For decorators and sign shops
Customer artwork arrives unusable. It leaves print-ready, and not until someone says so.
A logo turns up at 300 pixels on a white background, and somebody rebuilds it before anything can go on a garment. Nemaworks is artwork automation for decorators and sign shops: it keys the background, traces it, and sets it at the print width in millimetres — then stops and waits for a person, because the hole in a P and a genuine white letter are geometrically identical and no rule can tell them apart. The signature at the end is what settles who pays when a run comes out wrong.
- Every workflow
- Stops for a person before anything ships
- Every release
- Names who approved it, and which checks
- Every build
- Holds one business’s configuration and no one else’s
The idea
Shops are not short of AI that acts
They are short of AI they can let act in their name. Every workflow here parks before anything leaves the building, and nothing is released without an approval record naming who confirmed which checks. A gate on its own is not the interesting part — every system in this trade has somewhere to click approve. What sits in front of it is the artwork work itself, and the two together are the product.
Already built
A workflow that exists, configured for your business. Three exist today: artwork, mockup, blog. Adding a business to one is a record and a build, not a fork.
Built for you
A workflow for work that nothing in the catalogue covers yet. It is discovery and engineering rather than configuration, and it is honest to say so before it starts.
One workflow
Eight steps, and a person at the one that matters
This is the artwork workflow, shown end to end, because a specific thing can be checked and a claim about workflows cannot. Each step takes the artifact the last one produced and writes a new version beside it. Nothing is edited in place, so a wrong call is stepped back rather than painted over. One of the eight does not run on its own.
- 01
Keying
The background comes off by flooding in from the edge, not by deleting pale pixels. Threshold near-white and you delete white artwork too — and every step after it inherits the damage.
- 02
Trace
The raster becomes vector. The model is asked how the trace came out, so a bad one is caught here rather than at the proof.
- 03
Keyline
A uniform line around every shape is a stroke the customer never drew. It is stripped from the vector rather than traced faithfully.
- 04
Counters
Stops for a person
The holes in P, R and Q survive background removal as solid white blobs, and print as patches. A counter and a genuine white letter are geometrically identical, so a person confirms which is which.
- 05
Wearer name
Names are set from real glyph outlines. Type is never traced — tracing closes the counters you just punched.
- 06
Placement
The logo goes on at the print width in millimetres, on the supplier’s own product photo.
- 07
Proof
The two-page approval sheet, rendered from your configuration: your contact block, your disclaimers, your decoration methods.
- 08
PDF
Page two measures true on a ruler. There is a test that asserts it.
The demo
A messy logo, and what comes out
Not a customer’s artwork — a logo made for this page, deliberately ruined by a script and run through the real pipeline. Drag the slider: on white it looks finished, and on black you can see the keyline and the filled letter hole that would both have printed.
The gate
The list of things it refuses
Most of the work here is in what does not happen automatically. The first three are this trade’s, and each one cost a rebuild to learn. The last three hold whatever the workflow is. Nemaworks will not:
- Decide which white shapes are letter holes. There is no safe rule, so it asks.
- Substitute a font. A missing face fails the job rather than quietly reflowing a proof.
- Trace type.
- Release a file without an approval record naming who confirmed which checks.
- Overwrite a previous version of anything.
- Carry another business’s configuration. Each build contains one, and the build fails if a second gets in.
Job record
Specimen
- status
- pending_approval
- artifacts
- source.jpg → keyed.png → traced.svg → punched.svg → proof-p1.svg
- versions
- each one written beside the last, never over it
- approval
- none recorded
- deliverables
- locked
Illustrative. The gate is enforced by the server, not by hiding a button — the endpoint that hands over the finished files refuses without an approval record naming who confirmed which checks.
Configuration, not code
A second business is a record, not a fork
Every branded string, colour, fee, disclaimer and size arrives as configuration. Below is the whole of one business’s record — the decorated-apparel shop the first three workflows were built for. Yours would hold different fields and none of this one’s: a build carries exactly one record, and fails if a second gets in.
Branding
Colours, the mark, and where permission to use it came from.
Contact block
What prints in the header of every proof you send.
Decoration methods
DTF, DTG, screen print, embroidery, HTV, sublimation, laser.
Placements
Left chest at 90mm, centre back at A4, a name at 18mm cap height.
Disclaimers
Different wording per method, because the CMYK clause is wrong for thread.
Content rules
Voice, the suburbs you write about, the terms you do not chase.
Another substrate
What carries over, and what does not
Saying this out loud is the difference between a product and an agency that has called itself one. A banner, a left chest and an engraved plate are the same artwork problem on three materials — a customer’s logo, rebuilt, measured, and signed off before anything irreversible happens. Most of the work carries. Some of it is bound to the material, and that half is worth naming.
Carries over
- Vectorising, font outlines, transparency, and the letter-hole problem. A sign shop has all four.
- Millimetres. Page two measures true on a ruler, which matters more on a banner than on a left chest.
- The gate, the record naming who approved which checks, and configuration instead of code.
Stops here
- Colour separation and the white underbase. A wide-format printer separates at the RIP; a screen does not.
- What disappears on a dark garment, and the disclaimer split between thread and CMYK.
- Which is to say: the material changes, and most of the artwork work does not.
Questions
The ones worth answering straight
The gate, the version history and the configuration model are industry-agnostic by construction — nothing in them knows what trade you are in. The three workflows that exist were built for decorated apparel, and the detail inside them is worth nothing outside it. So the honest answer is that the foundation carries over and the workflow itself gets built.
No. The preflight check on this site is free and runs in your own browser, and that is the whole of what you can use today. The workflows behind it run end to end and have been driven against real jobs, but nothing is deployed, there is no way to sign up, and how it is delivered is still being settled. This page will say so plainly when that changes.
Not settled. A number invented for a website is worse than no number, and it is not being withheld — it has not been decided.
A customer’s logo is their property. Images are sent to Anthropic for the steps that need a judgement — how a trace came out, whether a keyline is really there, which white shapes are letter holes. Those requests carry the image and the question, not your customers’ names, addresses or contact details. Where the work itself is kept depends on how this ends up being delivered, which is not settled, and the privacy page will say so before anything ships.
Every step writes a new version beside the last one rather than editing in place, so a wrong call is stepped back rather than painted over. Nothing is released until a person approves it, and the approval records who confirmed which checks.
The model makes judgement calls only: which trace engine to use, how a trace came out, how many colours are in a logo, whether a keyline is really there, and which white shapes are letter holes. The imaging itself is deterministic code.
Tell us what your shop still does by hand.
Nemaworks is artwork automation for decorators and sign shops. Three workflows exist and all three were built inside a working shop, end to end, including the parts that were painful — counters that print as patches, keylines that are strokes rather than fills, black artwork that disappears on a black garment. If that list is familiar, that is the conversation.
Nothing is deployed yet, and there is no way to sign up.