If you’ve hired a traditional consulting team, you know the drill: discovery workshops, interviews, a parade of slides—and a handover call with a “strategic roadmap” you now need to interpret, sell internally, and somehow implement. With AI agents, that model breaks. By the time a deck lands, your data changed, the tools improved, and your team still doesn’t have something they can run. Co‑building is our answer to that gap.
Co‑building means we embed with your team and ship together. You keep context and ownership; we bring patterns, guardrails, and delivery muscle. The goal is simple: a working agent or workflow in production in ninety days, plus a playbook your team can extend without us.
What does co‑building look like in practice? One owner on your side who can grant access and sign off decisions. A weekly demo on the calendar. A shared channel where engineers, ops, and a product owner collaborate in the open. Documentation we write as we build—so knowledge doesn’t evaporate when a meeting ends.
Let’s walk through a typical engagement using a composite example. Imagine a growth‑stage company whose support queue is growing faster than headcount. Average first response is creeping over the SLA. Agents spend time on repetitive triage instead of solving harder issues. Leadership wants faster responses without slipping on quality or compliance.
Week 1–2: narrowing the thin slice. We map the queue and tag patterns: billing, access, password resets, known issues, bug reports. We learn which cases are safe to help with and which must go to a human. We pick a thin slice—first‑touch triage for three frequent categories—because it’s high volume and low risk. We list the minimum systems needed: the helpdesk, a status page, and an internal knowledge base. An internal owner grants access. We agree on a single success metric: cut median time‑to‑first‑response by 40%.
Week 3–4: building the first path through the maze. We design the agent’s flow: detect category → pull relevant context → draft a first response → decide whether to send or route to a human. We keep the retrieval corpus small and versioned. We add guardrails: least‑privilege access, rate limits, redaction for PII, and detailed logging. Every few days we demo to real agents and note friction. By the end of week four there’s a feature‑flagged route in staging with a handful of cases flowing end‑to‑end.
Week 5–6: connecting to real life. We integrate with the helpdesk for safe writes (e.g., internal notes first), and we add a single “accept/send” button in the tool the team already uses. We instrument metrics: how many drafts were generated, accepted as‑is, lightly edited, or rejected. We log latency (P50/P95) and the reasons for handoff. We also create a simple dashboard so results are visible without a data‑team ticket.
Week 7–8: pilot. We turn on the flag for a small group during business hours. We learn fast: the billing category needs a tighter template; the status check should call an internal API; the password‑reset path needs a local‑language tweak. Because we’re embedded, those changes ship the same day. Confidence grows as the team sees their fingerprints in the system.
Week 9–10: proof. We compare pilot metrics against the baseline. Time‑to‑first‑response drops by almost half. Draft acceptance (as‑is or with small edits) climbs above 70%. Hand‑offs for the thin slice drop, freeing senior agents for complex work. No security incidents, no data leakage. Leadership has enough evidence to plan a careful expansion.
That’s the shape of co‑building: pick a thin slice, ship in the open, measure what matters, and keep ownership in the team. There’s no mystery because all work happens in your repos and tools. You see every commit, every prompt change, every integration choice. If something breaks, your team knows where to look and how to fix it.
Definition of Done is a big part of why co‑building works. We don’t mark the project complete because a demo looked good. “Done” means monitoring and alerting are live; error handling and fallbacks are in place; there’s a rollback plan; access is least‑privilege; configs and secrets are documented; and a README + runbook exist for the people who will live with the system after launch.
Skills transfer is the other half. We pair‑build and review code together. We run short workshops on the exact stack you use. By week two, engineers on your side are committing. By Day 90, most teams can extend the agent without external help. That’s the compounding value: every next build is faster because your people now own the pattern.
Where co‑building shines: when there’s urgent pain that needs a fast thin slice; when learning by doing matters more than a slide deck; when compliance or IT gates require tight collaboration; when you want lasting capability, not just a deliverable.
When might classic consulting be better? If you need a one‑off RFP output with no internal owner, or you’re seeking a landscape report, the traditional model can fit. Just don’t expect it to produce a running agent your team can own the week after handover.
A quick word on cost. Co‑building isn’t cheaper per day; it’s cheaper per result. Because you skip the “translate the deck” phase, you cut calendar time and ship value sooner. And because your team learns the pattern, you avoid vendor lock‑in and reduce the cost of the second and third agent by a lot.
Security and governance remain first‑class. We work with your privacy and security leads to agree on data flows, logging, DPAs when needed, and retention policies. Least‑privilege access and audit trails are the default. Nothing runs without a clear owner and a rollback plan.
Finally, adoption. The best agents die when users ignore them. Co‑building helps adoption because users shape the tool. They see their language in prompts and templates. They helped set guardrails. They watched small wins add up in the metrics. Adoption isn’t a launch‑day event; it’s built gradually, in public, with the people who will use the agent every day.
If you’re deciding how to start, ask two questions: “What’s the smallest thin slice that proves value?” and “Who is the internal owner who can unblock access and decisions?” If you can answer those, you’re ready to co‑build.
Black‑box consulting delivers slide decks. Co‑building delivers working agents your team can maintain. If you want the second outcome, embed us with your team and let’s ship together.
Want to co‑build your first agent and keep the momentum? Book an intro call → /contact#contact-form