If you’ve ever been involved in a GAA club, you’ll know there is one person who holds the keys to everything: the Secretary. Need clarification on a rule? Ask the Secretary. Wondering about eligibility, fixtures, regulations, statistics, or best practice? Ask the Secretary. Unsure about anything at all? You guessed it.
So, when ISx4 was asked to develop an Agentic AI platform for the three organisations within the wider GAA family — the Gaelic Athletic Association, the Ladies' Gaelic Football Association and the Camogie Association with a cohort of more than half a million members — the name RúnAí almost chose itself.
RúnAí (pronounced Rooney) is the Irish word for Secretary. And just like its human counterpart at county or club level, it is designed to be the trusted authority — only this one doesn’t need sleep, tea breaks, or the odd reminder text on a Sunday morning.
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Three Agents Walk into a Club…
Release 1.0 of RúnAí provides access to three specialised AI Agents or assistants focused on:
· Rules
· Coaching
· Statistics
Members log in with their GAA email address and can ask questions in plain language. Responses are grounded in official GAA documentation and governance materials. Accuracy was not optional — it was the central design principle.
The problem we were solving was, in hindsight, obvious. For years, vast volumes of information existed — but accessing it efficiently wasn’t always straightforward. Volunteers needed clarity, not document archaeology. RúnAí was built to provide reliable answers quickly, in a format that feels conversational rather than procedural.
And because this is the GAA, culture matters. The interface is fully bilingual — users can ask questions in Irish or English and receive responses in either language. As a hidden bonus, users can ask questions in almost any language and still get the correct answer back .... in Irish or English. One of the quiet joys of AI vectorisation — but that’s an article for another edition.
Future plans include a public-facing widget on the GAA website, opening access to a global audience. After all, Gaelic games travel well.
Built Agile — and Occasionally Rebuilt Entirely
The scope and design were led and delivered by the ISx4 dedicated AI development team using agile methodologies. Interim releases were shared with the client, who refined requirements as they saw the product in action. This iterative approach proved essential — particularly in the fast-moving world of AI development.
In fact, at one point, we scrapped the product entirely and started again.
Yes. Completely.
In traditional software terms, that might sound dramatic. In modern AI development, it’s sometimes simply pragmatic. During beta testing, a significant architectural platform improvement became available — one that materially improved scalability and long-term performance. We had a working product which had rapidly become Plan B. It would have been acceptable. But “acceptable” isn’t what you aim for when building something designed to serve hundreds of thousands of volunteers.
So, we paused, reassessed, and doubled down on a new Plan A.
To their credit, the client trusted the process. The launch date — the inaugural GAA Club Summit in February — remained fixed. The team recalibrated and delivered against that milestone.
AI development today is less about building a static solution and more about designing solutions capable of evolving alongside rapidly advancing technologies. The trick is knowing when to stick and when to pivot.
Youth, Energy and a Blank Canvas
The ISx4 team assembled for this engagement could, by some definitions, be described as “early career” They did not have decades of legacy project delivery behind them. Albeit the internal ISx4 mentors were constantly providing the necessary oversight in relation to key decisions.
We saw this clarity of mind and spirit as a strength.
And in our game, there are not many people who can claim “years of experience in the building of Agentic AI agents.” The playing field is new. What we did have was a highly qualified ambitious group of young AI engineers — curious, creative and unconstrained by entrenched development dogma.
No preconceived notions. No “we’ve always done it this way.” Just raw capability and ambition.
And sometimes, that is exactly what emerging technology demands.
Compliance, Testing and the Timeless Truth of Garbage
Throughout development, regular touchpoints were held with GAA IT compliance and security officers to ensure full alignment with governance requirements. This was not an experimental sandbox — it was production technology within a national sporting organisation.
Internal beta testing was extensive before the platform was handed to GAA users for wider testing. And then came one of the most useful reminders in modern AI delivery:
Garbage in, Garbage out.
Some of the ingested documents contained legacy data issues. On the surface, these appeared to be software bugs. They were not. They were data quality problems masquerading as technical defects.
The good news? Modern AI tooling makes tracing such issues significantly easier than in previous eras. With intelligent diagnostics and pointer systems, pinpointing problematic source material is far more efficient than it would have been even a decade ago.
Still, the lesson remains timeless: AI does not fix poor data. It amplifies it.
After some diligent review and cleansing, the issues were resolved. The issues disappeared. And the platform’s reliability improved accordingly.
A Secretary for the Digital Age
RúnAí represents something more than a clever chatbot. It reflects a broader shift in how volunteer-driven organisations can leverage AI responsibly — to enhance, not replace, human expertise.
The human Secretary remains central to every club. RúnAí simply augments that role, ensuring accurate information is available instantly, consistently and at scale.
Over the coming months, continued usage within the GAA community will inform future enhancements — deeper integrations, expanded functionality and potentially broader access. The ambition is clear: further enhance the volume and content being ingested, maximise benefit both to the organisation and to the individual volunteers who give their time so generously.
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If the traditional Secretary is the heartbeat of a club, RúnAí might just be its digital nervous system — quietly connecting knowledge, people and process.
And unlike its human counterpart, it never asks, “Did you read the circular?”
GAA Members can access RúnAí today by logging in to their GAA account with their authenticated GAA email address and entering the url https://runai.gaa.ie/
Anyone who would like more information can contact Info@ISx4.com or visit our website at www.ISx4.com
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