What production AI actually costs, how to evaluate vendors, and when not to install AI at all. Written by the team installing it under PEPFAR rules, IRB review, and the kind of audits where the answer matters.
Vendor-agnostic. Free to read. Use it to evaluate any vendor — us included.
§01
The four cost buckets
Vendor subscriptions, engineering time, integration debt, outcome-eval. Year-one total is $75K-$250K regardless of who you hire.
§02
Outcome-eval framework
Three questions to answer before any code ships — and the decision rule that prevents the install getting quietly turned off in nine months.
§03
Vendor evaluation rubric
Three asks and three smells. Built from the conversations we have on our own first sales calls.
§04
Eight contract clauses
Metric-bound milestones, no-train, kill clause, audit-log retention, Engine commitment line item. None are legal advice — bring your counsel.
§05
When not to install AI
Four signals that defer or refer is the honest answer. Including from your own vendor.
Operators come in quoted by a freelancer at $5K, by a Big Four at $200K, by us at $75K — for what looks like the same SOW. They want to know what's real. This guide is what's real, with the parts that hurt us included.
If reading it lands you somewhere other than an engagement with us — including "you don't need AI yet" — that's the right outcome. We'd rather refer you out than sell you something you don't need.