What you own, what's documented, what happens if I'm unavailable. Agreed in writing before work starts, rather than negotiated at the end when you have the least leverage.
Working with me means senior attention on the whole engagement and no hand-offs. It also raises a fair question about what happens if I'm not around. That question gets answered in the contract rather than left to goodwill: documented systems, defined transition terms, and written agreement on what you own before anyone writes code.
Every item below is settled up front. None of it appears mid-negotiation as a concession, and none of it is a promise you have to take on faith. It's in the engagement before work starts, where you can hold me to it.
Delivery isn't complete until the system ships with written architecture documentation and a deployment runbook. Another engineer can stand the system up and keep it running without me in the room, within whatever license the engagement sets. That's a deliverable in the contract, not a courtesy.
That's the test I build to: if I'm unavailable, your system is an asset with documentation, not a mystery with a password.
Systems die at organizations when nobody can see how they work. Engineered architecture is what makes one last. Below is the system design of a working estimating engine I built as a demonstration: the rules live in configuration the client can read, the engine is deterministic code, the AI is fenced to one bounded job and never prices anything, and every output carries a provenance stamp.
Simplified view of a real build. The full drawing, with the data model and deployment runbook, is part of what ships with every system.
Before any client credential is issued on a system I built, it goes through an adversarial review pass. The reviewers work independently of the build, from the code and the running system, and they're instructed to break it rather than sign off on it. I fix what they surface and re-verify before anyone logs in. This isn't aspirational: I run it on my own products today, and I'll walk you through what the pass found on yours.
My own gate is never the final gate. You're welcome to put your own reviewers on top of it, and the system is documented and externally auditable by design so they have something real to work with.
IP and license terms. Ownership and license terms are settled in writing before any code exists, and they're scoped to the engagement rather than assumed. There's no ambiguity to litigate later, and no discovering after delivery that a core component belongs to the vendor.
Transition and continuity. The engagement contract includes defined off-boarding: credential handover, documentation delivery, and a support window. Continuity terms cover what happens if I'm unavailable. The plan for the worst case is signed before the work starts, not improvised during it.
I've spent years working inside operations governed by ITAR, CUI, and CMMC, so I know what those constraints demand day to day and what a reviewer expects to find. To be exact about it: GFE Ridgeline holds no compliance certification of its own, and I won't imply otherwise. If your engagement requires work inside a certified environment, that belongs in scope before anything starts.
What I do carry is a written operating procedure governing how I handle client data and what may reach external services, including AI tooling. A client-facing statement of that is available on request, and if your compliance team has questions it doesn't answer, they can ask me directly.