Nick Charney Kaye
Operator · San Francisco
// AI READINESS · SAN FRANCISCO
One live workflow, measured. Not another demo.
People who call about AI are afraid in one of two directions, and both fears are reasonable. The first is being left behind: the competitor who answers in an hour, the firm across the street that bills less for the same work, the client who asks why you still do it by hand. The second is loss: a client’s file pasted into a chatbot, a confident wrong answer sent under your name, an automation that quietly broke in March and nobody noticed until the audit. I put AI to actual use in a small business — my own, in production, every day, and the businesses I work with — and my method is built to answer both fears at once: one workflow somebody owns, built into the way the work already happens, measured in units the business already tracks, with a human kept exactly where a human matters. That is the whole job, and it fits in two weeks.
Who this is for. Law firms, accountants, clinics, agencies, and the event and hospitality operators who run on checklists and deadlines. The firm that bought an AI subscription and changed nothing. The one re-keying the same report every Monday. The one whose client data cannot leave the building — I build local-first when that’s the constraint, and I’ve shipped a product whose entire AI stack runs on the user’s own machine.
Who it is not for. Anyone who wants a strategy deck, a chatbot for its own sake, or a pilot with no owner and no baseline. If the workflow can’t be measured, I’ll say so in the first hour and you’ll have paid for a day, not a quarter.
What you’re afraid of, and what I do about it
- “It will leak our clients’ data.” Then the data doesn’t leave. I build local-first where confidentiality is the constraint — models and processing on hardware you control, nothing sent to a server you don’t — and I’ve shipped a product whose entire AI stack runs on the user’s own machine, provable with one command.
- “It will say something wrong under our name.” Nothing leaves the building without a person’s confirm. The automation drafts, routes, and schedules; review stays exactly where it earns its keep; a human clicks send.
- “We’ll pay for it and nothing will change.” You buy one workflow, live and adopted, with the before and after reported in your own units — not a license, not a roadmap. If it can’t be measured, I say so on the first day.
- “It will replace my people.” The first workflow replaces the Friday binder, not the person who assembled it. The people who do the work are in the room on day one, and the automation is built into the tools they already open.
- “We’re already behind.” You’re behind the demos, not the results. Most firms that bought AI tools can’t show them paying; the ones that can picked one workflow and measured it. That’s a two-week job, and it starts with a Day.
- “It will quietly break and nobody will notice.” Every workflow ships with its measure, its owner, a kill switch, and an audit trail — the same way I run my own.
The record behind the offer
My own business runs on AI in production, and the receipts are public. At a venture firm I replaced a thirty-day manual analyst process with a five-second AI-driven task followed by three days of human review — the people stayed where their judgment mattered. I run a self-driving delivery line in production: a prioritized backlog goes in, reviewed and merged software comes out, with a person only where a person matters. I encoded a recurring on-call chore once and it has run itself since. My studio’s Conversation Simulator ships with its language models, speech recognition, and synthesis all running on-device, and Read The Room delivers a personalized AI report on a serverless stack where the cost per report is the design problem.
Four ways to buy it
AI Workflow Triage
$2,000 · one day
- One day with the people who do the work — not the people who bought the tool — walking the week: where the hours go, which steps repeat, which decisions need a human
- A written list by the end of it: the three workflows that would pay, in order, with what each would take and what it would be measured on
- An honest “nothing here pays yet” if that’s the answer
The Day. Credited in full toward a Read or a Build within 60 days.
AI Readiness Read
$4,500 · one week
- A scored readiness assessment: the workflows, the data they run on, where that data may and may not go, and who would own each automation
- A prioritized opportunity list and a 90-day roadmap, with the privacy posture decided before anything is built
- A written go / no-go on the first workflow, with the baseline it will be measured against
The Read. Ends in a written go / no-go on the first workflow, with the baseline it will be measured against.
One Workflow, Automated and Measured
$9,500 · two weeks
- One workflow, on your stack, with your data, built into the tools your people already open — live and adopted, not demoed
- Human review kept exactly where it earns its keep, removed where it doesn’t
- Measured before and after in your own units, with the number reported to you in writing
A Build. On your stack, with your data, with the before and after in your own units.
Multi-Workflow or Agent Build
$15,000–$25,000 · four to eight weeks
- Several workflows in sequence, or one agent that drafts, routes, and schedules — with a human confirm on every action that leaves the building
- Governance by construction: no outbound action the business didn’t approve, a kill switch, an audit trail
- Rolled out to the people who own each workflow, with the training that makes it theirs
A Build. Several workflows, or one agent with a human confirm on every action that leaves the building.
Agentic Delivery Line for Your Repositories
$18,000 · four weeks
- For a company with its own software: an agentic delivery line stood up on your repositories — issue in, reviewed and merged code out, human gates where you want them
- Dashboards, a playbook, and a team walkthrough, modeled on the line I run in production
- Keep it running afterward from $2,500 a month
A Build. Issue in, reviewed and merged software out, a person only where a person matters — with a public reference implementation behind it.
Fractional AI & Technology Lead
$6,000 / month floor · about two days a month · embedded $12,000 / month
- The standing lead for a company that wants AI to keep paying: the next workflow queued, the last one re-measured, the vendors kept honest
- About two days a month at the floor; embedded, about a day a week, at $12,000
- Month to month, billed in advance, two weeks’ notice to end it; at most two retainers at once
The Retainer. The next workflow queued, the last one re-measured, the vendors kept honest.
Your team, trained. A working session built to your stack — a half day for the primer, a full day hands-on with your own data — is a corporate session on the speaking page, at the prices stated there.
The six questions you’re actually asking
Will this replace my people?
What if our data can't leave the building?
How do you choose the workflow?
How fast can you start?
Can I trust you with the data?
What does it cost to start?
Hand it over
Hand over the workflow
The report somebody re-keys every Monday, the intake that takes a week, the AI tool you bought that changed nothing. A few sentences is enough — read by me, answered within one business day.
Know it's a fit already? Book a 20-minute fit call › — the highest-intent path skips the form.
Answered within one business day, by me.
No form? Send it as an email instead.
Copy the template, fill in the blanks, and send it to hi@nickcharneykaye.com. One person reads every note and replies within one business day.
The fast way. Twenty minutes, this week, no deck required: book a 20-minute fit call.
The plain way. Email works too — hi@nickcharneykaye.com reaches me directly, answered within one business day. For anything sensitive, my public key is published.
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