Procurement for enterprise AI context work should buy an operable supply chain, not a longer pilot. Evaluate vendors on whether they can map sources, structure, semantics, validation, retrieval, agent operations, and the learning loop against your real systems—and whether they can state what will remain out of scope in the first engagement.
Scope a first step that produces decisions, not demos. The interview maps the schema landscape; a half-day Diagnostic Briefing within ten days of it turns that map into written findings and a buy/no-buy. A two-week Agent Context Cost & Failure Audit is a practical entry point: it uses telemetry and traces from one named agent workflow to show where spend and waste concentrate and where the agent fails on wrong context, without promising savings. A three-to-four-week Core Model Blueprint then assesses the connectors, ranks gaps by production impact and sequences the Core Model with a first implementation quarter. Managed operations should be priced only after ownership, write-back rules, and success measures are clear.
Reject proposals that jump from workshop to "agent platform" without a production path: access controls, audit, runbooks, and a named owner for each stage of the chain. Prefer firms that treat maturity as levels you can verify—ad hoc through self-improving, not as marketing stages. Prefer firms that design engagements so pilots can graduate into governed operations rather than restart as science projects.
What is being bought
Assessment engagements buy a written deliverable: a diagnosis, a maturity placement per stage with evidence attached, and where the Blueprint phase is included, a sequenced plan with effort estimates. Implementation engagements buy working software delivered on a quarterly milestone.
Pricing basis
| Engagement | Fee | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Diagnostic Briefing | $4,500 | Half day, within ten days of the interview, fixed |
| Agent Context Cost & Failure Audit | $12,000 | 2 weeks, one named agent workflow, fixed |
| Core Model Blueprint | $32,500 | 3 to 4 weeks, one named agent workflow, fixed |
| Implementation | $75,000 | First quarter, fixed: three systems, one Core Model, the MCP endpoint, CoreModels licence included; expansion quarters $60,000 – $180,000 by scope |
| Managed Operations | $9,000 – $18,000 | Per month, quarterly rolling: Care $9,000 · Ops + Eval $18,000 |
Every fee above is fixed before the engagement starts. The Core Model Blueprint is internally split into Diagnose at $15,000 and Blueprint at $17,500, and the second half can be declined once the first is delivered. Implementation’s first quarter is a fixed package; expansion quarters are priced by scope and fixed at quarter start. Managed Operations is two SKUs: Care, and Ops + Eval, which adds the evaluation harness on schedule, incident attribution and on-call for the named agent workflows.
Ownership and exit
- Reports, blueprints, runbooks and code are owned outright by the client
- A blueprint we produce can be executed by your team or another vendor
- No engagement creates a dependency on continued Ariesnet involvement