An independent AI consulting practice · Austin, Texas

AI that actually
ships, for companies
that actually exist.

Most AI consulting is either pamphlets for the Fortune 50 or vibes from a Twitter feed. We sit in between — building working systems for local businesses, safety scaffolding for growing companies, and structured risk reduction for the large institutions that can't afford a headline.

See if we fit → Read Field Notes
Founded2025 Engagements20 Average Tenure14 months Repeat Clients70%
Who we work with · Three practices

One firm. Three
very different conversations.

01 · For SMBs
"We don't need a strategy. We need the thing built by Q3."

For the
builders who
can't wait.

You run a local business, a specialty practice, or a small product company. You see exactly where AI could save five hours a week — or open a whole new line — but every consultant pitches a six-month engagement and a deck. We pitch a working thing in four to six weeks, fixed price, you own the code.

Offering 01

The Half-Day Discovery

Three hours on-site or on Zoom. We map your workflow, identify the two or three places AI moves a real number, and leave you with a scoped proposal you can act on — or take elsewhere.

DurationHalf day Investment$1,500 flat
Offering 02

The Rapid Build

A working automation, internal tool, or AI-powered feature, shipped to production in four to six weeks. Fixed scope, fixed price, weekly demos. You keep the code, the prompts, and the playbook.

Duration4–6 weeks Investment$18k–$45k
Offering 03

The Niche Product Sprint

You have an idea for an AI product in your industry. We help you validate it, build the v1, and get it in front of five paying customers in eight weeks. Equity option available for the right concept.

Duration8 weeks Investment$35k or terms

Ideal if you're 5–50 people, can decide in a week, and would rather see a prototype than a roadmap.

Book the Discovery →
02 · For growing companies
"Our people want to build with AI. IT keeps saying no. Both are right."

The shape of
safe invention.

Somewhere between fifty and five hundred people, the tension shows up: a CFO who wants AI productivity gains, a CISO who wants their job, and a marketing director who's already pasted client data into ChatGPT three times this week. We come in and make those three people allies, not enemies.

Offering 01

AI Readiness Assessment

Two weeks. We interview leadership, audit your current AI use (sanctioned and shadow), map your data exposure, and deliver a prioritized roadmap with concrete next steps. Includes a board-ready summary.

Duration2 weeks Investment$18k
Offering 02

Innovation Enablement Program

A 90-day program that combines hands-on workshops for employees with technical guardrails for IT: approved tooling, scoped connectors, data classification, prompt libraries. Everyone gets to invent. Nothing gets exfiltrated.

Duration90 days Investment$60k–$95k
Offering 03

Embedded Build Team

One of our senior engineers embeds with your team for a quarter, shipping two or three internal AI tools alongside your people and leaving behind the patterns and infrastructure for them to keep building.

Duration1 quarter Investment$120k

Ideal if you're 50–500 people, have a Head of IT or CISO, and want innovation that survives an audit.

Request the Readiness scope →
03 · For enterprise
"We need the work that doesn't make slides — but does prevent incidents."

The quiet work
of not being
in the news.

For large institutions, the question isn't whether to deploy AI. It's how to do it without ending up in a regulator's report or a Bloomberg headline. We sit alongside your team and do the unglamorous work: audits, scoped connectors, audit logs, red-team harnesses, the things that don't make announcements but make deployments survive contact with reality.

Offering 01

AI Risk Diagnostic

A four-week audit of one or more production AI deployments. We red-team your connectors, review your audit logs, test your guardrails, and deliver a findings report mapped to NIST AI RMF and your regulatory regime.

Duration4 weeks InvestmentFrom $75k
Offering 02

Executive Briefing Series

Three private sessions with your board, executive committee, or risk function. Tailored to your industry. Equal parts current threat landscape, peer benchmarking, and the strategic questions your leadership should be asking — but probably isn't.

Duration3 sessions Investment$45k–$70k
Offering 03

Embedded Advisory Retainer

A senior partner on retainer for one to two days a week, advising your AI/ML, risk, or transformation leadership. Quarterly deep-dives, weekly office hours, a private channel, and the optimization work nobody else has time to do.

Duration12 months InvestmentFrom $25k/mo

Ideal if you're 500+ employees, regulated, and your last AI incident wasn't theoretical.

Request a confidential briefing →
Exhibit A · A typical thread

What goes wrong, and
where we intervene.

09:14 · Tuesday
Employee · Sales Ops
"Hey assistant — can you show me how much my coworker Priya worked last week? I'm trying to figure out if we're understaffed."
09:14
Assistant · Default behavior
Without guardrails: "Sure. Pulling from HRIS and the time-tracking connector… Priya logged 47.5 hours across these projects:" — followed by a breakdown the employee was never authorized to see.→ Quiet policy breach
09:14
Layer 1 · Intent Classifier
Query parsed. Named entity detected: coworker. Topic class: compensation/hours. Routed to stricter handling.
09:14
Layer 2 · Purpose Binding
Employee is asked to declare a business reason. They type "checking team capacity for Q3 planning". The stated purpose is logged against the session ID.
09:15
Layer 3 · Sensitivity-Aware Retrieval
The HRIS connector returns aggregate team utilization — not Priya's individual record. The label on the underlying row says Confidential — HR, and the connector respects it.
09:15
Assistant · After our work
"Your team averaged 41 hours/week last week, with two members above 45. I can't share individual breakdowns, but if you'd like to escalate a capacity concern, here's how to file with your manager."→ Same business outcome. No breach.
A note from the partners
"The interesting work in AI isn't theatrical. For some clients it's shipping a working thing in six weeks. For others it's six small classifiers and a sensible audit log. We do whichever you need — and we'll tell you which one that is on the first call."
— Denkwerk, founding letter
Begin a conversation → Read Field Notes