OPERATE-02 · OPERATE

All Your AI, Kept Running

One person owns every AI system you run — your work always comes first, and the person who knows your systems stays, month after month.

$30,000/monthOngoing

The written plan comes first — and the $750 credits toward Design or any Build for 90 days.

Operate is not refundable — it is cancel-anytime with 30 days' notice, prorated to your end date. Guarantee on the work, no lock-in on the relationship.

After you pay
  1. 01Pay securely by card
  2. 02Pick a time that works
  3. 03Your written plan in a few days
AWhat you getFIXED SCOPE
  • 01Everything in Your AI, Looked After — across all of your live AI
  • 02One piece of work carried forward or unblocked each month
  • 03A monthly planning session
  • 04Help with the hard calls on how to build and which vendors to use
  • 05A short written report each month: what's done, what's at risk, what's next
BWHAT THIS ISTHE BRIEF

One person owns all of your live AI, not just an agreed slice. You get everything in Your AI, Looked After, plus top priority across every live workflow, a monthly planning session, help with the hard calls on how to build and which vendors to use, and one piece of work carried forward each month. The knowledge your roadmap depends on stays with us, so it does not leave when a team member does. Leave any time with 30 days' notice.

BUILT FOR CTO, VP Engineering, or founder managing several live AI priorities who needs one accountable owner carrying decisions and knowledge across all of them.

CIS THIS FOR YOUFIT CHECK

WHEN YOU NEED THIS

  • Live AI needs fixes and someone owning the roadmap
  • You want someone who already knows your code, not a fresh start each time
  • Too active for one-offs, too narrow to hire
  • Decisions stall between one piece of work and the next, or between vendors
  • CTO managing multiple AI priorities alone

NOT FOR YOU IF

  • Need a one-time deliverable, not ongoing ownership
  • No decision-maker to steer monthly priorities
  • Roadmap too unclear for monthly execution
DWHAT IT'S WORTHTHE RETURN

No hiring delays, no starting over, no rotating consultants. One person who keeps the knowledge and keeps work moving month after month — cancel any time with 30 days' notice.

FROM THE RECORD
D3IF SOMETHING BREAKSSEVERITY AND RESPONSE

The escalation path, before you need it.

Your operations team will ask for this and will not accept an undefined answer. Here it is, and the same table goes into the statement of work.

COVERAGE Monday to Friday, 09:00–18:00 US Central Time, excluding US federal holidays.

SeverityWhat it meansAcknowledgedWhat happens next
Severity 1Production is down, or data is at risk.Acknowledged within 4 business hoursWork starts the same business day and continues until it is stable.
Severity 2Running, but degraded, drifting, or costing more than it should.Acknowledged within 1 business dayFixed inside the current work cycle, or scheduled with a date.
Severity 3A question, a change request, or something to watch.Acknowledged within 2 business daysHandled in the normal run of the engagement.
Channel
One email address that reaches the operator directly, agreed at engagement start — not a shared inbox and not a ticket queue.
Escalation
If an acknowledgment window passes without a reply, escalate to the direct contact named in your statement of work, agreed with you at engagement start. It reaches the same person. A one-person practice has no tier above that, and we would rather say so than draw you an escalation tree with one name in every box.
Not covered
  • Planned maintenance, announced in advance.
  • Outages in systems ML LABS does not operate — your cloud, your vendors, your network.
  • Work outside the agreed set. It is quoted, not refused.
D4CAPACITYHOW MANY AT ONCE

How many of these run at once.

  • 01One Build at a time. Your proposal comes back with a committed start date, and if the slot is taken you find out before you sign rather than after.
  • 02Operate engagements run concurrently and the number is capped, so the person accountable for your live system is not quietly carrying five others. Ask how many are running before you sign and you get the count, not a reassurance.
  • 03Over capacity, you go on a waitlist with a committed date. Never a silent queue, and never a yes we cannot keep.
D5THE ONE-PERSON QUESTIONNAMED FIRST

Yes, it is one person. Here is what that costs you, and what it buys you.

You are not worried about documentation. You are worried about month four of a six-figure build, or month fourteen of a retainer, and one person who stops answering. That is the right thing to worry about, and reassurance is not an answer to it. Structure is.

What it costs you

A team of forty has redundancy you do not get here. We are not going to pretend otherwise — it is the one row in the comparison below that an agency wins outright.

What we do about it

  • Everything lives in your repository from day oneCode, runbook, and the architecture record land in a repository you own, continuously — not as a handover event at the end. There is no version of this where the work is trapped somewhere you cannot reach.
  • Credentials live in your secret storeNever in a repository, ours or yours. You grant access scoped to the statement of work and you revoke it whenever you decide to.
  • No standby engineer on retainer — and we will not pretend otherwiseSome firms answer this with a named successor kept on standby. We do not have one, and inventing one would be exactly the kind of reassurance this section refuses to give you. The structural answer is the one above: because the repository, the runbook and the credentials are already yours, whoever picks the work up — your own team, or someone you hire — starts from a written system rather than an excavation. That is a difference you can check in month one instead of discovering in month fourteen.
  • An unavailability clause with teethIf ML LABS goes non-responsive for five consecutive business days, Operate fees stop and prorate to that date. You are not paying for silence, and the handover package is already in your hands because it always was.

What it buys you

No account team, no handoffs, no context reset, and nobody learning your system on your budget. The person who scoped it is the person who built it and the person who answers when it breaks. That is not available at forty engineers, at any price.

The bar we would want you to hold us to, written down before you hold us to it. Read it →

EVERSUS THE ALTERNATIVESTRADE-OFFS
Rotating consultants (they start over every time)
Full-time AI lead ($200K-$350K/yr, 3-6 mo search)
Fractional CTO (broader advice, less AI delivery)
Do nothing; decisions slow, priorities fragment
NO LOCK-IN — 30 DAYS' NOTICE

No lock-in. 30 days' notice. Leave whenever you want.

Operate is not refundable — it is cancel-anytime with 30 days' notice, prorated to your end date. Guarantee on the work, no lock-in on the relationship.

The full terms → Security & data handling →