Engagements · erichenschel.com

Exactly what you receive, engagement by engagement.

No ambiguity about what you're buying. Each engagement below lists the artifacts you keep, the format they arrive in, and what "done" means — the same definitions that go into the statement of work.

Production Triage

The smallest engagement that can reduce your uncertainty. Most relationships start here.

$1,500 flat 3 business days
  • Architecture review — how your system actually works, verified from code, including where your docs disagree with reality. PDF + editable diagram
  • Prioritized risk map — every material risk, ranked by blast radius, each tied to a specific component. PDF
  • Remediation plan — the top risks as bounded work items with acceptance criteria any senior engineer could execute. PDF
  • 45-minute walkthrough — live with your team, recorded if you want it, ending in a clear recommendation: build, audit deeper, or stop. call + recording

Done means: you can name your highest-leverage technical move and defend it to your own team without me in the room. Fee credits toward a sprint started within 30 days.

Production Audit

For systems where the risk surface needs more than three days, or where you want specs your team can execute alone.

$4k–$8k 1–2 weeks
  • Everything in Triage, at full depth.
  • Code-level findings — annotated references into your repo covering contracts, data flow, failure modes, release discipline. written report
  • Implementation-ready specs — acceptance criteria, migration and rollback notes, test expectations per work item. one spec each
  • AI evaluation notes (when in scope) — how your prompts, retrieval, and tool use behave under real inputs, with an eval harness you keep. report + scripts
  • Sequenced roadmap — now / next / later with dependencies and rough cost. 1 page

Done means: your team could start any recommended item tomorrow morning without a clarifying meeting.

Build or Rescue Sprint

Hands-on delivery against one bounded production outcome.

$8k–$25k+ 2–6 weeks
  • Working, deployed code in your repo, under your CI, through reviewed pull requests — never a zip file. PRs in your repo
  • Tests that guard the outcome — the behavior you bought is the behavior that's tested. suite in CI
  • Weekly written status — shipped, in progress, blocked, decisions needed. Short enough to actually read. async, your channel
  • Decision log — every non-trivial choice recorded with context, so the reasoning outlives the engagement. markdown in repo
  • Handoff package — runbook with deploy, rollback, and known failure modes; updated diagram; recorded walkthrough. docs + video

Done means: the outcome is live, your team can operate and extend it, and nothing depends on me being reachable.

Fractional Engineering

Ongoing senior ownership without the full-time hire.

From $5k / month Monthly · 30-day notice
  • A named owner for an agreed slice of your system — including its incidents and its roadmap. 1-page charter
  • Shipped work every month against priorities we set together, under the same PR-and-tests discipline as a sprint. PRs + demo
  • Monthly engineering report — what shipped, system health, accumulating risks, and what I'd fund next if it were my money. 1–2 pages
  • Continuity guarantee — decision log and runbooks stay current, so offboarding is a two-week handoff, not a crisis. living docs

Done means, every month: the report is sent, the demo happened, and the docs reflect reality.

Standards on every engagement

These aren't add-ons; they're how "AI systems that hold up" gets kept as a promise.

Work happens in your house

Your repo, your cloud, your secrets. You lose nothing if the engagement ends tomorrow.

Written over verbal

Every recommendation and decision exists as a document you keep. Calls explain documents; they don't replace them.

Honest exits

Every engagement can end with "stop — this isn't worth building." A clean no is a deliverable.

Failure modes named up front

Anything shipped comes with its limits and rollback path documented.

The path in

A 15-minute fit call establishes the problem, urgency, and decision owner. If there's a fit, Production Triage finds your highest-leverage move in three days — and the fee credits toward a sprint. See a real example: sample triage report.

Book a fit call