Arden Koenig

Look first at relevant experience, not the size of the portfolio. Ask to see three or four engagements that match your stack, and then ask whether those engineers are still with the company. A solid partner will put you on a call with the people who would work on your project. Vague answers at this stage usually mean the demo work came from somewhere else.

The contract warrants a slower read than the pitch. Three clauses do most of the work: assignment of intellectual property, confidentiality, and termination and handover. Every artifact must transfer to you once invoices are settled, together with source code, designs and infrastructure as code. Watch for rag vs langchain any clause that leaves framework code in the vendor's hands, since that is often the part you cannot replace later.

Ask how they estimate. A credible estimate is accompanied by a list of assumptions, a task-level breakdown and a range rather than a single number. A fixed-bid deal is only reasonable when the scope is genuinely frozen; in any other case the vendor adds a risk premium and you pay for uncertainty either way. Time and materials puts the risk on your side, so it requires a cap, regular demos and transparent reporting.

Process beats the number of developers. Find out how change requests are handled, who signs off on a feature and how quality assurance works. A well-run team should be able to walk you through a live build at the end of each sprint. Acceptance criteria in writing remain your only real protection against an argument at delivery time.

Before signing, plan for the day you no longer need this vendor while the relationship is still good. Ask that the source repository lives on infrastructure you own from day one, and gpt integration services that documentation is written as you go rather than left to the end. A vendor with nothing to hide accepts it without argument; a long negotiation over it reveals a great deal.