Clarke Bishop · Atlanta, GA
I get FinServ AI pilots into production: governed, reliable, and audit-ready.
Fixed-scope AI Production-Readiness Assessments, built on an open reference stack (grade-stack), with fractional CTO retainers for the firms that want it ongoing.
What I Do
You have AI on the board agenda and a pilot that has not shipped. I take it from there: into production as a governed, reliable system your firm can operate and your auditors can accept.
For the technical reader: the deep material, the framework, and the reference implementation live in the GRADE Stack. This page stays at the altitude of the decision.
The GRADE Stack
Most AI does not fail loudly. It fails in the places you are not watching.
Silent production failures
An agent degrades quietly, and the first person to notice is a customer or a regulator.
Pilots stuck in purgatory
A promising demo that never crosses into production, quarter after quarter, with the budget still open.
Governance gaps
No controls, no audit trail, no clear owner: the kind of gap that becomes a board-level liability.
GRADE is the answer to those failures. It is the open reference stack I built for getting mid-market AI agents safely into production, on four pillars:
- Governed
- Controls, approvals, and audit trails wired in from the start, not bolted on before a board review.
- Reliable
- Systems that hold up under real traffic, with the guardrails to catch a silent failure before a customer does.
- Agentic Deployment
- Agents shipped into production behind clear boundaries, not stranded in a demo that never leaves the lab.
- Evaluated
- Measured against defined criteria, so quality is a number you can report, not a feeling you defend.
I built the open reference stack for getting mid-market AI agents safely into production.
The Engagement
AI Production-Readiness Assessment
Fixed scope. From $8K. Two to three weeks. A clear, board-ready read on whether your AI is fit for production, and exactly what it takes to get there.
What You Get
Findings against the four GRADE pillars
Where your systems stand on governance, reliability, deployment, and evaluation, with the evidence behind each call.
The board-level GRADE Scorecard
One page your leadership and your auditors can both read, scoring production readiness without the jargon.
A prioritized remediation path
The specific work that moves you to production, sequenced by risk and impact.
When the work continues past the assessment, it moves onto a fractional CTO retainer.
Proof
Shipped, in production, in regulated environments.
Financial Services
Live in 10 weeks instead of 6+ months, with analysts working 3× faster.
Challenge
A financial services firm had generative AI stuck in evaluation, with a six-month timeline and no clear path to a governed production system.
Solution
Delivered a production Gen AI system on Amazon Bedrock with the MLOps and controls to run it safely.
SaaS · Insurance
Lower support cost at scale.
An insurance platform needed a data foundation to serve a fast-growing global customer base.
Built a data platform serving 500+ customers across 40 countries, delivered in 9 months.
Health Tech
Successful Q4 2025 launch.
A startup needed a compliant platform ready for a hard launch window.
Delivered a HIPAA-compliant platform built for audit from day one.
Enterprise Software
70% faster onboarding.
An enterprise software company had a slow, manual customer onboarding process.
Designed an event-based onboarding system.
What happens next
01
Discovery call
A straight conversation about where your AI work stands and what production readiness would require.
02
Custom proposal
A scoped plan matched to your systems, your timeline, and your governance obligations.
03
Flexible start
We begin when it fits your calendar. No pressure, no artificial deadline.