Onboarding

Signed contract to live system: 4–6 weeks.

A tailored deployment, not a SaaS sign-up. Nine phases, each customised to your environment — your IdP, your network, your tools, your compliance constraints. With explicit support boundaries that scale.

01 — The support tier model

Three tiers. Manifest-enforced. No ambiguity.

Every component on the box belongs to one of three tiers, encoded in a signed manifest at install time and surfaced in the admin UI, telemetry, and support tickets.

T1 · Certified core

Full SLA per contract.

Firmware, OS, Kubernetes, inference gateway, inference servers, identity, bundled apps, curated connector catalog, blessed models. Runs with host privileges. We own the issues.

T2 · Verified partners

Best-effort, defined per partner.

Connectors, models, and apps from our partner registry that passed review. Runs in restricted containers. Integration surface ours; partner's internal logic theirs.

T3 · Client BYO

None on the additions; T1/T2 still covered.

Custom connectors, custom apps deployed to K8s, custom models, custom workflows. Sandboxed. No host access. No inbound network unless explicitly granted. You build it, you own it.

Pure Mode

A one-click admin action that disables all T2/T3 components. If an issue reproduces in Pure Mode, it's our ticket; if not, it routes to client (or partner) with a clear "components involved" report. This is the contract that lets us scale support.

02 — The timeline

Nine phases. Each one tailored to your environment.

Every phase has explicit owners, exit criteria, and a "Tailored to: …" thread that names what gets customised for your stack. Nothing about the install is a surprise.

00 T-14 → T-0 days

Pre-shipment.

Discovery questionnaire — your IdP, network topology, target integrations, user count, model preferences, compliance constraints (HIPAA, SOC2, FedRAMP, air-gap). Network pre-flight. Power & rack spec. License key bound to your hardware. Pre-flight call walks the questionnaire line by line. Sign-off in writing.

Tailored to: your IdP type, compliance regime, target integrations
01 Day 0 · ~2 hrs

Hardware delivery & rack.

Receiving inspection — serial matches manifest, no physical damage, tamper seals intact. Rack mount, redundant power, network uplinks (mgmt + data VLANs). BMC / out-of-band management configured. Field engineer verifies remote console access. Boot to firmware check screen, confirm against the certified manifest.

Tailored to: your data-centre layout, network VLANs
02 Day 0 · ~30 min

First boot & licensing.

First-boot wizard: hostname, time zone, NTP, initial admin credentials (rotated after IdP federation). License activation — online (signed token returned) or offline (signed bundle uploaded; default for security-sensitive clients). Storage volumes provisioned. Self-test: GPU enumeration, NVMe health, network throughput, inference smoke test.

Tailored to: your security posture (online vs air-gapped)
03 Day 1 morning · 1–2 hrs

Network & identity federation.

TLS certs installed (your CA or Let's Encrypt with internal ACME). DNS records pointed at the box for the chosen subdomain. Reverse proxy configured with routes for each app surface. Keycloak federated to your IdP via OIDC or SAML. SCIM provisioning verified with a real user/group sync. Role mapping confirmed: Admin / User / Auditor / Read-Only land in the right places.

Highest-value step — adoption stalls if this is wrong
04 Day 1 afternoon · ~1 hr

Inference & app stack.

Models loaded per the questionnaire — chat, code, embeddings — pulled from on-box signed registry (no internet required for T1 models). SGLang / vLLM inference servers registered with the gateway. LiteLLM configured: model aliases, per-team rate limits, per-team budgets, audit logging on. Bundled apps online: Open WebUI, AnythingLLM, n8n, openclaw / nemoclaw. Optional add-ons (Continue, Tabby, Langfuse) per scope.

Tailored to: your model preferences, per-team budgets
05 Day 1 → Day 2 · 2–4 hrs

Connector configuration.

Slack / Teams, email, source control (GitHub / GitLab / Bitbucket), issue tracking (Jira / Linear / Asana), docs (Notion / Confluence / SharePoint), CRM, storage. Each one auth'd, scoped (read-only by default for the first 30 days), and smoke-tested with a canned prompt before sign-off. Anything not on the curated catalog is logged as a T3 candidate.

Tailored to: your existing tool stack
06 Day 2 · ~1 hr

Validation suite.

Eight end-to-end tests across every surface — chat, IDE, inbound integration, outbound integration, workflow, agentic, observability, audit, Pure Mode toggle. Each one driven by a real user from your team, not the engineer. The test set is canonical — kept identical across every deployment so it's reproducible.

Real users, not engineers — the test must be reproducible
07 Day 2 afternoon · ~2 hrs

Training & handoff.

Admin training (60 min): user/group management, model registry, connector lifecycle, Pure Mode, audit export, update channels, backup/restore, the tier model. End-user kickoff (30 min, recorded). Client-specific runbook delivered with your values filled in. Support channel established. On-call escalation paths confirmed on both sides. Update strategy chosen.

Tailored to: your team's roles, your support workflow
08 +30 days

30-day check-in.

Calendar-locked at handoff. Usage review — active users, prompts/day per surface, top use cases, idle surfaces. Connector review — anything failing, anything underused, anything missing. Tier-boundary review — has anyone built T3 stuff yet? If yes, are the support implications understood? Roadmap conversation. Adoption numbers are healthy — or there's a written remediation plan.

Continuous partnership, not transactional handoff
03 — Who does what

RACI summary.

Explicit ownership for every onboarding activity. R = Responsible (does the work) · A = Accountable (signs off) · C = Consulted · I = Informed.

Activity Us Client IT Tool Owner End User
Pre-flight & questionnaireA / RRCI
Hardware rack & powerCR / AII
First boot & licensingR / ACII
Network, TLS, DNSCR / AII
IdP federationRA / RII
Inference & app stackR / ACII
Connector auth & scopeRCA / RI
Validation testsRCCA
Admin trainingR / AAII
End-user kickoffRIIA
Day-2 ops & T3 additionsC (T1/T2 only)A / RA / RI
What's next

Pilot the appliance against your real workloads.

Discovery call, sized appliance spec, and a 4–6 week path to live. Same team end-to-end.