Capture how a senior practitioner thinks. Before they walk out the door.
Equipment is bounded. Practitioner judgment isn't. Practitioner Capture is the harder, more valuable product: we capture the way a specific senior practitioner thinks and works — their decision frameworks, heuristics, judgment patterns, the questions they ask first, the trade-offs they weigh, the failure patterns they watch for, and the reasoning behind each.
What this is — and what it isn't
It is: A structured, queryable representation of a specific senior practitioner's approach to problems — their decision patterns, the reasoning they apply, the heuristics they trust — captured in their own words and authored content, and made AI-interactive so junior employees can query it the way they'd ask the practitioner directly.
It is not a chatbot of the person. That's gimmicky, brittle, and crosses ethical lines we won't cross. We are not making a digital twin. We are capturing the practitioner's authored reasoning — reviewed, corrected, and signed off by them — and making it queryable.
A junior tech queries: "There's a vibration pattern on Press 4 I haven't seen before. What would you check first?" The system responds with the practitioner's authored reasoning pattern — not a generic textbook answer — citing the actual entries the practitioner authored about how they diagnose vibration on rotating equipment.
The methodology is the moat
This is structured-interview craft, not a recording-and-LLM approach. Six phases.
1. Cognitive task analysis interviews
Multi-session structured interviews using techniques drawn from cognitive task analysis and decision-pattern elicitation. We get the practitioner to articulate decision processes they've never had to put into words.
2. Heuristic mapping
Capture the unwritten rules — "I always check bearing temp on Tuesdays before ramp-up because that's when the weekend's thermal cycle shows up" — and document them with the reasoning behind them.
3. Failure pattern catalog
What goes wrong, in what sequences, and what the practitioner's diagnostic instincts are when patterns don't match the manual.
4. Decision-tree authoring
For recurring decisions, structured flows: "When X, I check Y first because Z. If Y is normal, then…" — captured in the practitioner's voice.
5. Practitioner review & refinement
The practitioner reviews and corrects every authored entry. The output is their voice, their reasoning, signed off.
6. AI-interactive deployment
Junior employees query the captured model. Every question becomes a backlog item — "the practitioner's model didn't cover this; schedule a 30-minute follow-up interview."
Three flagship situations
The retiring senior engineer
35 years tenure. Personally responsible for three decades of systems decisions. Retiring in 18 months. Replacement won't be hired until they've left. Capture how they approach problems before they walk out the door.
The founder of a family-owned business
In their 60s or 70s. Built the business. Children running day-to-day but call them for every non-routine decision. They'd like to step back but can't. Their captured reasoning model becomes the senior advisor that doesn't need to be them anymore.
The senior consultant or partner
Their judgment is the firm's product. Younger associates need to learn how they think. Their captured methodology becomes the firm's training and quality-assurance asset.
Why this matters more than equipment capture
| Dimension | Equipment & Process | Practitioner |
|---|---|---|
| Knowledge type | Bounded — finite specs, finite processes | Unbounded — judgment, intuition, way of thinking |
| Replaceability | A competent technical writer could eventually document it | Nobody else can do this — the person carries it |
| Pain framing | Operational (line-down events, ramp time) | Existential ("when Bob retires we lose a piece of the company") |
| Value framing | Cost reduction | Insurance against irreplaceable loss |
Pricing
Setup fee plus monthly recurring. Three tiers, scoped to scope.
$3K – $6K / month recurring · Year-1 contract $71K – $147K
- One senior practitioner
- ~6–10 weeks of structured capture interviews (4–8 hrs/week of their time)
- Authored decision patterns, heuristics, reasoning models
- AI-interactive deployment
- Monthly enrichment as the practitioner reviews and refines
$7K – $14K / month recurring · Year-1 contract $174K – $348K
- A team of 2–4 senior practitioners
- Cross-referenced reasoning models across the bench
- Captured organizational decision patterns
- AI-interactive deployment
$18K – $35K / month recurring · Year-1 contract $416K – $820K
- Full executive or technical leadership team
- Integration with onboarding programs
- Structured pairing with junior employees
- Dedicated author
- Quarterly review with leadership
The customer is buying insurance against existential loss, not documentation. Replacement cost of a 35-year practitioner is multi-year onboarding plus permanent loss of certain knowledge entirely. Setup investment is a rounding error against that risk.
Honest preconditions
The practitioner has to want to participate
Capture only works if the practitioner is willing — ideally proud — to be captured. Some seniors won't be. That's a precondition we screen for in the first conversation, not a problem to be discovered later.
Methodology, not magic
Capturing how a senior thinks is a craft, not a tool. We don't promise to clone someone in a week. We promise a defensible, reviewed, signed-off authored reasoning model — and the AI layer that makes it queryable.
Have a practitioner you can't afford to lose?
The first conversation is short and free. We'll tell you honestly whether the engagement is a fit, what scope makes sense, and what the practitioner's involvement would look like over the next two months.
Start the conversation