Ongoing support & maintenance for a live AI system.
When you'd rather a system be run than handed off, this is the shape of the ongoing relationship: what's covered, how fast I respond, how you know it's healthy, and what happens when something drifts. It's a support agreement for a consulting engagement — not a five-nines infrastructure uptime guarantee.
Scope of covered services
What this covers. Ongoing operation of the AI system built during the engagement — the feature, its eval/test harness, and the CI gates — running in your infrastructure.
- Monitoring — health, quality drift, cost, and error-rate signals on the covered system.
- Maintenance — dependency updates, prompt/model tuning within the agreed scope, and eval-suite upkeep.
- Regression runs — the eval and test gates continue to run on a defined cadence; failures are triaged.
- Support — a named channel for issues and questions about the covered system.
Out of scope. New features, net-new integrations, unrelated systems, and incidents caused by third-party outages or changes made by your team outside the covered code. These are quoted separately.
Response targets
Targets are for response (acknowledgement and start of work), measured in business hours. Because this is a solo consulting engagement, targets are commitments to responsiveness, not a staffed 24/7 NOC.
| Severity | Example | Response target |
|---|---|---|
| S1 · Critical | Covered system down or returning unsafe output to customers | Same business day |
| S2 · High | Quality gate failing, degraded but running | 1 business day |
| S3 · Normal | Non-urgent question, minor issue, tuning request | 2–3 business days |
Business hours and time zone are stated in the signed agreement. Outside covered hours, S1 issues are handled on a best-effort basis.
Reporting & transparency
You get a periodic summary — regression-run results, any drift caught, changes made, and cost. No black box: the monitoring and gates run in your infrastructure, and you can see them any time.
Commercials & term
Retainer. A monthly retainer sized to the covered scope and expected activity, agreed in writing. indicative, scoped per engagement
Term. Month-to-month unless a fixed term is agreed, with a notice period for either party. Nothing is retained on my side after the relationship ends — the system continues to run in your infrastructure.
Sage Ideas LLC · Illustrative sample, not a binding agreement and not legal advice. Have your counsel review any agreement before signing.
Sample SLA · save as PDF ↓ · ← resources