Done-for-you AI agents shipped to your repo in 2 to 6 weeks. Flat fee from $15k. The code is yours. Your inbox is the only meeting.
One technical partner per engagement. Async by default. Four weeks from discovery to deploy. The agent ships on time, or we extend support free until it does. Code is yours on day twenty-eight. Nothing about that is negotiable — that's the contract.
Founders evaluating Forge are usually weighing four options. We've laid them out so the choice doesn't require a procurement spreadsheet.
| Forge | Hire MLE | SaaS platform | Agency | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Time to first agent in production | 4 weeks | 90 days (find) + 30 days (ramp) | 1-3 hours of self-config (then maintain forever) | 8-16 weeks (T&M, scope-creep) |
| Cost shape | Flat fee $15-50k | $220-340k all-in / year + equity dilution | Per-call subscription, scales with usage | Hourly $200-500, scope-creep risk |
| Code ownership | Yours, in your GitHub on day 28 | Yours | Vendor's. Their stack, their lock-in | Negotiable, often vendor-side |
| In-house ML expertise required | No | Yes — that IS the hire | Some (prompt engineering / connectors) | No — they bring it (and bill it) |
| Recurring meetings during build | Zero. Async only | 1:1s, sprint planning, retros — every week | Self-serve (no meetings) | Tuesday standup + bi-weekly review |
| Vendor lock-in | None — code-yours | None | High. Migration cost is your problem | Variable. Often retainer-tail |
| Maintenance after go-live | 7-30 day support + Care add-on $200/mo (optional) | Their job (and salary continues) | Vendor's job (and subscription continues) | Retainer required, hourly otherwise |
| Compliance evidence (FCRA / EU AI Act / LL144) | Optional AttestProto bundle (+0$) | They build it (more salary) | Vendor-controlled, varies | Add-on engagement |
| Outcome guarantee | ≥80% success criteria or support extends free | No formal guarantee | SLA + uptime, no outcome | Rare — usually scope-completion only |
A capable AI engineer in 2026 costs $220-340k all-in. The agent feature you need is one or two well-scoped builds — not a full-time hire. The platforms charge per-call forever. The agencies want retainers. You want the agent shipped, the code in your repo, and your team able to maintain it.
$220-340k all-in. 60-90 days to find, 30 days to ramp. Cap-table dilution if you give equity. Wrong shape for one or two well-defined builds.
Per-call billing forever. Vendor lock-in. Your data sits in their infrastructure. The day you outgrow it, the migration is your problem.
Retainers. T&M billing. Scope creep. Calls every Tuesday. The agent works at handover and starts breaking three weeks later when nobody on your side knows the codebase.
Forge is the fourth option: one technical partner, flat fee, four weeks, code yours.
Same arc for every engagement. Asynchronous by default — daily Slack updates, two scheduled checkpoints, no recurring meetings. You ship code with your team while we ship code into your stack.
Workflow shadowing on a recorded screen-share. Test data review. Exhibit A drafted and signed by Friday. The scope is binding from there — additions become Phase 2 contracts, not surprise-bill line items.
Agent built into your stack against scoped credentials. End-of-week demo on the real workflow. You see the artefact, not slides.
Tuned to ≥80% success rate on the agreed test set. End-of-week demo on production-shaped data. Edge cases logged for week 4 polish.
Deploy to your infrastructure. Code repo transferred to your GitHub. Runbook + monitoring dashboard delivered. 7-30 days of free post-launch support depending on tier. Done.
The agent code lives in your GitHub at deploy. No portion of it stays behind a Forge platform. If we vanish tomorrow, your team owns enough to maintain it.
$15k, $30k, or $50k — picked at signing, not a moving target. We absorb scope risk inside the tier. Out-of-tier asks become Phase 2 conversations, not invoice surprises.
Daily Slack standups in a private channel. Two scheduled checkpoints (Discovery + Production). Your founder time stays on your product, not on our calendar.
No form gates, no "talk to sales" maze. Tell us four things about your build and we'll suggest the tier that fits — open the recommendation as a pre-filled brief.
Plug in the actual hours your team spends on the workflow, the loaded hourly cost, and the automation target. Calculator computes annual savings, payback period, and 5-year ROI in real time.
Numbers update live. Defaults: 15 h/week, $75/hr ops cost, Standard tier, 70% automation. Adjust to your actual workflow.
The single biggest reason AI builds fail isn't the model — it's that the team never adopts the tool. Model your situation across the five variables that predict 12-week adoption from real Forge engagements. If the score is red, we'll refuse the engagement until it improves. We don't ship code that won't get used.
Calibrated against post-launch data from Forge engagements + published BCG / McKinsey enterprise AI adoption studies (2024-2026). Not a guarantee — a planning tool.
Reference engagements that ship the patterns Forge specialises in. Each card opens the brief — including tier, timeline, and the metric the customer measured against.
Reference agent skeletons for the integrations Forge gets asked about most. Each runs end-to-end with one API key. DIY in 1-2 weeks, or commission the production-grade version.
Triage refund requests against your policy. Auto-approve, auto-deny, or queue for human review. Hashable + signable for AttestProto compliance trail.
Score inbound leads against ICP rules, enrich with public company data, route to the matching account executive based on territory + product fit.
Watches #incidents channel. Hourly summary of active incidents to executive channel. Auto-drafts retrospective skeleton on resolution.
These templates are MIT-licensed reference skeletons. Fork them, learn from them, build with them. If you'd rather have us run a 4-week production-grade build on top — that's the Forge service. Either way you win.
Sized to ship the actual thing your team needs in the time you actually have. Pricing is fixed and public on purpose — your time is too valuable to spend on procurement theatre.
Beyond this scope — multi-agent meshes, full frontend rebuilds, multi-vertical compliance overlays — quote separately, from $75k.
Start the conversation50% deposit at signing, 50% at production deploy. Stripe Connect or wire. Service contract template available on request before signing.
Success criteria are written into Exhibit A in week 1. They're concrete, testable, and agreed by both sides before code starts. We don't ship vague.
Reply with the use case in plain English. I'll respond within four hours with a service-agreement template and one calendar slot for a 30-minute discovery call.