Chapter 05How we work

Figure it out. Build it. Ship it.

The way we approach every engagement, regardless of whether it ends in a 200-page evaluation, a custom agent, or a multi-tenant platform shipped to production. Borrowed from a long arc of work that started before Yikes Dude. Refined across three platforms in production.

Step 01of 03

Figure it out.

We sit with your operators for sixty to ninety minutes per workflow. Not the executive walk-through. The actual work, screen-shared. We pay attention to what people tab into when they think no one is watching, spreadsheets, group chats, that one document that everyone secretly relies on.

Then we score what we found, systems, vendors, processes, and data, against where AI and custom software actually move the needle. We map the build-vs-buy calls explicitly and we are honest about where we are not the right fit. You come away with a stakeholder map, a workflow inventory, and a quick-wins shortlist with budgets. No code yet, just a clear picture of the friction.

What we ask

01“Walk us through a normal Tuesday, what consumes the morning?”
02“Where does this team copy-paste between two tools?”
03“Where is the data clean enough for an agent to act on it?”
04“Build, buy, or rent?”

Step 02of 03

Build it.

We ship a thin slice in week one. One agent, one workflow, observable. Real data, a real evaluation harness catching drift. Two-week vertical slices from there. Every slice ends with something live in staging that you can click.

No slide decks standing in for software. No prototype that dies in a demo. The deliverables ratchet up slice by slice, orchestration layer, eval harness, the surfaces your team actually touches.

What we ask

01“What is the smallest thing we can ship in week one?”
02“How will we know it is working, and what triggers a kill switch?”
03“What is the quickest path from a thin slice to real adoption?”

Step 03of 03

Ship it.

By week six there is a thing in production, with real users, with the seatbelt of an evaluation suite catching drift. We hand off with observability, runbooks, and a relationship for the next phase. No black boxes.

If we’re the wrong long-term partner for a piece of the work, we tell you which studio or vendor to call next. The point was never to keep you dependent. The point is to leave you with something that works.

What we ask

01“Who owns it after we leave?”
02“What does done look like, six weeks in?”

Where it lands

The same method, three destinations.

Figuring it out looks the same no matter who you are. Building is where engagements diverge. We have shipped all three, and we will tell you in week one which one your problem actually needs.