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Custom AI Software Development (2026) | Of Ash and Fire

Custom AI software development for production. LLM apps, RAG, agents, MLOps, and eval/observability — built to ship, not to demo. Talk to our AI team.

Most "AI consulting" engagements end with a slide deck and a Notion page. We end ours with a deployed feature your customers actually use. We build production AI software — LLM applications, retrieval-augmented generation systems, agentic workflows, and deployed ML models — for teams that need AI to work reliably, cost-predictably, and without hallucinating their way into a customer-support fire. We have also spent the last three years cleaning up other people's AI-generated codebases, so we know what bad AI architecture looks like from the inside.

What We Offer

We design, build, and operate AI software end-to-end. That means picking the right model and the right pattern (RAG vs. fine-tuning vs. tool-calling vs. agentic), wiring it into your existing application, building the eval and observability infrastructure that catches regressions before customers do, and managing the cost and reliability tradeoffs that determine whether the feature ships profitably or quietly bleeds margin. We work with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, AWS Bedrock, and self-hosted open-weight models — model-agnostic by design.

Key Capabilities

  • LLM application development: Production-grade chat, copilot, summarization, classification, and structured extraction features built into your existing app with Next.js, Python, or whatever your stack already runs.
  • RAG and vector search: Document ingestion, chunking strategy, embedding pipelines, and vector stores (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Turbopuffer) tuned for your actual content — not the demo dataset.
  • Agentic workflow orchestration: Tool-using agents built with LangGraph, the OpenAI Agents SDK, or custom orchestration, with deterministic checkpointing and human-in-the-loop where the stakes warrant it.
  • ML model deployment (MLOps): Training, packaging, and serving custom models on SageMaker, Vertex AI, or self-hosted infrastructure, with proper versioning, A/B testing, and rollback.
  • Eval and observability: LangSmith, Helicone, Arize, and Langfuse integration — plus custom eval harnesses that test on your real data, not generic benchmarks. We measure quality, latency, and cost on every release.
  • Multi-model gateways: Vercel AI Gateway, OpenRouter, or custom routing layers that let you swap models, add fallbacks, and negotiate pricing without rewriting application code.
  • Production prompt engineering: Versioned prompts, structured outputs (JSON schema, Zod, Pydantic), guardrails, and the hallucination-mitigation patterns that come from actually shipping these systems.

Our Process

1. Discovery & Architecture

We start by being honest about whether AI is the right answer. For some problems, a rules engine, a search index, or a classic ML model is faster, cheaper, and more reliable. When AI is the right call, we design the data flow, pick the model strategy, estimate per-request cost, and identify failure modes before we write code. The output is a one-page architecture and a costed pilot scope.

2. Design & Prototyping

We build a working prototype in 2-4 weeks against your real data, with a minimal eval set scored by domain experts. This is where most teams discover their AI feature works great on five hand-picked examples and falls apart on the long tail. We surface those failure modes early so the product decision happens before the engineering investment.

3. Development & Integration

Production build includes the boring parts that determine whether the feature survives — caching, rate limiting, prompt versioning, structured output validation, fallback models, cost budgets, abuse detection, and observability. We integrate with your existing auth, billing, and logging. Every release runs through an automated eval suite before it touches production traffic.

4. Launch & Support

We launch behind a feature flag to a small cohort and watch the metrics that matter — answer quality, latency p95, cost per request, refusal rate, and user satisfaction. Most clients keep us on for ongoing eval expansion, model migration as new releases drop, and the periodic prompt and retrieval tuning that AI systems require. Models change every quarter; your software should not have to.

Industries We Serve

  • Healthcare: Clinical decision support, ambient documentation, prior-auth automation, and drug interaction detection — built with HIPAA, BAA, and audit-trail requirements as architectural inputs, not afterthoughts.
  • EdTech: Adaptive learning, content generation, automated assessment feedback, and tutor-style chat with the safety, FERPA, and age-appropriate guardrails that K-12 deployments demand.
  • Manufacturing: Predictive maintenance, computer vision for quality inspection, document and SOP search, and operator copilots integrated with MES and historian data.
  • B2B SaaS: Copilots, in-product agents, document understanding, and structured data extraction features for vertical SaaS platforms in legal, finance, real estate, and operations.

Service Highlights

1. We ship AI features, not slide decks

Most "AI consulting" engagements end with a strategy document. Ours end with a deployed feature your customers actually use. We engage scoped to production outcomes — shipped code, measurable quality metrics, and a runbook your team owns.

2. We build for cost and reliability — eval, fallbacks, observability

Demos work on five examples. Production fails on the long tail. We invest in eval pipelines, structured outputs, fallback models, cost budgets, and observability (LangSmith, Helicone, Arize, Langfuse) so quality regressions get caught before customers report them.

3. We have spent three years cleaning up AI-generated codebases

Our AI Code Quality practice has audited and refactored dozens of AI-built codebases. We know exactly what bad AI architecture looks like — and we build yours so it does not become someone else's remediation project in 18 months.

Features

LLM application development

RAG and vector search

Agentic workflow orchestration

ML model deployment (MLOps)

Eval and observability (LangSmith, Helicone, Arize)

Multi-model gateways (Vercel AI Gateway, OpenRouter)

Production prompt engineering

Structured outputs and guardrails

Get In Touch

For Fast Service, Email Us:

info@ofashandfire.com

Why Choose Us?

Industry Expertise

With years of experience in healthcare technology, we understand the unique needs and compliance requirements of the industry.

Cutting-Edge Solutions

We leverage the latest in mobile and cloud technology to build responsive, reliable, and efficient medical applications.

Dedicated Support

Our team provides ongoing support and maintenance, ensuring that your application runs smoothly as your needs evolve.

Frequently Asked Questions

How much does custom AI software development cost?+
A production AI feature — chat, copilot, RAG-powered search, or structured extraction — typically lands between $60K and $300K for the first release, depending on data complexity, eval scope, and integration surface. Larger agentic systems or custom-trained models scale higher. We always start with a costed prototype scope so you can validate quality before committing to production build.
Should we build custom AI or just use the OpenAI/Anthropic API directly?+
Direct API calls work for simple use cases. Custom AI software is what you need when the model has to ground itself in your data (RAG), use your tools (agents), enforce structured outputs, route between models for cost, recover from failures, and produce auditable, evaluatable behavior. The API call is 1% of the work — the other 99% is the application around it.
How do you measure quality and catch regressions?+
We build an eval suite specific to your use case, scored by domain experts. Every release runs against that suite before touching production. We instrument live traffic with LangSmith, Helicone, Arize, or Langfuse to track quality, latency, cost, and refusal rate over time. When a model upgrade or prompt change degrades behavior, the eval catches it before users do.
How do you prevent hallucinations in production AI?+
Hallucinations are a property of model + prompt + retrieval + output validation working together. We mitigate them with grounded retrieval (well-tuned RAG), structured output validation (JSON schema, Zod, Pydantic), prompt-level guardrails, refusal patterns for low-confidence answers, and citation-required responses where the use case warrants. No technique eliminates hallucinations entirely; we engineer for an acceptable rate that the eval pipeline measures.
What infrastructure do we need for production AI?+
At minimum: a model gateway (or direct provider integration with retry/fallback), a prompt and eval versioning layer, an observability stack (LangSmith/Helicone/Arize/Langfuse), a vector store if you are doing RAG (Pinecone, Weaviate, pgvector, Turbopuffer), and a cost-tracking layer tied to user/tenant. We can build on top of your existing stack or stand the whole thing up; either way the architecture is portable.

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