Fear 1 · Silent regression
The AI is getting worse and you don't know it
Drift creeps in. The eval suite stopped running after the project closed. Users complain before you catch it.
Care · Maintenance retainer · $3-5k/month
The AI you shipped six months ago is regressing. Nobody's watching.
The maintenance retainer. Your AI keeps running. You don't hire a full-time AI lead. 2 to 3 days a month, eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations. The continuity tier below the active engagements.
§01
Production AI doesn't sit still. Neither does the model under it.
Prompts that worked in March drift by September. Vendor pricing changes. Quotas tighten. A new model release shifts the eval baseline. Someone tweaks a prompt at 11pm and nobody runs the regression suite.
You don't need another build. You need someone watching the system you already shipped.
Fear 2 · Wrong-shape hire
A full-time AI lead at $300k loaded is the wrong fit
You don't have 40 hours a week of AI work. You have 2 to 3 days a month of maintenance and the occasional fire drill.
Fear 3 · Fire-drill cost
The next outage is a re-engagement at Fractional rates
$12-20k per month to fix a prompt that drifted. The economics don't work. Care is the third option.
§02
What's included every month.
2 to 3 days of work, predictable scope, no scope creep into new builds.
Inclusion 1 · Eval suite monitoring
Track regressions, flag drift
Monthly delta on accuracy, latency, cost. Flag drift on the prompts that matter before users feel it.
Inclusion 2 · Prompt regression triage
Break it, fix it, re-baseline
When a prompt breaks, I reproduce the failure in the eval suite, ship the fix, re-baseline. No tickets routed to your engineering team.
Inclusion 3 · Vendor escalations
I handle the support tickets
Anthropic, OpenAI, quota issues, billing surprises, model deprecations. I sit on the support tickets and negotiate quota. You don't.
Inclusion 4 · One small scope addition per month
One new use case, sized to the day budget
A single new prompt or workflow, sized to fit the day allowance. Same eval discipline as the original build. Anything larger flows to Scoped Build.
Inclusion 5 · Monthly check-in call
30 minutes with the stakeholder
What shipped. What broke. What's next. Async-first, but the call is on the calendar.
Inclusion 6 · Quarterly portfolio review
15-minute written summary, every quarter
The AI portfolio in one page. Shipped, broke, next. Sent quarterly. Forwardable to the board.
§03
What's not included. The continuity tier is not a backdoor into the higher tiers.
Scope-locked on purpose. If the work grows, the 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 a Scoped Build engagement: $30-60k, 60 to 90 days.
Not included · Goes to Fractional
Hiring help, panel reviews, recruiting
Helping you hire your own full-time AI lead is Fractional work. $12-20k per month. Different altitude, different price.
Not included · Goes to Three-Horizon or Fractional
Board work, strategy decks, portfolio reviews
Board-ready roadmaps and Three-Horizon classification are their own engagements. Care 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.
§04
Pricing and commitment, in writing.
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
$3-5k per month
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 Care. It's Scoped Build or Fractional. The retainer doesn't quietly expand. The price is honest.
§05
Frequently asked questions
A monthly maintenance retainer for production AI you already shipped. 2 to 3 days per month: eval monitoring, prompt regression triage, vendor escalations, one small scope addition per month. Built for the gap between shipping and hiring a full-time AI lead.
$3-5k per month. 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.
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 $300k loaded is the wrong shape. AI Care is the in-between.
Fractional is Director-altitude leadership: org redesign, hiring, board work, new builds, vendor strategy, at $12-20k per month. AI Care is operational maintenance only: eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations, at $3-5k per month. Different altitude, different price.
Then you don't need AI Care. 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.
§06
Where Care sits in the ladder.
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 Care, on month four
$3-5k per month. 2 to 3 days. Eval monitoring, prompt triage, vendor escalations. The system keeps running.
Keep what you shipped, running
Production AI is a system. Systems need someone watching.
Book the call. 30 minutes to map your stack and quote against the work. $3-5k per month. 3-month minimum.