Founding-Client Charter — Crucible AI

Charter clients don't "try" Crucible. They build it with us.

This is symbiotic by design. We don't build the company without our charter clients. They don't get 50% off the product for 36 months, with installation fees waived and no payment until Crucible goes live on their floor, without us. The pilot is the handshake on that arrangement.

It runs 90 days on your floor, with your regulatory surface, against your real audits. The Crucible you deploy on day one is the same Crucible our hundredth client will install — not a stripped "trial" build. We don't ship two products.

Charter is capped at 36 total installations. First come, first served across any tier and any vertical. When the 36 slots close, this rate closes with them. Live count on the pricing page.

Both sides have skin in the ground.

The charter isn't a discount in exchange for a testimonial. It's a mutual commitment, where each side gets something real that the other side can only get this way.

What you get

The foundation, locked in.

The full production system. Same Crucible we'll ship to anyone in year three. No stripped trial build, no disabled features. You're deploying real software on day one.
50% off published rates for 36 months. Real dollars, not "maybe we'll raise prices and you'll be glad" dollars. Tier A drops from $11,040 year-one to $5,520. Tier B drops accordingly, plus all per-install fees waived. You took early-adopter risk; this is concrete compensation for it.
First month due when Crucible goes live. Not at contract signing. Not while Sage is still scraping. You pay when you can use the product. If we can't deliver, you haven't paid anything for the attempt.
Direct access to the engineering team. No support tier gating. No tickets that disappear into a queue. When Sage finds a new state rule in your jurisdiction, we notice it together.
A voice in the roadmap. Charter clients see build priorities before anyone else and get to push back on them. The handlers you want built get built next.
Production continuity. The pilot auto-converts to your charter contract on day 91. No rebuild, no data migration, no re-training staff on a "real version" of the product. What you deployed is what you keep.

What we get

The edge cases that harden the product.

Real regulatory surface to build against. Every edge case your facility surfaces makes Crucible better for every client that follows you. Your compliance complexity is our most valuable development input.
Testimonial rights and case-study partnership. With your approval on every word, every number, and every quote published. We'd rather have one sentence you'd say publicly than a page of marketing you wouldn't.
A reference we can name. When the next compliance officer asks "who else has deployed this?" — that's a question we can only answer because charter clients said yes first. Trust transfers. It has to start somewhere.
Signal on what to build next. Your working patterns, gap-correction workflows, and audit-packet requests show us where the deterministic handlers have real value. Building roadmap from speculation is expensive; building it from usage is honest.
Proof that on-premise AI compliance tooling can be operated, updated, and defended in a real facility — not just demonstrated in a conference room. The category needs this proof. You're the proof.
The right to get better at this. Every charter client makes our product, our process, and our team stronger. We don't get to year three without year one.

Here's how it works in practice.

Three stages, 90 days, one handshake. The post-purchase scoping survey sets expectations on both sides before anything ships. Then we build, you deploy, and we stay close while the product meets your actual regulatory surface for the first time.

— STAGE 1 —

The scoping handshake

You complete the intake survey: regulatory surface, jurisdictions, accreditation posture, document volume, hardware environment. We come back with a fixed charter quote and build timeline. No pressure, no "discover the number at the end." The price you accept is what you'll pay, locked for 36 months.

— STAGE 2 —

The build & installation

Sage scrapes your vertical and jurisdictions once. We build your industry.mv2, encrypt it against your hardware fingerprint, and ship the installation package on USB. Your compliance officer runs the installer on your box. Less than one business day from unboxing to first query on commodity hardware.

— STAGE 3 —

The 90-day surface test

Your compliance officer uses Crucible against real work — actual gaps, actual alerts, actual audit prep. The engineering team stays close. Every edge case gets fixed in the corpus, in the handlers, or in the workflows. Day 91, your pilot auto-converts to your charter contract at the rate we agreed in Stage 1.

The charter's mechanics, stated plainly.

Term

36-month rate lock

The charter rate you sign at Stage 1 stays fixed for 36 months from activation. We raise published prices over time; charter clients don't feel it during the lock window.

Exit

Cancel by day 60

If the pilot isn't working — wrong fit, wrong timing, wrong product — you cancel by day 60 of the 90-day window. Your hardware is yours to keep. No financial claw-back. No penalty. We'd rather lose the client than keep one who doesn't believe the product works.

Continuity

Auto-convert on day 91

If day 60 passes without cancellation, day 91 flips the pilot to the charter contract automatically at the agreed rate. No rebuild. No data migration. The Crucible you've been using continues running; the billing engagement matures.

Cost structure

50% off · no install fee · pay at go-live

Charter clients run at 50% of published tier rates for 36 months. Installation fees — including Tier B's $3,500/install — are fully waived. Your first month is due only when Crucible goes live on your hardware — not at contract signing, not while Sage is still scraping. See pricing for Tier A / B / C rates at both published and charter levels.

Access

Engineering, not support tiers

Charter clients don't file tickets. You talk to the engineers who built the handlers. When Sage surfaces a new rule in your jurisdiction, we review the impact together. This continues through the entire 36-month lock.

Sovereignty

Your data never leaves

Not during the pilot. Not during the charter. Not ever. On-premise is not a feature we flip off for tier-B clients. The Crucible server has zero WAN egress by architecture; our access to it is nonexistent unless you explicitly initiate a support session over your LAN.

How a charter engagement begins.

Three steps. None of them are a sales funnel.

Complete the scoping survey

Seven steps, auto-saved, takes the time a real compliance conversation takes. Tells us your regulatory surface and what Crucible needs to cover.

Receive a fixed charter quote

We come back with a published-rate contract scoped to your actual needs. No negotiation theater. No mystery line items.

Deploy on your floor

Sage builds your corpus. You buy hardware. We ship the USB. Your compliance officer installs it. Less than a week from handshake to first query.

Start the scoping survey →

US compliance officers operate inside 12,000+ regulatory agencies pushing 50,000+ new regulatory measures every year.

Every one of those is a rule somebody at a facility is expected to know, track, document, and prove compliance against. Every one has an agency with authority to cite them when they don't.

More training videos, cloud dashboards, or enterprise GRC suites taking 9 months to deploy are not the right answer.

The only useful answer is better tools in the hands of front-line defenders, built on architecture that doesn't ask them to trust someone else's cloud with their patients' data.

That's Crucible. The charter is how it reaches the first facilities that prove it.

Come help us prove it.

Agency + regulatory-measure counts per LexisNexis State Net.