Discovery without an artefact
Most AI consulting starts with a discovery call and ends with a slide deck. The deck describes the work but cannot be built from. Engineering picks it up, asks twelve questions, and the project starts again.
The Spec · Fixed-scope scoping engagement
Four days, fixed price. We turn a vague AI ambition into a brief engineering can build against — problem statement, acceptance criteria, architecture sketch, delivery plan. You own the artefact. No retainer. No implementation lock-in.
Why this exists
Most AI consulting starts with a discovery call and ends with a slide deck. The deck describes the work but cannot be built from. Engineering picks it up, asks twelve questions, and the project starts again.
"Use AI to improve our reporting" is not a brief. Without a concrete definition of done — inputs, outputs, edge cases, who validates — every sprint negotiates the goal. Budgets blow. Timelines slip. Trust evaporates.
Many scoping engagements only pay off if the same vendor builds the system. The brief is shaped to fit their stack, their pricing, their roadmap. You leave with a plan that only works in their hands.
The methodology
The Spec is a four-day engagement. We sit with the people who run the workflow today, the people who would consume the AI output tomorrow, and the engineers who would have to build it. We watch the work. We trace the data. We argue about acceptance criteria until they are concrete enough to test.
What you walk away with is one document, around twenty pages, structured the way engineering teams already think: problem statement, acceptance criteria, system context, data sources, architecture sketch, integration map, risk register, delivery plan. Every claim is sourced from a real conversation or a real artefact in your business — not from a generic playbook.
We charge for the brief because the work is real. A free discovery call gives you a sales pitch. A paid spec gives you a buyable artefact: take it to us, take it to your in-house team, take it to a competitor. The brief is yours. We are happy if it never comes back.
Most consulting engagements only pay off if the same vendor wins the build. We have unbundled scoping from delivery on purpose. That changes the incentives at every step — what we ask, what we recommend, what we leave out. The brief is honest because we are not selling the next thing.
What you get
Around twenty pages. Problem statement, workflow map, acceptance criteria, data sources, architecture sketch, integration map, risk register, and a phased delivery plan. Written for engineers, readable by operators.
Slides convince. Briefs build. Markdown and PDF, version-controlled, hand-offable to any vendor or in-house team without translation.
A defensible range for delivery cost and timeline, broken down by phase. Numbers we would stand behind if asked to build it ourselves — and we will tell you on day one if the problem is too small or too large for the engagement we recommend.
On the final day we walk you and your engineering lead through the brief together. Open questions get resolved on the call. You leave with a document everyone in the room has agreed to.
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[AWAITING COPY] What's in the template, who it's for, and how to use it.
The engagement
A 45-minute conversation to confirm the problem fits The Spec format. If it does not — too small, too large, or not yet ready — we will tell you and point at the right starting point. No charge.
We meet your sponsor, the workflow owner, and the engineering lead. We watch the existing process, read the systems, and write down what we see. By end of day we have a draft problem statement and a list of open questions.
Asynchronous. We draft the brief. You answer the open questions and pull the data samples we asked for. Two short check-ins per day to confirm direction. Most of the writing happens here.
We walk through the brief together — sponsor, owner, engineering lead in the room. Open questions get closed live. Acceptance criteria get tightened. The document is signed off and handed over.
You own the brief. Take it to your engineering team, take it to a vendor, take it to us. We are happy to quote on the build, and equally happy to step out and let someone else deliver against the spec.
Frequently asked