Tier A, B, and C treatment prevents inference from silently becoming an executive fact.
FDE Lab is free · Production Reviews open
Your AI works. Is the system ready for production?
The model is only one component. YakData helps senior engineers turn working AI into production systems teams can trust, operate, recover, and own.
Built around 77 Rules: a real production AI system, not a hypothetical course project.
Does this look familiar?
The prototype is working. The production decision is not.
- The demo works, but nobody can define production-ready.
- The model performs well, but failure behavior is barely tested.
- Frontend, backend, AI, and product each work separately.
- Nobody is certain where human judgment belongs.
- Deployment is approaching, but recovery and ownership are still fuzzy.
What 77 Rules made obvious
The model was not the hard part.
A production AI system has to turn perception into evidence, controlled logic, a reviewable decision, and an operating result.
01Dashboard + contextOperating input
02Multimodal perceptionInterpret what is visible
03Structured evidenceObservation before inference
04Explicit rulesInspectable domain logic
05Deterministic scoreModel does not invent it
06Human reviewVerify, correct, override
07Operating outputTraceable decision artifact
Model interpretation supplies evidence. Business-critical scoring remains inspectable and reproducible.
Client-specific rules fit the core architecture, and the system was used to change reporting practice after handoff.
The FDE Production Map
Seven decisions. Five responsibility lanes. One production system.
The detailed work is complicated. The public map should not be. These seven decisions are enough to see where a production AI system stands and what has to happen next.
01Decide
02Requirements
03Architecture
04Vertical Slice
05Evaluate
06Production
07Ownership
PMUXFront EndBack EndTest / QA
The FDE connects the lanes. They overlap from the beginning. This is not a PM → UX → backend → frontend → QA waterfall.
The success condition is simple.Every consequential production decision has an owner, sufficient evidence, an acceptance bar, and an explicit next action.
See the method applied
Follow 77 Rules through the full production build.
FDE Lab is free. Watch the seven production decisions unfold without turning the home page into a technical manual.
Define it correctly.
Decide what deserves to be built. Turn expert judgment into requirements. Design the production system and the work.
Decision · Requirements · ArchitectureProve it works.
Build the thinnest complete vertical slice. Benchmark the AI, test failure modes, and make human control explicit.
Vertical Slice · EvaluationMake it production.
Harden the operating system, deploy it, prove recovery, transfer ownership, and decide what should happen next.
Production · OwnershipFollow the FDE Lab
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Apply it to your own work
Now put your system under the same scrutiny.
Bring one real artifact and one consequential decision. We challenge the assumptions, evidence, failure behavior, and production implications. You retain ownership of the build and leave with the next action.
$1,500 / quarter- Weekly live Production Reviews
- Bring work from any of the seven production decisions
- Written Production Review Record for substantive reviewed work
- Reviewed does not mean passed
Why this standard exists
Built from production work, not certification theory.
Netflix
Built the subscriber lifetime-value framework and worked on business problems spanning Finance, Marketing, and Operations.
Tableau
Director of Product Management. Conceived the native forecasting engine and worked on advanced data-ingest and management flows.
35 years
Across clinical-trial data, enterprise BI, product leadership, analytics, software systems, and production AI.
Stephen looks at what the business needs and works back to the technology. This insight is invaluable for improving ROI and driving quick wins from the analytical investment.John LodmellCFO, Nordstrom Credit Services