What we build, when we build it, and what it costs.
| Window | What happens | Why then |
|---|---|---|
| Sept to Oct | Portal, NDA, discovery signed | Attention is thin during harvest. Ask for something small. |
| Oct to Nov | Track 0 discovery runs | Harvest ending, benches clearing |
| Dec to Feb | Phase 1 and most of Phase 2, Program tier | The winter trough. Technicians have time to talk. Reference machines are parked and accessible. This window does not come back until next December. |
| Mar | Step to Build tier | Their season starts, our heavy build window closes |
| Mar to May | Phase 2 completes | Bench rungs 1 and 2, cross-site triage, and intake transcription in place before planting |
| May onward | First real season of the tool | Measured against the Track 0 baseline captured in October |
This is what the next call is asking for. Everything diagnostic, nothing constructive. Four to six weeks. Fixed fee. Credited in full against the first retainer month if you proceed within thirty days.
A written document that says either "the corpus supports this and here is what Phase 1 costs" or "it does not, and here is what would have to be built first." Both are successful outcomes of a discovery engagement.
Requires almost nothing from their staff beyond the interviews already run in Track 0.
"An agent, asked about a real historical failure it has not seen, returns the resolution that was actually performed, citing the ticket. If it cannot, do not proceed. Fix the corpus."
Three workstreams in parallel at Program tier, two at Build tier.
Hardware interface on one bench in Des Moines. Device identification on the top device family. Guided diagnostic at Rung 1. Verdict with evidence and calibrated confidence. Trace capture and replay at Rung 2 on one device family. Every session archived as a labeled example. Verdict controls and technician sign-off ship with Rung 1, not after it.
Repair queue orchestration across four sites by capacity, capability, and turnaround risk. Turnaround forecasting that flags units about to miss the published 3-5 day window. Near-zero technical risk. Hits the seasonality caveat on their own website. If the bench runs long, this is what carries the engagement.
Technician authorship and review workflow. Reference machine capture program, must happen in the winter trough or not at all. Continuity package with a rehearsed handover drill. Voice transcription and intent classification, listening only; no caller speaks to an agent yet. Operator console so your staff can see node activity without us.
"One technician, on one bench, uses this daily by preference rather than instruction, for four consecutive weeks. If they stop when nobody is watching, the tool is wrong and no amount of Phase 3 fixes it."
The handover drill was actually run and what it revealed was fixed.
Voice intake live, one intent class at a time, each measured against human handling before the next is enabled. Consent and disclosure ship before the first live call. Bench rolled to all four sites. Rung 3 behavioral modeling funded per device family behind its own go/no-go, decided on measured repair volume rather than enthusiasm. Field tablet for internal Ag Express technicians. Parts demand forecasting. Web node: consolidation, catalog repair, generated catalog content.
Dealer tenancy and licensing. Dealer technical backup portal. Domain-adapted model fine-tuned on the accumulated corpus. ICW production support. Onboarding and training agent. Inbox nodes. Electronics residual risk scoring and external distribution.
Phase 4 does not start on a schedule.
It starts when the dealer network asks for access without being prompted, or when a lender or auction house asks what an electronics risk score would cost. Those requests are the market signal. Their absence is also a signal.
This is what you own. This is what it costs. This is why the shape matters.
| Asset | Ag Express owns | We retain |
|---|---|---|
| Hardware | Purchased in your name | Specify and install |
| Corpus, ontology instance, all derived data | Outright. No claim. | No claim |
| Models fine-tuned on your corpus | Outright. No claim. | No claim |
| Delivered system: apps, orchestration, code | Outright | Right to reuse general non-client-specific components and know-how in other engagements |
| Runbooks and documentation | Own | Author |
| Our methods, doctrines, delivery process | No claim | Own |
Hardware at cost. No margin on hardware. Taking a spread on the asset is the small thing that makes the ownership story look insincere. The ESOP board will ask what happens if we go away. The answer: you own the hardware, the data, the models, and the code. We hand you the runbooks.
The tiers are capacity, not scope. Same program, same matrix, different velocity. The client chooses how fast, not what. Blended rate: $250 per agent hour. Delivery leverage: 3.88×.
Conventional cost assumes $150-200 per hour for senior engineering delivery. That is what they would actually pay a regional shop. Stated once, without adjectives.
The winter trough is when corpus capture, technician interviews, and reference machine recording must happen. Those three things are prerequisites for everything else. Five months at Program tier gives us 600 agent hours, enough for all of Phase 1 and roughly 70% of Phase 2.
Stepping to Build tier in March finishes Phase 2 around May, putting bench Rungs 1 and 2, cross-site triage, and intake transcription in place before planting.
Telling you to pay us less starting in March is the most credible thing we can do in this conversation. We are optimizing your calendar, not our revenue. Nearly every vendor tries to lock the highest tier for the longest term.
| Line | Amount | Nature |
|---|---|---|
| Discovery and corpus assessment | ~$15,000 | One time. Credited on proceeding within 30 days. |
| Retainer, Oct to Feb, Program tier | $150,000 | Operating |
| Retainer, Mar to Sep, Build tier | $140,000 | Operating |
| Hardware (T0 to T1) | Low-to-mid five figures | Capital asset, purchased in your name, at cost |
| Delivered | ~$305k + hardware | Phases 1 and 2, 46 features, ~768 agent hours, ~3,276 human-equivalent hours, owned outright |
A comparable conventional build of the same 46 features at $150-200/hour is roughly $490,000 to $655,000, before accounting for the fact that you would have to hire the team first. Stated once, without adjectives, and moved on from.