How we work · 05
Your engineers,
working the way ours do.
After we have gone.
Evals agreed before prompt code. Review as its own workstream. Evidence states on every hand-back. A definition of done that includes the rollback. Taught against your codebase and your standards rather than a generic curriculum — because the point is that it still holds after we leave.
You hold: your own standards corpus, the review discipline and a definition of done that includes evals and a rollback.
What is actually being transferred
Not tools. Not prompts. The review discipline.
Most AI upskilling teaches tooling — this model, that framework, these prompt patterns. It has a half-life of about a quarter, because the tools turn over faster than the training does. What does not turn over is the discipline: how you decide something works before you build it, how you review what an agent produced, how you say what state a claim is in, and what has to exist before something is called done.
So that is what we transfer, and we transfer it against your code. Your repository, your standards, your definition of done — rewritten with your team rather than handed to them. A generic curriculum produces engineers who can describe the discipline; working on their own codebase produces engineers who have applied it and been corrected.
The gate is deliberately unflattering to us: your team ships the last increment without us in the room. If they cannot, the engagement has not finished, whatever the retainer says.
The four words
Verified, Built, Designed, Intended. The states we hand back instead of “should work”. Teams that adopt these describe a change in how their own stand-ups go within about a month — it becomes hard to be vague on purpose.
How it runs
Taught on your codebase, corrected in your reviews.
Alongside real delivery, not instead of it. Training that runs in a separate track does not survive contact with a deadline.
- EngagementLab Retainer — monthly, rolling
- MethodTaught on your codebase, against your standards
- GateYour team ships the last increment without us
- ProducesYour own standards corpus, version-controlled
- Notice30 days on both sides
Write your standards corpus, together
Per-discipline standards in your own words, in your own repository, version-controlled. Ours is the starting point, not the answer — a standard your team did not write is a document they will not apply.
Evals before prompt code, on a real feature
Applied to something your team is actually shipping. The first time is uncomfortable, because agreeing correct answers surfaces disagreements the team was absorbing quietly.
Review as its own workstream
Not a step at the end. Including the harder habit: any engineer may challenge any other’s work, and the objection has to be answered rather than outlasted.
Evidence states on hand-backs
Every claim marked Verified, Built, Designed or Intended. This is the change with the largest effect and the smallest cost.
Step back deliberately
We reduce involvement increment by increment until your team ships one without us. That increment is the deliverable.
The two lists that matter
What you hold, and what we will not do.
Both are in the engagement letter before you sign it. The second list is the one worth reading twice — it is where most disappointment in this market actually comes from.
What you hold at the end
- Your own standards corpus, in your repository, version-controlled
- The review discipline, applied to your code and corrected in your reviews
- A definition of done that includes evals and a rollback
- The record of what your team shipped during the engagement
- An increment shipped by your team with us not in the room
What we won’t do
- Generic curricula taught away from your codebase
- Training that runs separately from real delivery
- Standards documents written for you rather than with you
- Retainers without a quarterly scope review
- Engagements without an exit clause
The alternative shape
Install the discipline, or deploy the workforce.
This shape leaves the discipline in your people. An AI Workforce Deployment stands up the machinery itself for a defined function. Some organisations need one, some the other, and a few need this first — we will tell you which, including when the answer is neither yet.
See the workforce →Why we can teach it
Because it is how this firm delivers, published in full on our delivery model — nine seats, written standards, review gate, integration gate, human decision.
Want it to hold after we leave?
Thirty minutes with a founder. Tell us what your team ships and how they review it now, and we will tell you which habit to change first.
Rolling · 30 days’ notice on both sides · Reviewed quarterly