Today, a capable team can build much of its software in-house. The tools are cheaper, the models are good, and your developers can ship. What's missing isn't more code, it's the judgment to decide what to build, how to architect it, and where AI actually belongs. That's what we sell: audits, specifications, architecture, and a roadmap you can act on.
Your devs use ChatGPT. Finance pastes numbers into Copilot. Sales runs Claude. Marketing generates assets in Midjourney. None of it is tracked, owned, or measured, and in six months someone on your board will ask what you got for the AI spend. You won't have a number, because nobody set a baseline, defined a KPI, or assigned an owner.
Buy a tool, adopt a platform, run a pilot, these are the wrong frames. They put a subscription on a card and call it a strategy. The frame that works: treat AI like a new hire. Give it a role, a manager, and a performance review. And the same is true above the AI layer: you don't need more hands on the keyboard, you need someone who has built this before to tell you what to build, what to skip, and what will break in production. We earn our fee on that judgment, the spec, the architecture, the roadmap, not only on the code that follows.
Every engagement maps to a stage in a hiring lifecycle. You start small and only go deeper when the previous stage proved it was worth it. No twelve-month commitment to find out if AI belongs in your business.
Discovery
A go / no-go and the next concrete step.
Reference check · ~1 week
An 8–12 page technical and operational report.
Role definition · ~2 weeks
Role, constraints, KPIs and owner, for dev teams, a CLAUDE.md.
First two weeks · 2 live days
Workshop, playbook and a recorded session your team keeps.
Probation · 4–6 weeks
Audit, onboarding and the first real implementation shipped.
Mentorship · ongoing
Access on retainer with a quarterly KPI review.
The lifecycle is the same. Where you point it depends on who you are and what hurts. Most engagements start in one track, the call tells us which.
For the CTO, team lead, or head of engineering
Teammate, not tool.
We turn ad-hoc AI use into a standard your whole team can rely on.
For the COO, CFO, or head of operations
People on decisions. AI on execution.
We find the repetitive work and route it through real integrations, not demos.
For the CEO, founder, or board
A roadmap, not experiments.
We assess where you are and hand you a decision document you can take to the table.
“XCODES played a key role in taking over a minimal MVP project and advancing it to a production-ready level.”
“I was most impressed by their flexibility, proactivity, and knowledge.”
“They understood our vision for the product and immediate needs and worked within scope in an efficient, professional, and personable manner.”
Free 30-minute interview. A go / no-go and the next concrete step.
The audit: where AI fits and what it's worth.
Job description and onboarding: role defined, team trained, first implementation shipped.
Review: KPIs measured against the baseline we set on day one.
You are never more than one stage of commitment in.
Straight answers, no sales theater. If something here isn't covered, the 30-minute call is the fastest way to get it answered.
Because the expensive mistakes happen before any code is written: the wrong architecture, the wrong build-vs-buy call, an AI feature that should never have shipped. Your team is good at building. We are good at deciding what to build and catching what breaks in production. You pay for that judgment, the spec, the architecture, the roadmap, and your team keeps building.
We will tell you when it is. The free interview ends in a go or a no-go, and no is a real outcome we deliver often. We are a software company, not an AI reseller, so we have no subscription to push.
A go / no-go on your specific situation, the single most useful next step, and an honest read on whether you need us at all. It's the scaled-down version of our Discovery stage, not a pitch with a calendar invite at the end.
A tool is a license you pay for and forget. We treat AI like a new hire: a role, a manager, KPIs, and a review. The difference shows up in six months, when you can answer what did we get for the AI spend with a number instead of an invoice.
No. The model is staged, and you only move to the next one when the previous proved its worth. You can stop after the free interview, after the audit, or after the first implementation. You are never more than one stage of commitment in.
No. The deliverables, the spec, the architecture, the CLAUDE.md, the roadmap, are yours to take anywhere, including your own team or another vendor. We would rather earn the build by being the obvious choice.
Claudiu Pleșa, our lead developer, takes the first call, dev to dev and decision-maker to decision-maker. No SDR, no script. You get someone who has shipped software and AI for real clients and can give you a straight answer in the first half hour.
You leave with a go / no-go and the next concrete step, or the honest answer that AI isn't where you should spend this quarter. No deck, no pitch, no commitment. Just a conversation with someone who has built it before.
