Forward Deployed Engineering · For SMBs

One AI workflow, shipped in your stack.
In 8 weeks. Code you own.

An internal copilot, a back-office pipeline, or a customer-facing chat — built by an embedded team you don't have to hire. Free discovery, fixed bid. We scope, ship, hand off. Your team runs it.

See pricing

What we ship

Pick the workflow that's costing you the most.

Four SMB-shaped starting points. Most engagements pull in one or two adjacent builds after the first ships.

5+ Zaps

brittle chains → one pipeline

Replace a Zapier chain with a real pipeline

If you're paying for 5+ Zaps and they've grown brittle with branching and retries — we'll replace them with a proper end-to-end pipeline. Branching, retries, observability, per-step cost controls.

Citations

every answer grounded

An internal copilot that knows your business

A branded chat surface over your docs, contracts, filings, runbooks. Sales, support, ops, and finance query it in natural language and get citations back. No data leaves your tenant.

Back-office

tools you already pay for

Automate the back office

Reconciliation, AP/AR, journal posting, vendor onboarding, weekly rollups. Pulls from the tools you already pay for (QuickBooks, HubSpot, M365, Salesforce). Replaces the spreadsheets and the contractor hours.

Branded

your voice, your rules

A customer-facing chat that knows your catalog

Branded chat or search on your website. Catalog-aware, inventory-aware, brand-voice enforced. Confidence-threshold handoff to a human with the packet — context, history, proposed reply, attachments.

Shipped outputs

What you actually get at the end of an 8-week build.

Real artifacts your team can run. Not a slide deck.

Internal RAG portal

Over your docs, contracts, or knowledge base. Citations on every answer. Refreshed on a schedule that fits your data shape.

Back-office console

Custom queue + audit trail + ops view shipped into your repo. Replaces a $400K/year SaaS seat license in most deployments.

Workflow automation

End-to-end pipelines that replace brittle Zapier chains. Branching, retries, DLQ, observability — the failure modes off-the-shelf tools don't surface.

Customer-facing chat

Branded chat / search / recommendation widgets. Routing, guardrails, escalation, rate-limiting handled — you ship the UX.

Agent workflows

Multi-step agents that work in production. Tool selection, retries, observability, human-in-the-loop. Built on your existing stack.

Custom integrations

M365, QuickBooks, HubSpot, Salesforce, SAP, Slack, Notion, Linear. Whatever's on the org chart, we hook into it.

8-week build, then hand off

Fixed scope. Fixed phases. No surprises.

Discovery

Week 1–2

We sit with the operators — owner, ops lead, finance. Find the workflow that's costing you the most. Free build-vs-buy memo and a fixed bid by end of week 2.

Build

Week 3–6

Working software in your repo. Real PRs, real tests, real deployable code. One product, one repo, one surface (internal or customer-facing).

Integrate

Week 7–8

Wire it into your existing stack — CRM, ticketing, internal APIs. Production hardening, runbooks. Optional light-touch retainer after ship.

Run

Optional retainer

Stays on for bug fixes, small iterations, and the next build. You're never left holding a system nobody at your shop knows how to run.

What SMB owners ask us first

Five questions that come up before the kickoff.

What does the build cost?

Discovery is free. We write a build-vs-buy memo and a fixed bid by end of week 2 — that bid locks. You'll know the number before we write a single line of code. SMB engagements are 8-week fixed scope. No public dollar figure — bid after free discovery because scope varies.

We don't have an engineering team. Can we still use FDE?

That's exactly who FDE is for. We work in your stack, ship into your repo, hand you the runbooks, and stay on for bug fixes. After the engagement your team owns everything — code, eval harness, data, keys. No forced lock-in.

How is this different from a dev agency?

Most agencies bill by hour and ship a project. We scope, ship a fixed deliverable, hand it over. Then we stay on as long as you want us to — a retainer for monitoring, eval drift, model refreshes, or the next adjacent build. The model bill is also routed through Yielding Bear, which usually runs 70%+ cheaper than paying OpenAI/Anthropic direct. Same agency — different math.

What if the scope changes mid-build?

We write a scope-change memo with a fresh bid. You can stop, pivot, or extend. Most SMB engagements pull in 1–2 small adjacent builds during the 8 weeks because the operators get a clearer view of the next highest-leverage workflow once the first one ships.

Can I just use your LLM API on its own, without FDE?

Yes. Free tier with 50K tokens/month, no card. Pay-as-you-go from $10. Grizzly Pro at $99/mo with 25M tokens, semantic caching, guardrails. FDE is only for teams who want us to scope, ship, and run an end-to-end AI build. Most SMBs start on pay-as-you-go, then add FDE when one workflow needs more than just the API.

Free discovery. Fixed bid by end of week 2.

Tell us the workflow. We come back with the build-vs-buy memo, the timeline, and the price. You own whether or not we proceed.

View Pricing