How engagements work.
Before you have to ask.

Most annotation vendors make you sit through a discovery call to learn how they're even structured. Here's the whole thing up front — the three ways we engage, what each one includes, how fast each moves, and how we scope the work.

Three ways in

Pick the one that matches where you are.

Most teams start with a pilot, run a sprint against their next training cycle, and move to an embedded team once the pipeline is continuous. You're not locked into a path.

Pilot

You're evaluating vendors

  • 500 frames from your real dataset
  • Two independent annotators plus a QA layer
  • Inter-annotator agreement report
  • Written review of your labeling guidelines
  • Output is yours to keep
Timeline5 business days
CommitmentNone
CostFree
Start a pilot →

Embedded team

Annotation is continuous now

  • A standing team that works as part of yours
  • In your Slack, your standups, your sprint board
  • Owns guideline maintenance and edge-case triage
  • Gold-set construction and ongoing QA benchmarking
  • Optional model validation and human-in-the-loop review
  • Same team members over time — institutional knowledge stays
Timeline2–4 weeks to full ramp
CommitmentRolling, 30-day notice
Scoped byHeadcount & roles
Talk it through →

Scoping

How the work gets priced.

We use one of three structures depending on how stable your guidelines are. We'll tell you which one fits after seeing a sample — and we'll tell you when a cheaper structure is the right one.

Per item

For well-defined, repeatable tasks where the spec is settled and the edge cases are known. Predictable for you, but only honest once guidelines have stopped moving.

Per team, per month

For work where guidelines are still evolving or throughput needs to flex with your training schedule. You're buying a team's capacity rather than a unit count.

Per project

For fixed-scope work with a defined deliverable — a gold-set build, a quality audit of an existing vendor's output, or a one-time backlog clear.

Start to production

What actually happens.

  1. Day 0

    Sample and guidelines

    You send data and whatever spec exists. No procurement process required to get this far, and no NDA needed unless you want one — we'll sign yours.

  2. Days 1–5

    Pilot

    Two annotators label independently, QA scores agreement, and we send back the output plus a written note on where your guidelines are ambiguous. This is the part most vendors skip.

  3. Week 2

    Scope and agreement

    With the pilot in hand we can size the real thing accurately — team size, throughput, accuracy targets, and cadence. One agreement, no procurement theatre.

  4. Weeks 2–3

    Team deployment

    Annotators are recruited and domain-trained against your guidelines rather than pulled from a general labeling pool. That's why we can hold quality at week one.

  5. Ongoing

    Delivery and adjustment

    Delivery on your cadence, IAA reported every batch, and guideline changes absorbed as your model and edge cases evolve.

Common questions

The things people ask on the call.

Why aren't there prices on this page?

Because a per-item number without knowing your annotation density, class count, and QA requirement would be a made-up figure, and you'd rightly discount it. What we can commit to publicly: the pilot is free, sprint work is monthly with no long-term contract, and you'll have a real number within a day of us seeing a sample.

What's the minimum commitment?

Sprint engagements run in one-month increments and can be paused between training cycles. Pilots require nothing at all.

Do you work in our tooling or yours?

Yours, in most cases — CVAT, Labelbox, Scale, SuperAnnotate, or an internal tool. If you don't have one, we'll bring ours and hand over the data in whatever format your pipeline expects.

What happens if quality slips?

Accuracy SLAs are written into sprint and embedded agreements with defined remediation — re-annotation at our cost, not yours. IAA is reported every batch so you see it before we do.

How do you handle data security?

NDAs, confidentiality terms per engagement, and deletion on request. Details are on our security page.

We need staffing or ops, not annotation.

Different structure entirely — see technical staffing, healthcare, or eCommerce operations.

Start where it costs you nothing.

500 frames, five days, an IAA report, and no contract. You'll know more about how we work than any call could tell you.