May 2026 Update: Open Source, Operational Intelligence & Our First Community Event

May was another month of strong momentum for the team.

Alongside continued Open Source contributions, we launched Operational Intelligence, a new video series where our founder shares practical insights from working with home service businesses and explores how AI can be applied to real operational challenges. We also hosted our first in-person AI event, No Excuse AI.

From engineering to content to community-building, the common thread throughout the month was sharing practical lessons from real-world implementation and making them accessible to others.

Open Source Contributions

This month, we opened 20 pull requests across multiple repositories, with 13 already merged.

Our contributions spanned analytics platforms, productivity tools, AI applications, and developer infrastructure, focusing on bug fixes, usability improvements, and enhancements that improve day-to-day user experience.

React Native

We contributed to React Native this month, the leading framework for mobile development.

• Opened a fix addressing issues with Android native module event subscriptions

Open Source remains an important part of how we learn, contribute back to the tools we use, and engage with the broader software community.

Working on mature production systems exposes us to different engineering approaches, review standards, and architectural decisions while allowing us to give back to the tools that power much of the modern software ecosystem.

Apache Superset

A significant portion of our work this month went into Apache Superset, where we contributed fixes across data visualization, application stability, user management, and internationalization.

Our merged contributions included:

• Fixing decimal truncation in Time Comparison totals

• Resolving logo URL issues in subdirectory deployments

• Preventing crashes when locale entries are missing

• Fixing single-data-point bar chart rendering behavior

• Adding safeguards to prevent frontend crashes

• Improving role management by displaying full user names instead of usernames

• Correcting Czech translation variables in SQL Lab messages

We also opened additional contributions covering reporting, caching, dataset management, MCP tooling, and export workflows.

AFFiNE

Our contributions to AFFiNE focused on editor experience, accessibility, and internationalization.

This month we:

• Fixed table column resizing in edgeless canvas mode

• Prevented keyboard shortcuts from interfering with macOS Option-key input

• Extended date picker navigation back to the year 1000

• Expanded Urdu translation coverage across the application

• Added the ability to show or hide page emojis within the editor

ComfyUI

In ComfyUI, we resolved a bug affecting image batch processing workflows.

• Fixed batch broadcasting behavior in the JoinImageWithAlpha node to correctly process all images instead of producing a single output

A New Series: Operational Intelligence

This month, we launched Operational Intelligence, a new content series where Hashir shares what he's seeing while working with construction and home service companies across the US and beyond.

We started the series because there is a growing gap between what people are hearing about AI and what businesses are actually implementing. Operational Intelligence focuses on practical opportunities, operational challenges, and real-world lessons from the field.

Episode 1: Where AI Actually Fits in Construction

The first episode explored where AI actually fits inside construction businesses. It covered:

• How companies are sitting on years of customer calls and operational data they rarely use

• Why quoting is one of the highest-impact processes to automate today

• How AI adoption works best when integrated into existing tools

• What businesses should pay attention to beyond the buzzwords

Episode 2: Compliance

The second episode focused on compliance and how AI can help businesses manage one of the industry's most costly and overlooked operational challenges.

The discussion covered:

• Reducing manual oversight

• Identifying risks earlier

• Simplifying compliance processes

• Preparing for evolving regulations

Episode 3: Training Field Workers

The third episode focused on training field workers.

Hashir discussed:

• Challenges created by staff turnover

• Inconsistent operational standards

• Reliance on senior employees for onboarding and knowledge transfer

The episode explored how AI can help businesses scale training and make company knowledge more accessible across teams.

Operational Intelligence will continue throughout the year as we share more insights from the industries we work with every day.

If you operate a construction, remodeling, roofing, HVAC, plumbing, or home services business and are looking for practical ways to apply AI without getting caught up in the hype, this series is worth following.

Our First No Excuse AI Event

When we planned this event, we didn't want to host another AI workshop.

There are already countless tutorials, courses, and experts teaching AI online. What interested us more was bringing together ambitious people to share real experiences, lessons, challenges, and ideas about where AI is heading.

We brought together students, builders, professionals, and business owners who were genuinely curious about the opportunities and changes AI is creating.

During the event, our founder and engineering leaders shared practical insights on navigating the AI era. The discussion focused on:

• Staying adaptable

• Strengthening engineering fundamentals

• Developing product thinking

• Learning how to work effectively with AI tools

• Understanding why critical thinking and communication matter more than ever

We also shared how we use AI internally across:

• Sales

• Marketing

• Operations

• Software Development

Along with our perspective on where the market is heading and what businesses should realistically expect over the next few years.

More than 70 people attended the event and, perhaps more importantly, stayed engaged throughout the evening.

The response reinforced that people are less interested in hearing what AI might do someday and far more interested in understanding how people and businesses are using it today.

Looking Ahead

One of the recurring themes we've noticed this year is that businesses are becoming increasingly interested in implementation rather than experimentation.

The conversation is no longer about whether AI is useful.

It's about how to apply it in ways that create measurable outcomes.

That's where we continue to spend most of our time: building practical systems, sharing what we're learning, and helping businesses navigate change with confidence.

The success of No Excuse AI showed us there's a real appetite for honest, implementation-focused conversations.

We'll definitely be hosting more events like this in the future because some of the best learning happens when people come together to share experiences, ideas, and challenges in person.