Your AI automations, kept alive and improving, month after month.

Why AI Automation Care exists

An AI automation isn't a building. It's a living system that operates inside a moving environment. The LLM provider deprecates a model. An upstream API changes its schema. A scraping target updates their HTML. A new edge case shows up that nobody anticipated. The team that asked for the automation grows, shifts priorities, asks for an extension.

Most automation projects don't fail at launch. They fail at month four, when the team that built it has moved on and nobody remembers exactly how the orchestration handles the retry queue.

AI Automation Care is the answer. A monthly retainer with a senior engineer who already knows your system — or who quickly inventories it during onboarding — keeping it healthy and shipping incremental improvements every month. The cost is predictable, the relationship is month-to-month, and you keep the option to walk away at any time.

What AI Automation Care covers

The retainer covers four kinds of ongoing work:

1. Health monitoring

Your automations are watched proactively, not reactively. When something breaks — an API change, a credential expiry, a silent retry loop — I see it before you do, and the fix is in motion before the next business day.

2. Fixes and patches

When something breaks or behaves unexpectedly, it gets fixed. LLM API deprecations, upstream schema changes, edge cases that escape into production — all included as part of the retainer at the appropriate tier.

3. Tuning and improvement

Every month, a defined number of hours go into making the automation better, not just keeping it alive. Better prompts, faster pipelines, cleaner monitoring, smarter retries, extended coverage for cases that didn't matter at launch but matter now.

4. Small new automations

At Care Pro and Care Enterprise tiers, the retainer includes hours for small new automation work — extending the system you already have, adding a new data source, integrating a new tool. Not full new builds, but meaningful incremental capability month over month.

The three tiers

Tier	Price	Hours/month	Response	New automation
Care Lite	From $500/mo	~2 hours	Within 2 business days	Not included
Care Pro	From $1,200/mo	~6 hours	Same business day	1 small per quarter
Care Enterprise	Custom	Custom	Custom SLA	Negotiated

The right tier depends on the complexity and criticality of your automation stack. We figure it out together on the Discovery Call. You can move between tiers month-to-month without penalty.

What's covered vs. what's a separate engagement

This is the question every prospective retainer client asks. The honest answer:

Covered under the retainer:
- Monitoring and alerting on your existing automations
- Fixes for bugs, breakages, API changes, credential issues
- Small tuning improvements within the existing scope
- Small new automation work, at Pro and Enterprise tiers
- A quarterly strategic review covering health, opportunities, and roadmap

Not covered (separate engagement, usually a QuickStart):
- Major new automation builds outside the existing scope
- Full new product features
- Migrations to a different platform or stack
- Large-scale refactors

The retainer is a subscription to senior engineering attention, not an unlimited buffet. The boundary is clear, written into the engagement terms, and never silently violated.

How onboarding works

For automations I built, onboarding is essentially zero — I already know the system. For automations someone else built, the first month includes a Care onboarding pass:

1. Inventory. I document every automation in your stack: what it does, how it's triggered, what it depends on, where it logs.
2. Monitoring setup. I instrument health monitoring across the inventory so we can see drift before users do.
3. Risk register. I flag anything brittle, undocumented, or at risk of imminent breakage so we can address it on a priority basis.

After the onboarding pass, the standard rhythm begins. The onboarding work is included in the first month's retainer at the Care Pro tier and above; for Care Lite, it's quoted separately as a small fixed-price engagement.

The lock-in question — there isn't one

Buyers asking about retainers almost always ask: what happens if I want to leave?

The honest answer:

• The retainer is month-to-month. You give 30 days' notice and walk.
• You always own your source code, your documentation, your infrastructure, and your data.
• I provide a clean handover to your next engineer or vendor at no extra cost.
• There is no proprietary runtime, no licensed component, no hidden dependency on me.

AI Automation Care is a service, not a lock-in. The retainer survives because it delivers value every month, not because it's hard to leave.

When AI Automation Care isn't the right fit

• You haven't shipped any automation yet. Start with AI Automation QuickStart or Custom AI Assistant Integration. Care is the after product.
• You expect 24/7 enterprise SLA. This is best-effort during business hours. Enterprise SLA can be negotiated at the Enterprise tier but isn't the default.
• You want unlimited new feature development inside a flat fee. Major new work is its own engagement.

How AI Automation Care fits the rest of the lineup

Care is the natural continuation of every build engagement. Most clients move into a Care retainer at handover from a QuickStart, a Custom AI Assistant Integration, or an AI Product Build — because automations that compound need someone watching them, and hiring full-time for that is overkill.

If you have automations running today that someone else built, Care can absorb them after a brief onboarding pass. You don't need to have built with me to retain me.

Ready to keep your AI stack healthy?

Book a free 20-minute Discovery Call to talk through your current automation stack, the right Care tier, and the onboarding plan. Month-to-month, no lock-in, full ownership stays with you.