Connect your company knowledge to AI workflows your team can trust.
I spend one week onsite mapping how your company actually runs, then build the AI operations layer remotely from Austin — four to six weeks in total. You own it when I hand it over. Fixed project fee, no hourly billing, no long transformation program.
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Onsite audit
Map the business, deliver a full plan.
Deployment build
Architecture, cleanup, and workflows.
Retainer
Optional, month to month.
Start with just the onsite week. Keep the audit and plan, then decide on the build.
Most companies don't need a custom AI model. They need their own knowledge in one place.
The bottleneck is rarely the model. It's that the answers are scattered across drives, inboxes, a CRM, a few dashboards, and the three people everyone interrupts. AI becomes unreliable fast when the team has no agreed source of truth.
So that's what I build first: a context layer that knows how your business works, connected to the tools your team already uses. I call it your company brain. Once it exists, retrieval and workflow automation stop being demos and start doing real work.
A project, not a platform.
This is a fixed-scope engagement with a beginning and an end. I come onsite for one week, then build remotely over four to six weeks total. You get a working AI operations layer your team can use and your IT can govern, not another opaque subscription your team can't govern.
The onsite week
Monday to Friday, in your building.
The onsite week is where the real information lives. I sit with the people who run the company and trace how work actually moves, not how the org chart says it does.
- 01
Interviews across the company
Leadership, operations, sales, admin, finance, and IT. Enough of each to see the whole flow, not just one department's version of it.
- 02
Map where knowledge lives
Which drive, which inbox, which spreadsheet, and which single person everyone depends on. The real map, not the org chart.
- 03
Find the repeated questions and handoffs
The things that get asked and re-asked, and the points where work stalls waiting on one person.
- 04
Define source-of-truth rules
When two documents disagree, which one wins. Decided on purpose and written down.
- 05
Draw the security boundary
Which data must never leave your internal systems, and how access will be scoped.
- 06
Pick two to four workflows
The ones worth automating first, chosen with your team, not for them.
- 07
Set up secure, documented access
Named accounts under your control, ready for the build phase.
You come out of the week with a clear picture of your own operation, whether or not you continue to the full build.
What you get
- A knowledge architecture and a written source-of-truth hierarchy for your business.
- Targeted cleanup of the fields, documents, and records the selected workflows need. Broad data remediation is scoped separately.
- A RAG knowledge base and retrieval prototype where it fits your data, not forced where it doesn't.
- Two to four narrowly scoped workflows, each with one owner, defined inputs, approval gates, and acceptance criteria.
- Approval gates on anything that sends, spends, or changes records.
- Administrator documentation so your team can run and extend the system.
- A recorded team walkthrough, an admin handoff session, and a written runbook for each shipped workflow.
- A practical tool-overlap review: duplicate subscriptions, unused AI features, and consolidation candidates. Cancellation decisions stay yours.
- A 90-day roadmap for what to build next, in priority order.
Who this is for
A good fit
- 50 to 200 employees is the sweet spot. Smaller teams fit when a single repeated workflow is painful enough to justify a fixed-scope sprint.
- Owner-, founder-, or COO-led, with someone who can make decisions in the room.
- Roughly $5M to $100M in revenue.
- Running Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, a CRM, shared drives, dashboards, and real SOPs.
- Carrying recurring admin work and repeated internal questions.
- Wants AI working internally but has no one on staff to build the context layer.
Not a fit
- Enterprise “AI transformation” programs measured in quarters and committees.
- Chatbot theater or a public-facing marketing gimmick.
- A prompt-writing workshop. This is systems work, not training day.
Your systems stay yours.
Hardly Creative works through scoped, documented, revocable contractor access: named accounts, MFA, least-privilege permissions, audit logs, and time-bound credentials. You can see exactly what I can reach, and you can revoke it in minutes.
You keep ownership
Every account, credential, and production system stays in your name. Where a workflow needs a third-party AI or automation service, it's named and documented before launch.
Internal data stays internal
I define that boundary during the onsite week and build to it.
I work alongside your IT or MSP
Not around them. They keep the keys; I operate inside the access they grant.
Everything is documented
So your team can audit, extend, or shut it down without me.
Own your data. Own your edge.
A company brain is only worth building if the leverage stays with you. I build yours to be model- and provider-agnostic: your knowledge, your data, and the workflows on top live in systems you own and can move to whatever model is best next quarter. You are not locked to one vendor's roadmap, and you are not exposed to runaway per-token costs. In plain terms: you decide what AI can see, sensitive data stays where it belongs, costs stay visible, and your team can shut any of it off.
Some owners don't want a platform vendor's team embedded deep in their proprietary workflows. This engagement keeps the implementation independent, documented, and in your own accounts. A solo operator under NDA builds it, hands it over, and leaves.
