Agentic Proof of Concept
Pick the workflow. Two to four weeks later, look at a working thing.
Fixed price, fixed deliverable
On a date, with a fixed-price deliverable: a working system, the requirement corpus, and a costed scope for production as a separate decision. Nothing rolls on.
Derived from the published rate card, so you can check the arithmetic.
One or two Tenhaw engineers, pair-programming with your people throughout.
Yes, and they are the whole team. One or two forward-deployed engineers at the published senior practitioner rate of £1,250 a day, each one someone James Rooney has already delivered alongside.
James Rooney provides partner oversight on every engagement, and leads the audits personally. The people on your engagement are not substituted without your written agreement. Access, data handling and screening are set out on our security page.
An Agentic Proof of Concept is a two-to-four week fixed-price engagement that takes one real workflow and builds a working agentic system against it, using our published AI-engineering-first method. It is pair-programmed with your own engineers throughout so the capability transfers rather than leaving with us. On a recent engagement this produced, in two weeks, a working proof of concept extracting information from PDFs into business intelligence on Azure, ground that had previously taken roughly twelve months.
What you get
In scope for the £20k–£55k fixed price.
- A working agentic system against one real workflow, in your environment
- The full requirement corpus as structured markdown, yours to keep and extend
- A documented gap-and-contradiction analysis, surfaced before any code was written
- Your own engineers able to run the method, measured rather than assumed
- An assessment of what productionising it would take, scoped and costed
How the engagement runs, week by week
2–4 weeks, drawn to scale so you can see how long each part actually takes.
- 01Days 1–3
Turn the existing requirements (PDFs, diagrams, decks) into a structured markdown corpus, map the relationships, and run the gap-and-contradiction pass before any code exists.
- 02Days 4–5
Resolve the gaps with your subject-matter experts, and record explicitly what we are proceeding without, and why.
- 03Week 2
Build against the whole requirement set, paired with your engineers, with a security review roughly every fifth prompt. Typically around 80% correct by the end of this week.
- 04Weeks 3–4
Iterate toward roughly 95%, fold user-testing feedback back through the same corpus, and scope what production readiness would require.
- Days 1–3
Turn the existing requirements (PDFs, diagrams, decks) into a structured markdown corpus, map the relationships, and run the gap-and-contradiction pass before any code exists.
- Days 4–5
Resolve the gaps with your subject-matter experts, and record explicitly what we are proceeding without, and why.
- Week 2
Build against the whole requirement set, paired with your engineers, with a security review roughly every fifth prompt. Typically around 80% correct by the end of this week.
- Weeks 3–4
Iterate toward roughly 95%, fold user-testing feedback back through the same corpus, and scope what production readiness would require.
Is this the right rung for you?
We would rather tell you now than three weeks in.
Right for you if
- Organisations that already know which workflow they want to attack
- Leadership teams who need something working to unlock the real budget conversation
- Businesses where a plan will not persuade the sceptics but a demonstration might
- Teams who want their own engineers to learn the method by doing it
Not right if
- Organisations still deciding where to invest: take the audit first
- Anyone expecting a production deployment in four weeks: this is a proof of concept, and hardening it for production is a longer, separately scoped job
- Workflows where the underlying data does not yet exist in any usable form
Prefer to talk it through? Ask us on a discovery call →
A working thing your executives can use, not a deck about a working thing.
£20k–£55k·2–4 weeks·Rung 02
- A measured read on how much of the method your own people absorbed
- A costed scope for productionisation, as a separate decision
- Evidence of whether this workflow is worth pursuing at all
Agentic Proof of Concept: your questions
What is an agentic proof of concept?
A short fixed-price engagement, two to four weeks at Tenhaw, that takes one real workflow and builds a working agentic system against it, in your environment and against your data. The point is to replace an argument about feasibility with a working thing people can use. It is not a production deployment; productionising is scoped and costed separately.
How can a proof of concept take only two weeks?
By treating the requirements as the source code. Every requirement is converted into structured markdown, mapped for relationships, and interrogated for gaps and contradictions before any code is written; the build then runs against the whole requirement set at maximum model reasoning rather than file by file. The full method is published at tenhaw.com/the-tenhaw-way/building-with-ai.
Will our own engineers learn anything, or do you hand over a black box?
The build is pair-programmed with your engineers throughout, deliberately. On a recent engagement the client engineer who paired on a two-week build finished it saying they were 70% confident they could run the process unaided. Seventy per cent after a fortnight is the measured figure, and it is the difference between buying a proof of concept and starting to acquire a capability.
What does an agentic proof of concept cost?
Tenhaw prices agentic proofs of concept between £20,000 and £55,000 as a fixed fee for two to four weeks, depending on the complexity of the workflow and the state of the underlying data. The price is agreed before the work starts and does not move.
Can we contract your engineers by the day instead?
No. Tenhaw is not a staffing agency and does not place people by the day into someone else's plan, which is what lets us publish a rate card and stay accountable for the outcome. Senior people are supplied on an engagement with partner oversight behind them. If you want a single senior lead rather than a build, the closest thing on the ladder is programme and delivery management, where one lead runs delivery and governance without Tenhaw building any of it.
What happens if the proof of concept fails?
You get a documented answer to a question that would otherwise have cost far more to answer, plus the requirement corpus and gap analysis, which retain value regardless. A proof of concept that establishes a workflow is not viable has done its job, and we would rather tell you that in week three than in month nine.
The other rungs
Each one ends in a decision rather than a dependency. If another fits better, we will say so.
Agent-Readiness Audit
Where agents add value, where they don't, and what to do first.
Fixed price · £30k–£90k6–8 weeks03Agentic Design Team
A pair who design the agentic systems, and the infrastructure to run them at scale.
£35k–£55k / month2–4 months04Agentic Build Team
A team of three who build and ship it, under partner oversight.
£70k–£85k / month6–12 months05Programme & Delivery Management
We will govern the programme whether or not we are building any of it.
£18k–£35k / monthProgramme durationTalk it through before you commit.
Thirty minutes with James. We will tell you honestly whether Agentic Proof of Concept is the right rung for where you are, and you will leave with a rough scope whether you engage us or not.
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What this engagement is called elsewhere
This rung buys an outcome, so there is one role on it and the engagement is scoped to a workflow rather than to a headcount.
Forward-deployed AI engineer
Also advertised as: agentic engineer, AI build lead, LLM engineer
One or two engineers build against a single real workflow in your environment, pair-programming with your people from the first day so the method stays behind. You are buying a working thing and the method behind it, not an engineer by the day. If what you want is a senior person sitting in your stand-up for six months, that is the build team, and if you want one holding delivery without us building anything, that is programme and delivery management.
Every role here is supplied as an engagement, not a permanent hire or a staffing agency placement. The person is someone James Rooney has already delivered alongside, screened to BS7858 standard before they touch your estate, contracted by Tenhaw under the same confidentiality and data-handling terms as an employee, and accountable to James Rooney as well as to you. They are not substituted without your written agreement. There is no introduction fee and no permanent-placement conversion clause, and notice is thirty days either way. If what you need is a permanent Head of AI on your own payroll, hire one; an interim holds the seat while you run that search, and writes the specification you recruit against.
How the associate pool is selected and screened is set out on our team page, and the day rates behind every figure here are on the rate card.