Where the engagement lands, and proposed next steps.
The engagement ends on Monday 17 August with the assistant live and in daily use. This document asks ICB to approve one thing: the ongoing development retainer, for work to continue from Tuesday 18 August.
The engagement letter of 15 May 2026 set the scope in terms of four missions, with varying expectations: one mission at will deliver, two at expect to deliver, and one at explore. The table below sets each mission's expectations against its outcomes.
| Mission | Commitment in the signed terms | Delivered by 17 August | Position |
|---|---|---|---|
| A · Practice Licence processing | Will deliver "An AI-assisted document-checking and decision-support layer over the seven-stage PLP SOP… surfaces flags and check-this prompts to the PLP, and drafts outbound correspondence subject to human review." | The dashboard is live and in daily team use: the applications gallery, per-application timelines with live mailbox integration, document verification, the Sodalis lane, status tracking, and per-user access under row-level security. Outbound drafting is the final component and lands within the engagement window. | Complete Drafting completes in-term. |
| B · Member email triage | Expect to deliver "Triage of inbound member email queries with suggested responses and check-this lists. Coverage breadth depends on the eval set that can be constructed from historical exchanges…" | The triage layer is delivered: full-mailbox ingest (5,456 messages), automated redaction of member data before any AI inference, classification at 98.3% accuracy against a human-corrected reference set, and thread-to-application linkage. Suggested-response drafting is in progress and shares its machinery with the Mission A drafting work. | Partial Triage delivered; suggested responses open. |
| C · Case management and complaints | Expect to deliver "Tooling for the small but high-stakes population of active complaint cases… Exact shape depends on how the case-state model emerges in early discovery." | Removed from scope by ICB during the engagement: complaints tooling now sits with the Sodalis replacement build, and case volume was judged too low to justify dedicated software. | Removed by ICB Reassigned. |
| D · Exemptions | Explore "A cross-team discovery workstream investigating how an analogous grounded-inference approach might serve the separate Exemptions team… Any subsequent build emerges from discovery findings." | A production system: the exemptions team queue over the live 2026 backlog (158 applications), a secure applicant form live in production with guarded document upload, per-document verification, a swappable background-check checklist, and a full decision audit trail. | In production A live production system is currently with the Exemptions team for testing and feedback. |
Several requests arrived during the engagement window, after the mission scope was set. They are the first items on the retainer's priority list, and they are what the development allocation starts on from 18 August.
The list is not fixed. Anything the team wants built or improved can join it, and the monthly review with Agatha decides the order.
The development allocation is the same £4,000 per month ICB has paid throughout the engagement, for the same class of work: building and extending the assistant. The £600 maintenance line exists because a live production system, used daily by the team, needs keeping healthy independently of any new build. The £400 chair line is set out below.
The engagement letter states that "a post-handover support retainer of bounded scope and pricing will be agreed separately at that point". This is that agreement.
Chairing ICB's AI Collective on the same term and notice as the retainer, with the fee attached to defined outputs rather than to the seat:
Before each meeting: the agenda, plus a short written briefing on what has changed in AI that ICB should be aware of or act on. At the meeting: chairing. After: minutes, decisions, actions, and a summary suitable for wider distribution.
Two things sit outside the monthly allocation, because both need capacity the retainer does not hold: work ICB needs delivered to a fixed date rather than when the list reaches it, and work large enough to occupy the allocation for several consecutive months. Either is quoted once scoped, and runs alongside the retainer rather than displacing it.
AML Online is noted here for completeness: whether that build sits with me at all is still an open question on ICB's side.
The boundary is software. The retainer builds and maintains ICB's software; writing course material and running marketing are not software, and each already has its own agreement.
All output produced under the retainer is ICB's property on the same terms as the engagement letter, with the single Academy carve-out stated above.
A standing option alongside the retainer, priced now so there is never a negotiation at the moment of need. It is not part of the approval this document asks for; it is switched on separately, if and when ICB wants it.
One hour per working day on the Practice Licence inbox, as currently provided. One-week minimum, invoiced in arrears, available on request when absence or workload requires it.
This is priced as senior cover that needs no ramp-up on a regulated workflow, not as clerical hours. For planned absences and routine load, the team covering its own queue remains the sensible default; this option exists so that unplanned gaps have a same-week answer.
From the retainer's start, ICB owns its infrastructure directly: ICB attaches its own payment method to the accounts that run the assistant and pays each vendor directly. I hold administrative access so new projects and sites can be added without an approval step, and I sit on the billing alerts for every account, so a failed payment is caught before it takes anything down. There is no pass-through billing and no margin on infrastructure: every hosting pound goes from ICB to the vendor.
Figures are the vendors' current pricing; dollar amounts shown with approximate sterling.
| Item | Vendor | Cost | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|
| Database, authentication and storage platform | Supabase | $25 / month (≈ £20) | The core of the system. |
| Dashboard hosting | Vercel | ≈ $20 / month (≈ £16) | Currently on a development plan at no charge; moves to an ICB-owned team plan at handover. |
| Sign-in email delivery | Resend | £0 | Free tier at current volume. |
| AI inference (classification, summaries) | OpenRouter | < £5 / month | Grows modestly as the drafting tools enter daily use. |
| Scheduled refresh runner | Hetzner | ≈ £5–10 / month | Currently runs on my own server at no charge; a small ICB-owned instance at handover. |
| Approximate total at handover | — | ≈ £45–55 / month |
| Item | Vendor | Cost | Trigger |
|---|---|---|---|
| Yoti identity verification | Yoti | £60 setup + £250 / month | Only if ICB adopts Yoti. The background-check checklist is built so Yoti swaps in without rework, so this decision can be taken on its own merits at any time. |
| Point-in-time database recovery + compute upgrade | Supabase | ≈ $110–115 / month (≈ £85–90) | Recommended once the assistant is business-critical: it upgrades recovery from daily backup to any-point restore. The single biggest step change on this list, and a deliberate decision, not a default. |
The disclosure from the engagement letter continues unchanged: I am the spouse of ICB's CEO, the interest is declared, and the ICB procurement and approval chain is recused accordingly. For this package that recusal is made concrete in the approval route below: Ami is informed of this document and approves nothing in it.
The retainer runs from Tuesday 18 August 2026 for an initial six months, with three months' written notice either side and an annual review of scope and pricing. Fees are invoiced monthly in advance with no applicable VAT, routed as at present.
Approve the support and development retainer at £5,000 per month from 18 August 2026: £4,000 of development directed by a monthly priority list with Agatha, £600 of maintenance on the live system, and £400 to chair the AI Collective. Six-month initial term, three months' notice either side.