It also positions you for wherever the industry goes next. When your data is clean, owned, and correctly scoped, you can point it at whatever wins: closed models like Claude or GPT, open-source models you run yourself, a private deployment if your risk profile ever calls for it, or a mix of both. The frontier is moving week to week through 2026 and beyond. Own the foundation and you choose your direction; rent someone else's stack and you take what you're given.
This is the direction the industry is moving. Palantir's AI-sovereignty push and the All-In panel are making the same case: own your data, own your weights, stay independent.
Pricing
Fixed project fees, quoted up front. Travel is billed separately, at cost, and approved before anything is booked. No hourly billing.
AI Readiness Field Audit
Starting at $9,500 + travel
One onsite week plus a written audit and action plan: where your knowledge lives, what's ready for AI, which tools you can consolidate, and what to build first. Book it on its own — move into a Sprint within 30 days and 50% of the audit fee is credited toward the build.
Company Brain Deployment Sprint
Starting at $24,500 + travel
Flagship
The full four-to-six-week build: one week onsite, then knowledge architecture, retrieval, and two to four workflows delivered in your own accounts. For founding clients this covers one department, up to two primary systems of record, and a documented handoff — broader cleanup or extra workflows are scoped separately. The onsite week is a decision point; commit to the build only if it's right for you.
AI Operations Retainer
Starting at $4,500 / month
Monitoring, fixes, vendor and API changes, and one workflow improvement a month. Month to month, three-month minimum, no contract beyond that. Keep the system improving without hiring for it.
A limited number of fixed-scope founding deployments are open now. Reduced fixed fees apply for clients willing to approve a public or anonymized case study; terms are agreed before contract.
Government & institutional buyers
Hardly Creative delivers client-owned, auditable AI operations deployment and custom software to government and institutional buyers, built within existing IT governance: knowledge architecture, retrieval systems, and secure workflow automation.
- NAICS
- 541512 · 541511 · 541519 · 541611 · 541618
- SAM.gov
- Registered · UEI Y8HTN8TGJEJ5
- Location
- Austin, Texas · North America
For solicitation or teaming inquiries, email .
Questions
- Do you bill hourly?
- No. Every engagement is a fixed project fee, quoted before I start. You know the number going in.
- Do you actually come onsite?
- Yes. One full week, in person, at the start. Some of the most important operating context shows up only when I sit with the people doing the work. The remaining three to five weeks are remote from Austin.
- Can I stop after the onsite week?
- Yes. You can book the onsite Field Audit on its own, or as the first phase of a Sprint. Either way you leave the week with the audit and a full action plan, and you decide whether to continue to the build. No pressure to commit before you've seen the plan.
- Will this replace our current software?
- No. I build on top of the tools you already run: Google Workspace or Microsoft 365, your CRM, your drives, your dashboards. The goal is to connect them, not rip them out.
- Do you build custom AI models?
- Almost never, and not first. Most companies get far more from organizing their own knowledge and automating real workflows than from training a bespoke model. If a custom model is genuinely warranted, I'll tell you, and usually it isn't.
- Will you work with our IT team or MSP?
- Yes, always. I operate inside the access your IT grants, with named accounts and audit logs. They keep control; I keep them informed.
- How does payment work?
- The Field Audit is 50% to book and 50% on delivery. The Deployment Sprint is 40% to book, 40% after the onsite week and architecture approval, and 20% before final handoff. Travel is billed separately, at cost, and approved before booking.
- What's not included?
- A Sprint is bounded in the SOW: one department, a capped set of systems and workflows, with acceptance criteria and exclusions in writing. Broad company-wide data remediation, custom model training, replacing core software, and formal security certification (SOC 2, HIPAA, CMMC) work are scoped separately or referred out.
- What do you need from our team?
- A project sponsor, a named data owner, and scoped access to the systems in the SOW. I work through named accounts with audit logs, and your team approves exactly what I can reach.
- Who pays for the AI tools?
- You do, in your own accounts — model APIs, automation platforms, and any hosted services. I keep them minimal and tell you the expected monthly run cost before anything ships.
- Do you sign our NDA?
- Yes. An NDA and your MSA are standard. I work under whatever agreement your legal team requires.
- How do we measure success?
- We set acceptance criteria per workflow up front — a target turnaround time, fewer repeat questions, or a searchable, approved source of truth — and check against them at handoff.
- What happens after handoff, or if we cancel the retainer?
- Everything lives in your accounts with a written runbook, so your team can run it without me. Cancel the retainer and the system keeps working; you only lose ongoing monitoring and improvements.
Start with a fit call.
Tell me how your company runs today and what you want AI doing internally. If it's a fit, I'll outline scope and a fixed fee. If it isn't, I'll say so.