Engagement is a conversation,
not a form.

We onboard two systems per quarter. The intake below is the start of that conversation. A principal reads every brief, in writing, within 48 hours. We do not pitch. We do not send sequences. We say yes, or we say no with a referral.
CAPACITY
2 systems / quarter
RESPONSE SLA
48h, written
CADENCE
Weekly reads
MINIMUM
Six weeks
THE PROTOCOL

How a Gruntflow engagement actually runs.

Six stages, written down. Every engagement we have ever run has followed some variation of this. We publish it because it lets you self-select. Read our field notes →
01W1BRIEF

You send a written brief.

A few paragraphs in your own voice. The operation you want autonomized, what breaks today, who owns the loop, what working looks like.

↳No form required. Email or signal works.
02W2READ

We send back a written read.

Within 48 hours of receipt. A one-page architecture sketch, the trade-offs we see, and the questions we still have.

↳The read is wrong; the read is also the work.
03W3DECISION

Yes, or a written referral.

If the system is one we should build, we say so and write the engagement letter. If not, we refer you to someone we trust for the work.

↳We turn down more than we take.
04W4–W12BUILD

Engineering, weekly reads.

We build. You get a written read every Friday: what shipped, what is still ambiguous, where decisions are needed. Code, infrastructure, observability — all instrumented from day one.

↳You are never the last to hear.
05W13OPERATOR

Operator onboard.

The person who will live inside the system is trained, documented, and handed the keys. They can read every transition, override any decision, and reverse anything we ship.

↳A system without an operator is not a system.
06W14+ONGOING

We are on call.

Quiet retainer. We monitor, we patch, we evolve. We pick up the phone when the system surprises you. We invoice quarterly.

↳Built to outlast the team that commissioned it.
THE BRIEF

What to put in your brief.

You can use the form below, or send the same content in prose. Either way, these are the five questions a useful brief answers.
01
OPERATION
What is the work — in plain English. Not the tech stack. The actual operation.
02
PAIN
What breaks today. Frequency, cost, who feels it first.
03
OWNERSHIP
Who owns the loop now. Who will own it after.
04
OUTCOME
What “working” looks like in numbers, or in the rhythm of a normal week.
05
PRIORS
What you have already tried, and why it did not stick.
THE INTAKE

Send the brief.

Five sections, ~5 minutes. Marked * are required. Everything else is helpful, not blocking. You will receive a receipt and a written reply within 48 hours.
// 01OPERATOR
// 02CONTEXT
// 03PROBLEM
// 04DETAILS
// 05CHANNEL
Submitting transmits your brief to a principal. No mailing list, no follow-up sequence. We reply within 48 hours or not at all.
CONSTRAINTS

What we don't take.

These are not preferences. They are the rules we have written down after running enough engagements to know the difference between work that ships and work that drifts. See systems in production →
// 01
NO PURE DEMOS
We do not build proof-of-concept chat boxes. If it cannot run in production, we will not write it.
×
// 02
NO ENGAGEMENT WITHOUT OPERATOR
Every system needs a named human who lives inside it. If you cannot tell us who that is, we cannot start.
×
// 03
NO IRREVERSIBLE AUTOMATION
We will not ship anything that cannot be undone by one operator action with a clean audit trail.
×
// 04
NO ENGAGEMENTS UNDER SIX WEEKS
Real systems are not built in two-week sprints. We do not pretend otherwise.
×