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OBEDIENCE CORP

Forward deployed engineering

The problem stops
being your problem.

Engagements start with a paid first phase, with scope and price agreed before work starts.

We embed with your team, find the work that is eating it, and deliver a working result. Your team reviews every change and keeps the result.

Built in your environment, with the tools your team already uses.

Discuss an engagementSee the work

Where we can help

Start with the work that keeps getting in the way.

Some teams know exactly what needs fixing. Others need help finding where to start. We work from the process your team uses today.

01

Work between systems.

Tickets, repositories, spreadsheets, and forms that still depend on someone moving the work along.

02

Work that keeps coming back.

Research and administrative processes that take time from the people you need doing other work.

03

A build that needs an owner.

A custom internal tool or workflow that needs an engineer to carry it from scope through review and handover.

Working together

An engineer who stays with the work.

We embed with your team, work through the problem in its real setting, and carry the build through review and handover.

Discuss your project

  1. Paid first phase

    Define the result together.

    We look at the actual process with your team and choose the work to take on. Scope and price are agreed before work starts. You keep the findings if you stop here.

  2. Delivery

    Build where your team works.

    We build in your environment, with checks against the agreed result. Your team reviews every change and approves what gets merged.

  3. Handover

    You keep the result.

    The engagement has a defined end. Your team keeps the delivered work, source, and findings. Further work is a decision you make at the checkpoint.

Company engineering / historical replay

Long-running work, with a record you can inspect.

This festival ran for four days while other work continued in parallel. The replay shows the plan progressing through the work.

The work delivered

  • Safer file operations
  • Consistent command output
  • Stronger git workflows

Drafted by Fathom. Execution started with Grok, finished with Codex.

Explore the completed festival

Festival keeps the plan, decisions, and verification with the work. You can inspect the completed festival and the changes it produced.

Client work includes products launched by three startups in 2025. The companies and code are covered by NDA.

Read the public work record →
Camp hardeningRecorded work
Historical plan replay. Original colors.

Before we start

A few practical questions.

Do we need a finished specification?

A description of the problem is enough for the first conversation. The paid first phase is where we examine the work with your team and define the result. If you already have a clear target, we start there.

Will our team need to adopt Festival?

We use Festival to organize our delivery. The engagement is built around your existing environment and workflow; operating Festival is not a requirement for your team.

How are scope and price agreed?

We agree the scope and price in writing before work starts. The first phase is paid and has a defined checkpoint, so you can decide whether to continue based on what we find.

START A CONVERSATION

Tell us what you’re trying to make work.

Process automation, paid pilots, applied engineering, research partnerships, and investment are all good reasons to reach out. You do not need a polished brief. A sentence or two about the problem is enough to start.

You don’t need a brief, a spec, or a plan. If you can describe the problem out loud, we can take it from there.

Public engineering

Recently shipped.

All releases

  1. festival v0.3.13

    fix: publish a security policy and pin workflow actions

  2. fest v0.9.0

    Defer a blocked task, sweep deferred blockers at festival end, force to drop

  3. camp v0.11.0

    Add shared one-time festival starter camp setup

Products

Tools from the work.

Explore the software we build alongside our engineering engagements.

Open source

Festival

An operating environment for long-running work with agents. Goals, context, plans, and evidence stay with the work in files and git.

Explore Festival
All work

Selected writing

What holds up in practice.

Field notes by Lance Rogers on running agents, reviewing their work, and learning from the results.

  1. The Bottleneck Moved: Nine Months of Running AI Agents Through Festival

    Nine months of running Festival on real work, measured from the logs.

  2. Quality Gates for Agent Work: Decisions, Not Formalities

    A gate an agent waves itself through is not a gate. Quality gates for agent work have to be decisions against artifacts.

  3. Loop Engineering: The Turn Is Not the Unit of Work

    The unit of work is no longer a prompt. It is a loop with a driver, a body, exit conditions, and failure modes.

All writing

The company

Founded by software engineer Lance Rogers.

Obedience Corp’s own engineering runs on the systems we develop. The code and field notes are public where we can share them.

About Obedience Corp

For research and investment conversations, the thesis explains the company’s direction.

Read the thesis