AI System Continuity · Maintenance retainer

Production AI decays in silence. Continuity is the watch on it.

Eval suites rot. Prompts drift. Vendors deprecate the model under you. Training material goes stale the week after rollout. 2 to 3 days a month covers the monthly health-check, eval re-runs, prompt regression triage, vendor escalations, and a Sev-1 SLA inside one business day. The continuity tier below the active engagements.

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TL;DR · 60-second read

What you walk away with

A monthly health-check artifact, a Sev-1 SLA, and a system that doesn't quietly decay between board meetings.

Who it's for: Teams with production AI already shipped and nobody watching it. Not enough work for a full-time AI lead.
Format: 2 to 3 days per month. 3-month minimum, monthly renewal after.
Investment: Quoted in writing within 48 hours.
Next step: Book the Continuity call

Production AI is a system with seven failure modes. They don't announce themselves. They surface as a Sev-1, a board question you can't answer, or a slow-bleed cost line nobody traced back to the source.

You don't need another build. You need someone watching what you already shipped, on a named cadence, against a baseline.

Failure mode 01 · Model drift

The provider silently updates the model under your prompts

Same prompt, different distribution. Accuracy slides 4 to 8 points in a quarter. The eval suite would catch it, if anyone were running it.

Failure mode 02 · Prompt degradation

Edge cases pile up. Hotfixes stack. The prompt no longer matches the intent

Six engineers tweak the same prompt over six months. Nobody owns the regression suite. The prompt ships drift as a feature.

Failure mode 03 · Vendor model deprecation

Anthropic, OpenAI, or your inference vendor sunsets the model you depend on

90-day deprecation window. No migration plan. The replacement model has different tool-calling behavior and your evals fail on day one.

Failure mode 04 · Upstream schema changes

The system feeding your AI changes its data contract

A CRM field gets renamed. A pricing table gets reshaped. The agent keeps running, returns plausible answers, and silently corrupts the next step in the workflow.

Failure mode 05 · Eval suite rot

The eval suite ships with the build, then stops running

No owner. No cadence. By month four, the eval suite is a folder in the repo nobody opens. Regressions ship to production unflagged.

Failure mode 06 · Observability silence

The logs are on. Nobody is reading them

Latency spikes, cost overruns, retry storms, runaway loops. The dashboards exist. There's no human in the loop reviewing them on a cadence.

Failure mode 07 · Stale training and RBAC drift

The team forgets how to use it. Access permissions outlive the people who set them

Training material captured at launch goes stale the first time a workflow changes. RBAC roles drift as the org reshuffles, and the AI inherits access nobody meant to grant.

Each deliverable below has a frequency, an artifact, and an owner. 2 to 3 days a month, scope-locked. No creep into new builds.

Monthly · Health-check artifact

One-page report on the system you shipped

Accuracy, latency, cost, error rate, and adoption against the locked baseline. Delivered by the 5th business day each month. Forwardable to the board without a redraft.

Monthly · Eval suite re-run

The eval suite runs against the baseline, every month

Same golden set, same scoring rubric, same cadence. Drift flagged with a delta number, not a feeling. The suite stays warm instead of rotting in the repo.

Monthly · Model-deprecation watch

Early warning on every vendor in the stack

Anthropic, OpenAI, inference provider sunset calendars tracked. Migration plan drafted before the 90-day window opens, not after. You hear about deprecations from me, not from a Twitter thread.

As-needed · Prompt regression triage

Break it, reproduce in eval, ship the fix, re-baseline

When a prompt breaks, I reproduce in the eval suite, ship the fix, re-baseline. No tickets to your engineering team. Logged in the monthly health-check.

As-needed · Vendor escalations

I sit on the support ticket, not your engineers

Quota issues, billing surprises, rate-limit changes, tool-calling regressions, security questionnaires. I negotiate. Your team stays out of vendor inboxes.

As-needed · Sev-1 response

Acknowledged within 1 business day, triaged within 3

Production AI broken in a user-visible way is the SLA event. I'm on it inside one business day. If not, the next month's retainer is waived.

Quarterly · Tribal-knowledge inventory refresh

The shared knowledge base does not go stale

The AI-ready knowledge base your team and your AI both work from gets a quarterly pass. New workflows captured, retired ones removed, ownership reassigned. Onboarding stays sub-week.

Quarterly · Workforce retraining touch-ups

Training material moves when the model or workflow moves

When a model version, prompt, or workflow changes, the team-facing training gets a targeted update. No annual rip-and-replace. The Leadership-Lab-Crowd structure stays current.

Quarterly · RBAC and access review

Permissions stay matched to the org chart

As the team reshapes, RBAC drifts. Quarterly review of who and what the AI can touch. Decommissioned roles pruned. Audit-ready.

Monthly · One small scope addition

One new use case, sized to the day budget

A single new prompt or workflow, sized to the day allowance. Same eval discipline as the original build. Anything larger flows to Scoped Build.

