How we work
Three shapes, in order. Each one is allowed to end the relationship cleanly — that is the point of doing them in this order rather than selling the whole thing at once.
What an engagement with us looks like
An engagement with us has three shapes, in order: a diagnostic of about a week, a pilot of a few weeks, and a build your team owns at the end. How long the build takes depends on its scope, which we estimate and cap with you before it starts.
The studio, done for you
Every engagement runs on the same studio we also sell direct, ongoing access to: the place a model actually gets built. Hiring us means we operate that studio on your behalf, end to end. The deliverable is three things together, not one: the model, its certificate, and the report that explains what it does and why. You keep all three, and what they earn afterwards is yours — you own the return, not a subscription to ours.
embark.day is where the models and the community that build them live; this is the studio — who you hire when you want one built for you. See the three layers, measured.
1 · Diagnostic — about a week
What happens in a diagnostic: we look at the decision you actually make, the data you actually have, and we tell you whether this is worth building. Deliverable: a written assessment naming the decision, the measurable outcome, what is missing, and what we would do about it — including if the answer is "nothing, your spreadsheet is fine."
Fixed fee. Roughly a third of diagnostics should end here if we are being honest about scope, and we would rather bank that reputation than the follow-on.
2 · Pilot — a few weeks
How long a pilot takes: a few weeks. One decision, built and running against your real data, with the success measure agreed in writing before we start. Deliverable: the working system, the measurement that says whether it beat the current approach, and the honest result either way.
Fixed scope and fixed price. If the pilot misses its measure, you owe nothing further and you keep the assessment and the code.
3 · Build and hand over
The pilot becomes something your team owns: integrated, documented, and with the reasoning written down where the next engineer will find it. We stay on a defined support arrangement afterwards if you want one, and we are equally happy if you do not.
Time and materials against a capped estimate, or fixed price per milestone. Your call.
What you own at the end
- Your data stays yours. We do not train shared models on your data, and we do not reuse your figures in anyone else's engagement.
- The code and the models. Work product is yours. We keep our pre-existing tools and the general methods; you keep everything built for you and the right to run, modify and hand it on.
- The reasoning. Written down, in your repository, in language your team speaks. A system nobody can explain six months later has already failed.
Ongoing access, after the engagement
Most of what we build runs on top of the same engine we sell in its own right at embark.day — see the rate card. Handover does not leave you needing us forever: you keep the code, and if your team wants direct, ongoing access to the engine itself — to extend what we built, or call it from something new — that is a normal business account: invoice-billed, prepaid credit, and, like every account, all sales are final. There is no self-serve "buy" button for it; tell us what you need and we set one up. (If a business account is more than a lone engineer needs to start, embark.day's own self-serve credit covers evaluating the SDK directly — either way, a key lands the same way every account's does, at embark.day/key.html.)
How we price a diagnostic, a pilot and a build
Fixed fee for diagnostics and pilots, because you should not carry the risk of our estimate. Capped time and materials for build work, because that is the honest shape once scope is genuinely open. No percentage-of-savings arrangements — they sound aligned and they quietly bias every measurement we would then be making.