# Ilayer

> Ilayer is an AI engineering studio that builds and operates production AI agents, grounded retrieval, and the evals and honesty gates that keep them from bluffing.

Key facts: Ilayer is an AI engineering studio. We embed with your team and build
inside your stack, then stay on the hook for what runs in production. The differentiator
is honesty: every AI answer is grounded in a real record, and the system abstains rather
than guess. Grounding and citations do not make mistakes impossible; they make them
visible and traceable instead of silent. Engagements are fixed-scope with the price agreed
up front, then a flat monthly rate to operate and improve the system. The client owns the
code. Start a project at https://ilayer.ai/contact.

## Services

- [AI automation](https://ilayer.ai/services/ai-automation): Turn a slow, manual workflow into one that runs itself, with checks you can see.
- [Forward-deployed AI engineering](https://ilayer.ai/services/forward-deployed-engineering): We embed with your team and ship inside your stack.
- [AI agents and grounded RAG](https://ilayer.ai/services/ai-agents-rag): Answers pulled from your own documents, each traceable to its source.
- [LLM evals and reliability](https://ilayer.ai/services/llm-evals-reliability): Honesty gates that block a wrong answer before it ships.

## Case studies

- [One honest answer box over a firm's entire portfolio](https://ilayer.ai/work/grounded-portfolio-intelligence): A $3.4B US real-estate investment firm
- [A multi-agent pipeline that finds real vulnerabilities](https://ilayer.ai/work/autonomous-audit-pipeline): Ilayer research

## Capabilities

- The infrastructure underneath: We run the cloud your agents sit on, and fix it with diagnosis instead of bigger boxes.
- AI for smart-contract security: Multi-agent systems that audit smart contracts and surface real findings, where AI meets web3.

## Field guide

- [How to stop AI hallucinations](https://ilayer.ai/ai-hallucination-prevention): The four mechanisms that actually reduce made-up answers, the one promise no vendor can honestly make, and a checklist to take into your next sales call.

## Articles

- [Twelve questions to ask before you hire an AI development company](https://ilayer.ai/blog/questions-to-ask-an-ai-development-company): The twelve questions that separate a team that has shipped and operated AI from one that will subcontract it, with what a good answer and a weak answer sound like.
- [Build vs buy AI agents, and the fourth option nobody sells you](https://ilayer.ai/blog/build-vs-buy-ai-agents): Four ways to end up with an AI agent, what each one actually costs you, and a rule for telling which one your problem needs.
- [What an AI agent costs to build, and what it costs to keep running](https://ilayer.ai/blog/ai-agent-development-cost): The real cost drivers, the monthly line items, and a worked example built from provider prices we read today.
- [Why AI pilots die between the demo and the deadline](https://ilayer.ai/blog/why-ai-pilots-never-reach-production): Five failure patterns, the symptom each one shows first, and a checklist you can hold your own project against at week nine.
- [How to test a RAG system before you trust it](https://ilayer.ai/blog/how-to-evaluate-a-rag-system): Six test families, the numbers to gate a release on, and an honest answer to what counts as a good score.
- [RAG or fine-tuning: what each one costs to own](https://ilayer.ai/blog/rag-vs-fine-tuning): The mechanics take a paragraph. The two-year bill, the retraining cadence, and who gets paged are what actually decide it.
- [Why AI makes things up](https://ilayer.ai/blog/why-ai-makes-things-up): A language model produces the most plausible continuation of your question. Plausible and true are different targets, and the gap between them is the whole story.

## Optional

- [About](https://ilayer.ai/about): how the studio works and what it will not claim
- [How an engagement runs](https://ilayer.ai/process): scope, build, gate, operate
- [Blog index](https://ilayer.ai/blog): all 8 pieces
- [Contact](https://ilayer.ai/contact): start a project