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AI engineering

More than a model
behind a text box.

Language models are one of seven AI disciplines we engineer with. What makes any of them useful is the system around them — what they are allowed to read, how the output is constrained, and what happens next.

From single-modal AI to complete intelligence systems.

A delivery exception is an ERP record, a photograph, a driver’s spoken note and a GPS position. The useful system is the one that considers them together.

Inputs

  • Text & documents
  • Images
  • Video
  • Speech & audio
  • Business data
  • Location

Intelligence layer

Outputs

  • Insight
  • Decision support
  • Workflow
  • Business application

Seven disciplines.

LLM

Large language models

Applications built on language models where the value is in what surrounds the model: what it is allowed to read, how that context is retrieved, how the output is constrained, and what it is permitted to do with the result.

Engineered on request

  • Enterprise LLM applications
  • Retrieval-augmented systems
  • Structured information extraction
  • Classification and routing
  • Summarisation over operational records
  • Structured outputs against a schema
  • Tool and system interaction
  • Grounded answers with sources

Works with: text & documents · business data

NLP

Natural language processing

Not everything needs a language model. A great deal of business text is better handled by classification, extraction and retrieval that are cheaper, faster and more predictable — and can be evaluated.

Engineered on request

  • Text classification
  • Entity and field extraction
  • Document analysis
  • Semantic and keyword retrieval
  • Intent understanding
  • Text-derived business signals

Works with: text & documents

CV

Computer vision

Vision work is only useful when its output enters a workflow. The engineering is in the pipeline around the model: capture, pre-processing, thresholds, review of uncertain cases, and what happens to the result.

Scoped per engagement

  • Image analysis and classification
  • Video analysis
  • Object detection and recognition
  • Visual inspection
  • Visual tracking
  • Document and image understanding
  • Vision-driven business workflows

Works with: images · video

Speech

Speech & audio

Speech recognition and audio processing engineered into workflows where typing is impractical — a warehouse, a vehicle, a production floor — and where the transcript then has to reach a system that can use it.

Scoped per engagement

  • Speech recognition and transcription
  • Spoken-language interfaces
  • Audio processing
  • Voice-enabled workflows
  • Hands-free field operation

Works with: speech & audio · text & documents

Multimodal

Multimodal systems

The point at which these stop being separate technologies. A delivery exception may involve an ERP record, a photograph, a driver’s spoken note, a GPS position and a signed document — and the useful system is the one that considers them together.

Scoped per engagement

  • Combining records, documents, images and audio in one workflow
  • Cross-modal correlation
  • Evidence assembled from several sources
  • Location context joined to operational data

Works with: text & documents · images · video · speech & audio · business data · location

Interfaces

Intelligence interfaces

The interaction may be conversational. What makes it an intelligence interface is what happens underneath: intent recognised, connected systems queried, sources correlated, findings explained, an action proposed — and, for anything consequential, a person asked first.

Built and running

  • Intent and context recognition
  • Querying connected systems
  • Correlating multiple sources
  • Detecting risk, anomaly and opportunity
  • Explaining a finding with its evidence
  • Proposing actions
  • Triggering controlled workflows
  • Human approval for consequential actions

Works with: text & documents · business data

Decision support

Decision support

Traditional reporting answers a question that was already formed. Decision support runs continuously against operational data and raises the exceptions — which is a different engineering problem, and a different product.

Built and running

  • Continuous evaluation against operational data
  • Anomaly and pattern detection
  • Threshold and rule evaluation alongside model output
  • Prioritised exceptions
  • Explanations attached to every finding

Works with: business data · text & documents

Intelligence interfaces, not chatbots.

The interaction may be conversational. The product is not the conversation.

Answers the question you typed
Recognises what you are trying to find out
Reads a document store
Queries the systems that hold the record
Returns text
Returns a finding with the evidence behind it
Waits to be asked
Raises the exception before anyone asks
Suggests you do something
Prepares the action and waits for approval
See it working — Operational AI