Working model · assumptions are yours to move
Every number below is an input you can change. Two of them are measured from real projects and marked as such. Everything else is an assumption, marked as such, and most of them are probably wrong in ways this page is designed to let you find out.
Only two inputs here are evidence. The measured tag means it came off a real project; assumed means someone picked it, and that someone was me.
The retainer, less what it actually costs to serve. This is the number the whole business rests on, and it is small and boring by design.
An operator owns their clients end to end — intake, build, revisions, ongoing maintenance. This is their whole book, monthly.
Cost to serve one client for one month, as an operator's book grows. An agency's cost is labour and stays roughly flat per client. Ours is a fixed operator plus a few dollars of tokens, so it falls with every client added.
The commoditised end of the market sells a build and disappears. That is not a cheaper version of this business — it is a different business, and this is the gap.
Token cost falls over time — open-weight models, competition, better harnesses. It is a real effect and it is worth modelling honestly, which means showing that it is not what makes this work.