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● ADVISORY LABS DOCUMENT 004 PRACTICE: AI ENGINEERING
// SERVICES · MOTION

Four ways to work with us. Each one a real "no" point.

Most agencies want a contract before they understand the problem. We work backwards. Free 1-hour strategy session first. $2,500 Audit when there's signal. Project or Retainer only when both sides know what we're shipping.

// 01

Free 1-Hour Strategy Session

Free · 1 hour

You bring the situation; we listen. We say honestly whether AI fits where you think it does, where the actual lever is, and whether one of our engagement shapes makes sense. Most people leave with at least one specific thing they can do without us.

Deliverable

A clear read on whether the next step is an Audit, a Project, or none of the above.

Book a strategy session →
// 02

Audit

$2,500 · 2 weeks

We sit inside your funnel, eligibility logic, LOS workflow, or capital allocation — whichever surface is bleeding the most. We talk to your team, instrument the pipeline, and come back with a ranked roadmap plus the order to ship.

Deliverable

A written ranked roadmap (top 5 candidate projects with effort + impact estimates), a scoped follow-up project quote, and the raw notes + system diagrams we built along the way. Converts to a Project or Retainer at a discount.

Request an audit →
// 03

Project

Starts at $15,000 · 2–3 weeks per phase (Audit → Build → Ship)

Fixed scope, fixed price, one shipped deliverable. We write the code ourselves, ship live to your stack, and hand off ownership. You walk away with running code and the runbook to maintain it.

Deliverable

Production code, deployed and running. Migration safety gates, monitoring, CI/CD. Docs and runbook handoff.

Scope a project →
// 04

Retainer

$7,500–$15,000/month · 6-month minimum

Ongoing fractional AI engineering capacity. A new component ships every 2–3 weeks. You don't reprioritize against our other clients; we just build. Most operators land here after a Project proves the pattern.

Deliverable

Weekly shipping cadence + monthly roadmap review + on-call coverage. Pattern library + incident retros documented in your repo, not ours.

Discuss a retainer →
// 05 · PROJECT EXAMPLES

What an operator typically asks us to build.

Specific patterns we ship in 2–3 week cycles. Most arrive after an Audit. Each one is a production deliverable, not a pilot.

// FOR MORTGAGE BROKERS
  • Inbound voice triage agent

    Twilio-backed voice agent picks up in 5 minutes, qualifies in 4 questions, books to LO calendar, writes to Encompass + CRM.

  • Conditions-clearing inbox agent

    Borrower portal + OCR validates uploaded docs against the underwriter's condition request, pushes cleared docs back to eFolder.

  • TRID redisclosure sentinel

    Diffs Encompass fields hourly, alerts you in Slack when tolerance triggers re-disclosure. Avg $1,225/loan in cures avoided.

  • Referral-partner portal

    Realtors see their submitted leads and current stage, auto-recap emails on Fridays. Keeps the referral engine fed.

// FOR HEI OPERATORS
  • Eligibility decision engine

    Deterministic rules-as-code across multiple investor overlays. Audit-logged, replayable. Zero LLMs in the yes/no decision.

  • AVM-to-appraisal cascade

    Auto-orders AVM, BPO, or full appraisal based on your confidence tolerance. Drops valuation cost ~60% on eligible files.

  • Borrower settlement-math explainer

    Customer-facing tool shows the exact payoff math step-by-step with audit log. Litigation defense.

  • Portfolio mark-to-market daemon

    Nightly AVM refresh + lien / MLS detection across the book. Generates the monthly investor tape (HTAP / PHEI / SHEI formats).

Not on this list? The pattern transfers. Send a brief or book a strategy session to scope yours.

// 06 · HOW PRICING WORKS

Floor prices. No tier comparisons.

Every offer has a floor price. We don't publish ceilings because they depend on scope. We don't run tier comparison tables ("Basic / Pro / Premium") because the work isn't the same shape twice.

The 1-hour strategy session is free because it's how we figure out whether we should work together at all. Most sessions end with a recommendation that isn't "buy our Audit." We're comfortable with that.

The Audit is $2,500 because two weeks of structured discovery saves both sides 8–10 weeks of misaimed engineering. It converts to a Project or Retainer at a discount.

The Retainer is 6-month minimum because anything shorter is consulting, not engineering.

Book a free 1-hour strategy session →
// 07 · QUESTIONS WE GET

Services FAQ

// FAQ
How is the $2,500 Audit different from the free 1-hour Strategy Session?
The Strategy Session is a free 60-minute working conversation. We listen, ask sharp questions, and tell you honestly whether the problem you describe is one we can solve, point you to a vendor who can, or call out that AI is the wrong lever entirely. About one in three Strategy Sessions ends with us recommending against any engagement. The Audit is a paid two-week structured deep dive: we sit inside your funnel, instrument the pipeline, read your migrations folder, talk to your team, and produce a ranked roadmap with effort + impact estimates plus a scoped follow-up Project quote. Strategy Session decides whether to start; Audit decides what to build first.
What is the difference between a Project and a Retainer?
Project = one specific shipped deliverable, fixed scope, fixed price, ships in 2–3 week cycles. You walk away with running code and a runbook. Retainer = ongoing fractional engineering capacity. A new component ships every 2–3 weeks; we hold roadmap ownership and on-call coverage. Most operators land on Retainer after a successful Project proves the pattern. Project is the right shape when you know exactly what you need; Retainer is the right shape when the work is open-ended and you want a senior engineer steering it.
Do you require an Audit before a Project?
Usually yes. The Audit is the work that makes the Project quotable as fixed-price — without it, we'd have to either pad the estimate heavily or bill hourly, neither of which serves you. There is one exception: if you arrive with a clearly-scoped problem (e.g., "we need an inbound voice triage agent against Encompass, here's the call volume, here's the qualification logic"), we can scope directly to a Project. The Audit credit applies to the Project at signing.
What if I want to start with a Retainer directly?
We will, occasionally, when there's a track record. If you've referred someone we shipped for, if you have a public-source-of-truth track record of running production AI yourself, or if the work is unambiguously open-ended (e.g., "be our fractional AI lead for two quarters"), we will start at Retainer. The Audit is the standard first step because most cold-start engagements need the scope contract that the Audit produces.
Are pricing floors negotiable for early-stage operators?
The Strategy Session is free, always. The Audit is $2,500 — we don't discount because the cost is genuinely low for what it produces and discounting signals we don't value it. The Project floor of $15,000 reflects the smallest shippable production deliverable; below that, the engineering overhead dominates the value and neither side wins. For Series Seed–A operators with cash constraints, we have run reduced-scope Audits and phased Project payment terms; ask directly.
Why is the Retainer a six-month minimum?
Below six months, the engagement is consulting, not engineering. Three months of useful output for a fractional engineer typically requires three months of context-building — you would pay for the ramp-up and never get the compound return. Six months gets you 8–10 shipped components, a fully populated .claude/patterns/ library, a runbook, and a team that knows your stack as well as you do. Most retainer engagements renew because the operator wants to keep the compound going, not because they are locked in.
// 08 · BRIEF US

Tell us what's broken.

We'll come back with one of three things: a strategy session invite, a pointed question, or an honest "this isn't us." Most briefs get a reply within two business days.

By submitting, you'll get a response from Advisory Labs directly. We aim for a reply within two business days.