About
From the factory floor to agentic pipelines
I'm Chris Paton. I run Toro Solutions, and I build agentic workflows for businesses that are using AI but not seeing the benefit.
The story
Where I started
I started as a lean manufacturing engineer. My job was to walk a production line, time every step and take out the ones that added nothing. That habit never left: I still map a process before I touch it.
Moving an operation across the Atlantic at 25
At 25 I led the relocation of a full operation from the UK to Puerto Rico. It taught me that the hard part of any change is rarely the equipment. It's getting people to trust a new way of working.
Building travel sites in Spain
Then I moved to Spain and started building travel websites. That's where I learned the other half of the job: search, content, and what makes a stranger book.
Becoming an engineer
Then I became a .NET engineer, building production systems: the unglamorous work that keeps a business running.
Running agents on my own businesses
Today I run Campercation and TrustedVillas, two travel platforms I own, largely on agentic pipelines I built. Content is planned from search data and drafted, checked and published by agents. Property data syncs itself and tells me when it breaks. My weekly business reviews are written by scheduled agent tasks. I test every pattern on my own businesses before I sell it to anyone else's.
Why that mix matters
Lean engineer, change lead, builder
Most AI consultants come from one of three places: strategy, software or marketing. I've done the process work, led the change and written the code. So when I say an agent will save your team a day a week, I've mapped the process, I know how your people will react, and I can build the thing.
How I think about AI
The four ideas behind every job
Lean before agents.
Remove the waste, then automate what's left. Automating a bad process gives you faster waste.
Knowledge · Skills · Wisdom.
AI supplies knowledge. Your repeatable know-how becomes skills that agents run. Wisdom (judgement, relationships, risk) stays with your people.
ZPD for teams.
With good scaffolding, agents let each person work one level above where they are today.
Strategic programming.
People own the architecture, the intent and the tests. Agents write the code inside those lines.
How I work
Ship, don't deck.
You get a working system, not a strategy document.
Fixed prices.
You know the cost before we start.
Plain English.
If I can't explain what the agent does in a sentence, it isn't ready.
You own it.
Everything runs in your accounts, with a runbook your team can use.
I do the work.
Every engagement is led and built by me personally.
Proof from my own production lines
What I run today
Campercation
A campervan travel platform I own and run
The blog runs on a search-seeded pipeline: topics come from search data, drafts are generated and GEO-structured, images go to a CDN and posts publish through a .NET API. A weekly SEO loop decides what to write or update next.
25,000+ stopovers on the live map
RunningTrustedVillas
A villa rental platform I own and run
A property sync pipeline with monitoring, so listings stay current without anyone re-keying them. Hub content sits under change control, so an agent can’t quietly rewrite a live page.
63,000+ properties synced
RunningVerqos
The content engine behind both
The same pipeline, productised. It plans, drafts, checks and publishes, with a human review queue for anything legal, pricing or competitive.
Hundreds of hours saved
RunningHow I run the business
Scheduled agent tasks
My weekly LinkedIn and SEO reviews run as scheduled agent tasks with written quality guardrails. I read the output, not the raw data.
24/7 automated agents running
Running
FAQ
Who is behind Toro Solutions?
Chris Paton: lean manufacturing engineer turned .NET engineer, and now a builder of agentic workflows. I run two travel platforms of my own on the same pipelines I build for clients.
Is Toro Solutions just you?
Yes. Every engagement is scoped, built and handed over by me. If a project ever needs more hands, I'll tell you before we start.
What is agentic engineering?
It's building software and workflows where AI agents do real work inside boundaries that people set: architecture, intent, tests and sign-off. It's the disciplined alternative to prompting until something works.
Why does a lean manufacturing background matter for AI?
Because most AI projects fail on process, not technology. Lean teaches you to find and remove waste before you automate, which is the step most AI rollouts skip.
Company details
Toro Solutions Ltd
- Registered company name
- Toro Solutions Ltd
- Company registration number
- 04973065 (registered in England and Wales)
- VAT registration number
- GB 919 2744 03
- Registered office
- 71-75 Shelton StreetLondonWC2H 9JQ
- Website
- www.toro-solutions.com