Practice Licence & Exemptions Assistant · August 2026

Beyond 17 August

Progress report and proposed next steps.

The one decision this document asks for

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.

£4,500 per month plus direct platform expenses · six-month initial term, 1 month's notice either side

Building and extending the software. Features, new surfaces, integrations and scoping work, directed by a rolling priority list reviewed monthly with Agatha.
Deploying the tools the team builds. Several people are now making their own with AI; getting those into service securely and consistently with the rest of the system, rather than alongside it.
Keeping the live system healthy. A production system in daily use needs hosting oversight, working scheduled jobs, defect fixes and user support, independently of any new build.
Security and advice around ICB's use of AI. The access model that decides what any AI tool can reach, and a standing source of advice as the organisation adopts more of them.

Section 1

Where the engagement lands

Delivered against the signed terms

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 Email 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.

Section 2

Going forward

Several requests arrived during the engagement window, after the mission scope was set. They are the first items on the priority list from 18 August.

Dashboard reporting and export. Application processing metrics by selectable time period and per-team-member activity visibility, exportable, as requested by Garry.
Exam signups automation. The core of the next development tranche.
Member Services dashboard. An extension of the two dashboards already built and in use, not a new system.
The knowledge base. A single searchable place for ICB's own policy and process material, so the whole team has convenient access to ground truth. This already exists as a Claude artifact; the work is fortification and deployment.
The qualification calculator. A public-facing tool letting someone check what their existing qualifications count for before they apply, drawing on the same list of accepted qualifications the exemptions system uses. It exists in working form; the work is fortification and deployment.
Skills Challenge Platform. Whether this is a tracker or a full platform is still open, and scoping settles that before anything is built.

The list is not fixed. Anything the team wants built or improved can join it, and the monthly review with Agatha decides the order.

Section 3

The proposal: development retainer

For approval From 18 August 2026

ICB has paid £4,000 a month throughout the engagement, for building and extending the assistant. From 18 August the retainer is £4,500 a month, to reflect the increased scope.

Platform costs sit outside the fee entirely. ICB pays each vendor directly, with no pass-through and no margin; see section 5.

What the retainer covers

Building and extending the software. Features, new surfaces, integrations and scoping work, directed by the priority list below.
Deploying the tools the team builds. People across ICB are now building their own tools with AI. Taking those from a working prototype into service, connected to the same data and the same access model as everything else, so ICB ends up with one system rather than a collection of separate ones.
Keeping the live system healthy. Hosting oversight and billing alerts, the scheduled jobs and the data-refresh runner, bug fixes on shipped features, and user access and team support.
Security around ICB's use of AI. Establishing which information is sensitive and to whom, specifying the access model that follows from it, and reviewing the configuration before new tools reach the team. The principle is that mishaps are prevented by how the systems are set up, rather than left to individuals to remember to use them correctly. ICB implements, and remains responsible for its own systems.
Advice on ICB's wider use of AI. The questions the team brings as it adopts new tools, and a view on what is changing that ICB should know about. Advice rather than authorship: ICB's own policy and member-facing material are written by ICB.
Coordination with Kyle. Keeping the assistant aligned with his work, so ICB is not left with two systems to reconcile later.
Regulatory and compliance changes that reach the software. Where a change in law or guidance requires something of the systems ICB runs, keeping them current is part of the retainer, not a separate piece of work.

How the allocation works

A rolling priority list, reviewed monthly with Agatha. The list decides what the allocation is spent on; and we audit that list together once a month.
The list runs longer than the month. New requests join the sequence rather than expanding the monthly cost.

AML Online is noted here for completeness: whether that build sits with me at all is still an open question on ICB's side.

What the retainer doesn't include

The boundary is the software ICB runs and the advice around it. Writing course material and running marketing are neither, and each already has its own agreement.

It is not operational cover. The retainer builds and maintains the system; if hands-on processing of Practice Licences becomes necessary, this is billed separately, see section 4.
It does not include AI Academy course development. Course authorship, course IP and Academy fees sit entirely outside this retainer and are governed by the separate AI Academy heads of terms.
It does not touch the marketing engagement. That remains a separate arrangement, unaffected by this document.

Intellectual property

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.

Section 4

On-demand Practice Licence cover

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.

On-demand Practice Licence cover £500 / week

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.

Section 5

Hosting: ownership and running costs

Ownership

Going forward, ICB will own its cloud infrastructure directly, attaching its own payment method to the accounts that run the assistant, and paying each vendor directly. I'll hold administrative access so new projects and sites can be added without an approval step, and I'll receive 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.

Running costs

Figures are the vendors' current pricing; dollar amounts shown with approximate sterling.

Running today

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

Section 6

Governance and approval

Connected-party position

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.

Approval route

Agatha, as Head of Operations, confirms the scope and is the counterparty for the monthly priority review.
Julius, as Finance Director, approves the spend.
Confirmation works the way the engagement letter did: an affirmative reply to the covering email stands as agreement, or we discuss by reply.

Term

The retainer runs from Tuesday 18 August 2026 for an initial six months, with one month's written notice either side and an annual review of scope and pricing. Fees will continue to be invoiced monthly in advance with no applicable VAT.