

Solo

€0forever
  • Local mode: your data stays on your machine (JSON, zero infra)
  • Cloud: 1 matrix, 2 users
  • Read-only MCP
Start free

Team

€89/month per organization
  • Unlimited matrices, 10 users
  • Cadences, themes, action items
  • Completeness score
  • Full MCP: OAuth, weekly_sync, all tools
  • Exports
Start 30-day trial

Partner

€290/month — 3 client organizations included
  • Then €49/month per additional client
  • Unlimited matrices per client
  • Light white-label (client logo)
  • Assisted onboarding
  • Clients can graduate to their own plan, with their data
Become a founding partner

Enterprise

from €500/month
  • Multi-site, SSO
  • Extended audit trail
  • SLA & deployment support
Contact us

Frequently asked questions

What is a Hoshin Kanri X-Matrix?

The X-Matrix is the central tool of Hoshin Kanri (policy deployment), a strategic planning method from lean management. It aligns four quadrants on one page: 3-5 year strategic objectives (North), annual objectives (East), improvement initiatives (South) and KPIs (West), with correlation marks showing how each level supports the next. It makes the chain from vision to daily work visible — and auditable.

How is this different from OKR software?

OKR covers one layer: quarterly objectives and key results. Hoshin Kanri adds the 3-5 year direction, explicit correlations between levels, the catchball process and a meeting-cadence system to review it all. If you run OKRs, the X-Matrix maps cleanly onto them — East as Objectives, West as Key Results — with the long-term layer OKR lacks.

Is this an AI strategy consultant?

No — it is the harness that makes one trustworthy. Frontier models already reason at consultant level; what they lack is structure and follow-through. We provide the proven framework (the X-Matrix), the rituals (review cadences) and the audit (completeness score); your AI provides the thinking. Together they behave like an executive right hand that never lets an idea escape unmeasured — and never hallucinates a strategy outside the frame your team negotiated.

What is MCP and what do AI agents actually do here?

MCP (Model Context Protocol) is the open standard that lets AI assistants like Claude use external tools. Hoshin Kanri ships an MCP server: an agent can read your matrix, capture ideas mid-conversation, update initiative statuses, diagnose how well a strategic theme is deployed, and run a weekly sync against Linear or Jira. You connect it to claude.ai with OAuth in about two minutes.

Does it replace Linear, Jira or Asana?

No — by design. Your execution tool keeps the tasks, sprints and issues. Hoshin Kanri keeps the strategy: objectives, initiatives, KPIs and reviews. Each initiative carries a link (external_ref) to its execution project, and the weekly_sync agent prompt keeps the two aligned without double data entry.

Can I use it for free?

Yes, two ways. The cloud Solo tier is free: one matrix, two users, read-only MCP. And the local mode is entirely free and infrastructure-less: your matrix lives in JSON files on your machine, readable by Claude Desktop via MCP — nothing leaves your computer.

Is my data isolated and where is it hosted?

Every query is scoped to your organization (strict multi-tenant isolation), API tokens are stored hashed, access is auditable, and OAuth 2.1 with PKCE secures agent connections. Data is hosted in the EU.

Give your AI the rigor of a chief of staff

The framework is proven. The rigor is now affordable. Free to start — two minutes to connect Claude.

Create your X-Matrix