An AI worker fails as a tool and succeeds as an employee.
That is the whole argument, and everything below is the consequence of taking it seriously. A tool is something you buy, manage and judge yourself. An employee arrives with a job description, a manager, a personnel file and the ability to be sacked. Build those four things properly and you have a hire, not a gadget. Here is how GRABS builds them.
Four conditions, and how to test them.
An AI worker becomes an interim employee when four things are true. None of them is a claim you have to take on faith. Each one is something you can put to us before you sign, and the answer should be the same every time you ask it.
01
A job description
A mission, KPIs, a defined scope and an autonomy grade. The team knows what it is for.
The test: Ask to see the job spec before the term starts. Mission, KPIs, scope and an authority grade, on one page, in writing.
02
A manager
A Monday Report, an approval queue, escalation routes. The work is managed, not set loose.
The test: Ask who reviews the work and when. A Monday Report every week, an approval queue you control, and a review at 30, 60 and 90 days.
03
A personnel file
The vault: context, voice, access and compliance rules. Every action logged and attributable.
The test: Ask where the knowledge lives and who keeps it. The vault is yours, it is portable, and it leaves with you at handover.
04
It can be sacked
A sixty-second sacking switch. Caps enforced in code, not by discipline. You are never trapped.
The test: Ask how fast you can stop it. Sixty seconds, enforced in code, with no notice period and no negotiation.
What a role is actually made of.
A GRABS role is composed from a competency library, not invented for each client. Every competency is written in the language of human capability, because that is the language a manager can already assess, argue with and hold to account. The six parts below are what you read on a role card before you hire.
Knowledge
What the worker knows: your payment terms, your matter types, your escalation thresholds, and the domain itself. Knowledge comes from the vault, so it is your business's knowledge, not a model's recollection of businesses in general.
Skills
What it can actually do, written as tasks a manager would recognise: draft the reminder, reconcile the ledger, assemble the bundle, prepare the brief. Not capabilities in the abstract, work in the specific.
Behaviours
How it conducts itself when the work is ambiguous: persistent without being rude, never letting an item age in silence, escalating the judgement calls rather than guessing at them.
Tools
What it is permitted to use, and nothing beyond that. Access is scoped to the job spec, through the worker's own identities, never your staff logins.
Authority
How far it can go before it must ask. Set as a grade in the contract, enforced in code rather than by instruction, and raised only as the record earns it.
Co-factors
What the worker needs from you for the role to work at all: the approver who clears the queue, the system access, the source of truth. Stated up front, because a role that assumes them silently is a role that fails quietly.
The chassis underneath every role is identical.
Plan, act, check, calibrate, engage, learn. Calibration is the keystone, because confident wrongness is the defining failure mode of these systems. A competent employee knows the difference between a grounded judgement and a guess, and says so. We would rather a worker escalate too often than improvise once.
One term, seven stages.
The term runs from job spec to handover, and both sides have a part in every stage. If you have ever brought in an interim, none of this will be unfamiliar, which is the point.
- 01
Job spec
Mission, KPIs, scope, autonomy grade
We
We write the job spec: the mission, the KPIs, the scope and the autonomy grade the worker is sold at.
You
You agree the mission and the one number the hire is measured on. Nothing starts until you can read what the worker is for on a single page.
- 02
Recruitment
Role composed from the competency library
We
We compose the role from the competency library, drawing the knowledge, skills and behaviours from patterns we already hold.
You
You read the role card the way you would read a candidate. No invented experience, no borrowed metrics.
- 03
Contract
Fixed term, outcomes, caps, data handling
We
We set the contract: a fixed term, typically 90 days, with the outcomes, the caps and the data handling written down.
You
You buy a job done, on a fixed term, and you keep the right to end it in sixty seconds.
- 04
Onboarding
The vault. Days, not months
We
We onboard into the vault: your context, your voice, your access rules and your compliance rules, structured and governed.
You
You hand over the knowledge, scattered as it is. We structure it. It is yours, and it stays yours.
- 05
Line management
Monday Report, approval queues, escalation
We
We line-manage: the Monday Report every week, the approval queue, and escalation routes for anything outside scope.
You
You manage it the way you manage a person: approve, redirect, escalate, or say no.
- 06
Performance review
Instrumented evidence at 30/60/90
We
We review against the baseline at 30, 60 and 90 days, using instrumented evidence rather than our own account of ourselves.
You
You kill, keep or scale, on evidence. A probation period, run properly.
- 07
Handover
You keep the vault, the playbooks and the attestation
We
We hand over, with an attestation: a measured account of what the worker did and how well it did it.
You
You keep the vault, the playbooks, the trained process and the attestation record. The next engagement is sold on the record of the last.
Authority is a dial, not a switch.
Every role is sold at a maximum authority grade, set in the contract and raised only as the record earns it. The caps are enforced in code, not by discipline, which is what makes the grade a fact rather than an intention.
A0
Supervised
Every output is approved by a named person before release. Sensitive roles start here, and some deliberately stay.
A1
Approved-output
The worker works freely inside its scope and releases only through the approval queue. One gate between its work and the world.
A2
Autonomous within caps
The worker acts without per-item approval, inside hard limits enforced in code. Above the cap it escalates; below it, it acts and logs.
The grades in depth, with the approval queue, the disclosure signature and revocation, are set out in Governance.
What a manager means in practice.
Management is the differentiator, and it is not a promise of attentiveness. It is four standing mechanisms that run whether or not anyone is feeling diligent that week.
The Monday Report
Every week, a standing account of what was done, what was blocked, and what needs a decision from you. It is the same report you would expect from an interim on a Monday morning, and it is the reason nothing drifts for a quarter before anyone notices.
The approval queue
Anything consequential waits for a named person in your business to approve it, amend it or refuse it. The queue is the gate, and you hold it. What was approved, escalated and refused is part of the weekly record.
Escalation routes
Every edge case has a human destination, decided in advance. A worker that meets something outside its scope does not improvise a way through it. It stops and asks the person whose call it is.
The 30/60/90 review
Formal performance reviews against the baseline, backed by instrumented evidence. Confident wrongness is the defining failure mode of these systems, so the review measures calibration too: whether the worker knows the difference between a grounded judgement and a guess, and says which it is.
Whatever else an engagement delivers, this is the floor
The least any client ever receives is a complete structuring of their company's knowledge, the vault, and a step change in their knowledge management.
If a scoping call finds your knowledge is not ready, the vault is where you start, and it is the most valuable thing you can buy this quarter. You keep it either way.
The rest of the model.
How we count savings
Every figure traces to an event we logged and a price you signed. We count, you price.
Our engagements
We run the model on our own portfolio first, with full ceremony, and publish the record.
Data security
Per-client isolation, the worker's own identities, your ownership, and a portable vault.