How we work

A repeatable way of shipping for unprecedented work.

Every engagement runs on the same operating system — a fixed-scope pilot, a build phase paid in two-week cycles, and a scale phase that runs as long as it earns its keep.

Engagement model
01
Pilot2 weeks
Fixed scope, fixed price, one answer.
02
Build2-wk cycles
Ship in increments, stop any time.
03
ScaleOngoing
Runs as long as it earns its keep.
100%
Code ownership
Staff+
Engineers only
0
Lock-in clauses
PRINCIPLE 01

Fixed-scope pilots

Two weeks, one price, one question we're proving.

PRINCIPLE 02

Senior-only teams

Staff+ engineers and operators on the call from day one.

PRINCIPLE 03

You own the work

Code, models, and creative ship into your repos as we build.

The four phases

Discover. Design. Build. Scale.

The same four phases run every engagement, from a 14-day pilot to a multi-year retainer. The duration changes; the shape doesn't.

PHASE 01

Discover

Week 0

Understand the system, then the problem.

Before we scope, we audit. We sit with your engineering, ops, and growth teams for two days. We read your post-mortems, your support tickets, and your last three quarterly plans. The output is a one-page brief naming the outcome, the failure modes, and what we explicitly won't build.

Who's on the call: Engagement partner · Principal engineer · Growth lead
DELIVERABLES
Stakeholder interviews (6–10)
System & data audit
One-page outcome brief
Fixed-price pilot SOW
PHASE 02

Design

Week 1

Plan thin enough to actually build.

We use the first week of the pilot to design — not screens, but the slice. What's the smallest possible thing that proves the outcome? What's the architecture that lets us scale it later without a rewrite? What does success look like in a metric, not in a feeling? We come out of this week with a build plan you can read in 8 minutes.

Who's on the call: Principal engineer · Design director · AI agent lead (if applicable)
DELIVERABLES
Slice definition & success metric
System architecture sketch
Build plan (8-minute read)
Risk register
PHASE 03

Build

Week 2

Ship code into your repos, daily.

Build week is when we commit. Not to a feature-branch we'll merge later — into your main branch, with your CI, behind your feature flags. By the end of week two there's a real piece of software running in your environment that a real user can touch. Whether you keep going is a decision you make with data, not slides.

Who's on the call: Full pilot squad · You + your reviewer
DELIVERABLES
Production-grade slice
CI + observability wired in
Eval/measurement harness
Pilot retrospective + go/no-go memo
PHASE 04

Scale

Ongoing

Run the same loop until the curve bends.

If the pilot earned its next phase, we shift into two-week build cycles. Same people, same cadence. Every cycle has one outcome it's paid to move, and we publish the number publicly inside your team's Slack. When the curve flattens — when the next cycle won't pay back its cost — we say so. That's the deal.

Who's on the call: Same team that ran the pilot
DELIVERABLES
2-week build cycles
Weekly metric publication
Quarterly architecture review
Off-ramp plan, always live
The 14-day pilot

What a fixed-scope pilot actually looks like.

Ten working days. One question we're proving the answer to. A go/no-go memo on the desk by Friday of week two — and the code in your repo regardless of which way the decision goes.

D1
Mon · W1
D2
Tue · W1
D3
Wed · W1
D4
Thu · W1
D5
Fri · W1
D6
Mon · W2
D7
Tue · W2
D8
Wed · W2
D9
Thu · W2
D10
Fri · W2
D1

Kickoff

Outcome brief signed. Access provisioned. Squad assigned.

D2

Audit & interviews

Six 30-min interviews with your team. Repo + data walkthrough.

D3

Slice definition

Smallest provable slice locked. Success metric named.

D4

Architecture sketch

Internal review with your tech lead. Risk register opens.

D5

Build plan signed

8-minute build plan circulated. Demo cadence scheduled.

D6

First commit lands

Squad pairs into your repo. CI green by end of day.

D7

Eval harness up

Measurement wired in before the feature. We can't ship blind.

D8

Mid-pilot demo

30-min live demo to stakeholders. Adjustments logged, not litigated.

D9

Slice complete

Feature flag flipped on for an internal cohort.

D10

Go / no-go memo

One-page memo: what we built, what it moved, what comes next.

Cadence

The week looks the same every week.

Four meetings per cycle. No status reports, no project-manager handoffs — the people doing the work are the ones in the room.

Monday

Cycle kickoff

20-min standup. Last week's metric, this week's target, the one thing in the way.

Wed/Thu

Mid-cycle review

Working session. We look at the build in your environment, not in a deck.

Friday

Demo + retro + memo

Live demo (15min). Retro (10min). One-page memo posted in Slack.

Quarterly

Architecture & roadmap

Half-day with your CTO. Where we're tightening, where we're cutting, what comes off the plan.

Your stack, our office

We work where you work.

We commit into your repo, ship through your CI, and post our standups in your Slack. No “GalacticAITech project room”. If we use a tool you don't, we'll tell you in the kickoff.

SOURCE & SHIP
GitHubLinearVercelCloudflare
COMMS
SlackNotionLoomGoogle Meet
AI & DATA
LangSmithBraintrustdbtHex
OBSERVE
SentryDatadogPostHogOpenTelemetry
What we sign up for

Six promises. In the SOW, not in a brochure.

Every commitment below appears in our standard contract. If we miss one, we name it in the next retro and credit the cycle.

Fixed-price pilots.

No "discovery surprises". The number we quote on Friday is the number you pay.

Walk-away clause.

If the pilot doesn't earn the next phase on its merits, you keep the code and we shake hands.

Code in your repo.

Day one. Not at handoff. Every commit signed, every PR reviewed by your reviewer of choice.

One point of contact.

Your engagement partner stays the same from kickoff to off-ramp. No re-introductions.

Metric, weekly.

Every build cycle has a named metric, and we publish the number in your Slack on Fridays.

Senior delivery.

Median tenure on your project is 8+ years. No bait-and-switch after the SOW signs.

Start here

Bring the messy version.
We'll come back with a plan.

A 30-minute call is enough to scope a fixed-price pilot. We'll send a one-page brief within two business days, and you'll know what the first two weeks look like before you decide to spend a dollar.

WHAT TO BRING
1A messy version of the outcome you're chasing
2Whoever owns the metric on your end
3Any constraints we should know — budget, deadline, compliance
4Nothing else. No deck, no spec.