Your AI workspace, staying useful.

Yes, in almost all cases. AI Operations is a retainer for evolving and refining a workspace - there has to be a workspace to evolve. If you don't have a Blueprint (or equivalent setup), start with the Blueprint and add the retainer at handover.

Exception: if you've already built a substantive AI setup yourself or with another provider, the retainer can pick up from there. We'd start with an Audit-style review to understand what's there.

Hours roll over by one month. So if you don't use any of your Starter 4 hours in January, you'd have 8 available in February. After one month they expire - this keeps the retainer accountable and prevents stockpiling.

If multiple months are running quiet, it's usually a sign the tier is wrong. We'd talk about scaling down rather than continuing to bank unused hours.

Two options. First, top up - extra hours at the same £80/hr rate, invoiced separately. Useful for one-off pushes (a launch, a pitch, a major rebuild). Second, move up a tier - if it's a sustained increase, the higher tier makes sense.

I'll flag it proactively. If you're regularly going over your tier, I'll suggest scaling up rather than letting top-up invoices stack.

AI Operations is strategic - Darren handles the work that needs senior thinking. Workspace evolution, new capabilities, market intel, scoping new products. Higher-level, lower-volume.

Content Operations is production - Kirsty handles the day-to-day. LinkedIn posts, email newsletters, social, podcast briefs. Lower-level, higher-volume. Most established clients have both - one for the system, one for what comes out of it.

Yes. One month's notice. No long contracts, no penalties. The retainer should make sense every month it runs - if it stops being useful, the right answer is to pause it, not protect it with contracts.

If you pause and come back later, we'd briefly catch up to see what's changed in the business and the workspace, then pick up where we left off.

Yes. AI Operations is Darren-delivered by definition. The whole point of the strategic retainer is access to senior thinking - which means me, not a team. If volume ever required additional capacity, you'd be informed and given the option to opt out.

For day-to-day production work that doesn't need senior thinking, Kirsty's Content Operations retainer exists. That's where the team angle lives.

Part of what the retainer pays for is staying current. When Anthropic releases new model versions, new features, or new tooling - we assess what changes for your setup. If something needs rebuilding to take advantage of new capabilities, that's covered within retainer hours.

If a major shift requires substantial new work (a new product, a new platform), that becomes its own engagement scoped separately.