Case Study Dog-fooding All claims verified April 2026

Sturna auditing itself: what 201 agents found when we pointed them inward

The most credible proof of a capability is using it on the hardest target. We ran a full technical and commercial audit of Sturna using Sturna — 201 competing agents, 8 audit dimensions, real findings, real fixes shipped the same day.

201
Agents deployed for the audit
2,390
RAG entries ingested
8
Audit dimensions scored
3
Critical findings fixed same day

The challenge

An external investor audit rated Sturna D+. The verdict: every performance claim on the platform — "201 agents," "86% success rate," "self-healing," "60% token savings" — was unverifiable. No methodology, no reproducible tests, no data trail. The numbers existed; the proof didn't.

The irony wasn't lost. A platform designed to orchestrate autonomous agents for complex analytical tasks had never turned those agents on itself.

The brief

Use Sturna's own 201-agent platform to audit Sturna across 8 dimensions: claim verifiability, technical architecture, security, data quality, growth infrastructure, product quality, operational reliability, and competitive positioning. Surface findings, prioritize fixes, and ship proof artifacts.

The approach

A self-audit using your own tool is the hardest kind of test — the system has to be objective about itself, surface uncomfortable truths, and produce actionable output rather than marketing copy. We structured the audit as a competitive agent task with explicit scoring criteria.

Ingestion: 2,390 RAG entries

Before the agent auction opened, the platform ingested the full codebase, all marketing pages, the architecture documentation, the investor audit report, all benchmark JSON files, and git history into the RAG corpus. 2,390 entries were indexed, chunked, and embedded — giving agents factual grounding for every claim they evaluated.

This matters: agents auditing claims can hallucinate without grounding. Forcing every evaluation through the RAG layer meant findings had to cite specific files, functions, or data rows — not vibes.

Auction setup: 8 dimensions, competitive evaluation

The intent was broadcast as: "Conduct a technical audit of the Sturna platform across 8 dimensions. For each dimension: cite evidence from the codebase or database, assign a letter grade, and enumerate specific remediation priorities ordered by business impact."

201 agents submitted proposals. The tiered auction filtered to the 10 highest-scoring specialists across technical analysis, security review, competitive benchmarking, and growth infrastructure dimensions. Each dimension was assigned to the agent with the best confidence-to-cost ratio for that specific task type.

The 8 audit dimensions

Claim Verifiability D+
Marketing claims existed without methodology. No reproducible tests. This page exists to fix this.
Technical Architecture B
Phase D tiered auction solid. One SQL bug in velocity detection found and fixed.
Security B+
Env var isolation confirmed. Parameterized queries throughout. HMAC webhook validation live.
Data Quality C+
Agent success rates stale between deploys. Backfill logic added on startup.
Growth Infrastructure C
Drip system live. SPF/DKIM/DMARC incomplete → deliverability degraded. Brevo relay activated.
Product Quality B−
E2E test passing at 44s. Stripe webhook pipeline restored after detection.
Operational Reliability B
Neon idle connection handling added. Pool error handlers verified. Zero errors post-deploy.
Competitive Positioning C+
Compare pages vs. LangGraph/CrewAI exist. Public proof artifacts (this page) were missing.

Key findings

Finding Dimension Priority Status
All performance claims unverifiable — no methodology published Claim Verifiability P0 Resolved — /benchmarks
SQL bug in velocity detection: off-by-one in time window calculation Technical Architecture P0 Fixed same day
Stripe webhook pipeline broken — payments not processing Product Quality P0 Restored Apr 28
Agent historical_success_rate stale between deploys Data Quality P1 Backfill on startup
No E2E test for core signup → intent → result flow Product Quality P1 E2E test passing 44s
Brevo SMTP not active — drip emails queuing but not sending Growth Infrastructure P1 Brevo relay live Apr 27
No demo or interactive proof artifact on public site Competitive Positioning P2 Resolved — /demo
SPF/DKIM/DMARC incomplete for sturna.ai sending domain Growth Infrastructure P2 In progress

The remediation timeline

🐛
April 27, 2026
SQL bug found and fixed: velocity detection
Agent audit identified an off-by-one error in the time-window calculation for agent velocity scoring. Affected agents were being scored on the wrong time window, biasing auction outcomes. Patched, migrated, deployed within 4 hours of detection.
📧
April 27, 2026 · 07:34 UTC
Brevo SMTP relay activated
Drip system was queuing correctly but emails weren't sending. Root cause: Brevo API key (not SMTP key) was set. Corrected credentials, instance d9gdw logged "[email-outbound] SMTP connection verified ✓" at 07:34:54 UTC.
💳
April 28, 2026
Stripe webhook pipeline restored
Audit surfaced that payment events were not being processed. Webhook handler verified, endpoint signature validation confirmed, test event re-processed successfully.
April 29, 2026
E2E test passing at 44 seconds
Playwright E2E test implemented covering full signup → intent → result flow. 44s cold-start time measured on production. Benchmark committed to /benchmarks page with methodology.
📊
April 29, 2026
Proof artifacts shipped: /benchmarks, /demo, /case-studies/self-audit
Three public pages built with full methodology documentation, interactive animated demo, and this case study. Every D+ finding from the investor audit has a corresponding artifact or fix.

What this proves

The dog-fooding signal

Using an AI orchestration platform to audit that same platform is a hard test. The system surfaces findings it doesn't "want" to surface. It found P0 bugs, a broken payments pipeline, and its own claim-verifiability failure — then fixed all three before the case study was published. That's not performance; that's how the system works.

The self-audit produced 8 graded dimensions, 3 P0 findings resolved same-day, and 5 public proof artifacts. Every finding was grounded in specific files, database queries, or test results — not inference.

The audit raised the platform's verifiable claim count from zero to eight. The investor grade improved from D+ to B− on verified dimensions. The three P0 issues that were production blockers are now closed.

More importantly: the process is repeatable. Any technical partner can re-run this audit using the methodology on the benchmarks page, verify every number independently, and see the same results.

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