Monthly · 30-minute stakeholder sync

What shipped, what broke, what's next

Async-first, calendar-confirmed. The monthly health-check is the agenda.

Quarterly · Portfolio review for the board

One-page summary, forwardable

Three months of shipped, broke, next, in board-ready language. The CFO can defend the line item without a translator.

Scope-locked on purpose. Work grows, engagement graduates. Not the retainer.

Not included · Goes to Scoped Build

New builds beyond the 1-use-case-per-month allowance

One small addition fits. A new multi-agent workflow does not. That's Scoped Build: 60 to 90 days.

Not included · Goes to Fractional

Hiring help, panel reviews, recruiting

Helping you hire a full-time AI lead is Fractional work. Different altitude.

Not included · Goes to AI Portfolio Allocation or Fractional

Board work, strategy decks, portfolio reviews

Board-ready roadmaps and Three-Horizon classification are their own engagements. Continuity keeps what you shipped running.

Not included · Goes to Training

New workforce training rollouts

Leadership-Lab-Crowd training is a 4 to 8 week engagement. Not a maintenance line item.

Scope-locked at 2 to 3 days per month. Price scopes against system complexity, eval suite size, and vendor count. Quoted in writing within 48 hours of the discovery call.

Pricing

Scoped, predictable maintenance

Scope-locked at 2 to 3 days per month. Quoted in writing within 48 hours of the discovery call.

Commitment

3-month minimum, monthly renewal after

First month is reading the system. Month two catches the first drift. Month three is the baseline. Cancel anytime after with 30 days' notice.

Why the minimum

Three months to a real baseline

Anything shorter is paying for ramp without the payoff. The first drift report only means something against month one's reading.

Why the cap

Scope-locked at 2 to 3 days

Past the cap, the work isn't Continuity. It's Scoped Build or Fractional. The retainer doesn't quietly expand. The price is honest.

What is AI System Continuity?

Continuity insurance for production AI you already shipped. 2 to 3 days per month covering: a monthly health-check artifact, eval suite re-runs against the locked baseline, prompt regression triage, model-deprecation early warning, vendor escalations, quarterly tribal-knowledge inventory refresh, and workforce retraining touch-ups when models or workflows change. One small scope addition per month fits inside the day budget. Sev-1 incidents are acknowledged within 1 business day. Built for the gap between shipping and hiring a full-time AI lead.

How much does AI System Continuity cost?

3-month minimum. Monthly renewal after. Scope-locked at 2 to 3 days per month. Price scopes against system complexity, eval suite size, and vendor count. Quoted in writing within 48 hours of the discovery call.

Who is AI System Continuity for?

Clients who shipped a Scoped Build or finished a Fractional engagement and need someone keeping the system running. Production AI is in place. A full-time AI lead at senior-exec comp is the wrong shape. AI System Continuity is the in-between.

How is AI System Continuity different from a Fractional retainer?

Fractional is Director-altitude leadership: org redesign, hiring, board work, new builds, vendor strategy. AI System Continuity is operational maintenance only: eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations. Different altitude, different scope.

What if I need more than 2 to 3 days a month?

Then you don't need AI System Continuity. You need Scoped Build for a new use case, or Fractional for ongoing leadership. I'll tell you in the intro call which one fits. The retainer doesn't quietly expand into the higher tiers.

What's your guarantee on this engagement?

Two guarantees. SKU guarantee: Sev-1 incidents (production AI broken in a user-visible way) acknowledged within 1 business day, triaged within 3. If not, next month's retainer is waived. Umbrella guarantee on every engagement: a 14-day mutual exit. Either party can end the engagement inside the first 14 days. Days worked are billed at the agreed day rate. No further commitment.

Below the active engagements. Not competitive with them. The continuity tier most clients graduate into after their Scoped Build or Fractional ends.

Before · Active engagement

Scoped Build or Fractional

The AI gets shipped. Eval suite stood up. Team trained. Engagement closes.

After · Continuity tier

AI System Continuity, on month four

2 to 3 days a month. Eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations. The system keeps running.

Production AI breaks loudly. If I'm not on Sev-1 inside one business day, the retainer doesn't get paid that month. That removes the "ghost vendor" risk from the buyer's pile.

AI System Continuity guarantee

Sev-1 response or the month is waived

Sev-1 incidents (production AI broken in a user-visible way) acknowledged within 1 business day, triaged within 3. If not, next month's retainer is waived.

Umbrella · Every engagement

14-day mutual exit

Every engagement carries a 14-day mutual exit. Either party can end the engagement inside the first 14 days. Days worked are billed at the agreed day rate. No further commitment.

Keep what you shipped, running

Production AI is a system with seven failure modes. Continuity is the watch on all of them.

Book the call. 30 minutes to map your stack, your eval surface, and your vendor exposure. Quoted against the work in writing within 48 hours. 3-month minimum.