From Claude workflow to production agent infra
Decipher is the first agent on Cipher's stampable rails. Here is how a quote is constructed, how the stack is pieced together, and why the model never sees what the logged-in user cannot.
A Claude Project that works for the team has proven the decision logic. It has not shipped identity you own, named connectors, or an audit trail operators can keep.
Decipher is that cutover in working form. You sign in with MFA. The API decides what your role can see. Pricing math runs in code tools. Connectors are wrappers with their own scope. Quotes stay indicative until a human confirms.
The commercial shape is three pieces you can check: rails once, each production agent as its own line, each named system as a connector. Band position moves with proven-versus-greenfield, write-versus-read, tenancy, and how many systems the agent actually touches. The structure does not change. The number does. Floors live on the Cipher pricing page. This essay is the construction, not a quote.
What “works in Claude” actually is
Most teams we meet already have the hard part half-done. A Claude Project, a Custom GPT, or a ChatGPT workflow is drafting the same answer a senior person used to write by hand. Inputs are known. The ugly edge cases have names. Someone on the team uses it every week.
That is a proven workflow. It is still running inside a vendor product: their login, their memory, their connector story, their retention. Fine while the output is copied into the CRM by a human. Fragile the moment the agent must act, a customer must log in, or finance asks what agent #3 will cost.
Cipher's cutover rule is blunt. Stay in Claude until the happy path and the tool list are real. Then harden onto rails you operate. Do not pay to rediscover the prompt on a production stack, and do not pretend a shared Claude project is that stack.
How a quote is constructed
Cipher does not sell a blob. A phase is assembled from named pieces so both sides can see what happens when you add agent #3 or HubSpot. Decipher uses the same model in code: the agent must call estimate tools; it is not allowed to invent figures.
You will not find a dollar amount in this post. The construction is the useful part, and it is the part that survives a different industry, a different connector list, or a different deadline.
Rails, once
Rails are the shared base every later agent reuses: login and MFA, the authenticated UI, the API that owns HTTP and persistence, the agent runtime, audit, and a place to hang connectors. Cipher stamps this. Decipher is the dogfood instance — NestJS, Next.js, Postgres, Redis for infra only, hand-rolled JWT plus required TOTP, Mastra as the agent side. AWS AgentCore or Strands can appear as a delivery lane for a client who needs that gravity. They are not a second product kernel.
If you resell the same system to downstream clients, tenancy sits on the rails line as an uplift. Self-use internal staff does not pay that tax.
Each production agent
One agent is one line: freeze the inputs, the decision logic, the outputs, the trigger, and whether a Claude workflow already exists. Proven-in-Claude sits lower in the band because discovery is done. Greenfield sits higher because you are still finding the edge cases while you harden. Shared tools and memory across a family pull the later agents down. Writes, human-approval chains, and external users on the login path push them up.
Each named connector
A connector is a system the agent must touch this phase: HubSpot, Microsoft 365, a core lending API. It is a wrapper with auth, scopes, tests, and least privilege — not “the agent will just call the API.” Teams that bury two SaaS connectors inside one agent line rediscover OAuth consent and polling-only APIs mid-build. Cipher prices the wrapper as its own line so that risk stays visible. Systems you will need later are written down as design notes. They are not priced as build.
Delivery lane on top
Steady, Standard, and Accelerated are the same scope at three calendars. Fewer engineers sequential, the default two-engineer pace, or more engineers in parallel. The lane is config, not a model judgement. The client picks a lane. The line items stay the same.
Every completed quote carries assumptions, open questions, exclusions (certification, unbounded discovery, cloud runtime meters), and a scoping-call CTA. The label is always the same: indicative, scoped per engagement, until a human confirms.
Rails, connectors, and RBAC are three different jobs
People collapse these into “security” or “the platform.” They fail in different places, so they are built as different pieces.
| Piece | Job | What breaks if you skip it |
|---|---|---|
| Rails | Identity, UI, API, runtime, audit — reused by every agent | Agent #2 rebuilds login and the chat shell |
| Connectors | One wrapper per named system, scoped to the caller | Secrets in prompts; HubSpot becomes “the agent” |
| RBAC | Role on the authenticated user, enforced at the API | Hidden UI tabs; the model is asked to keep secrets |
On Decipher the roles are cipher_staff and demo_viewer. Guards load the user from Postgres and reject a session that has not completed MFA. Staff can open the operator build spec (delivery-stack notes, internal sensitivity). A viewer who hits that route gets 403 from the API, and the attempt is written to audit_events. Hiding the tab would not be the control.
The model never receives what the user cannot see
Prompting a model to “not leak internals” is not a control. Decipher assembles context before the agent runs. Staff context includes the internal knowledge base. Viewer context is built from public floors and the caller's own records. The model cannot recite a rate it was never given.
The mock CRM connector follows the same rule. Every tool call carries { userId, role } from the Nest bridge. lookup_client_context returns rows owned by that user only. There is no god-mode repository. Cross-user ids 404. Denied probes are audited.
That is the same architecture as a client assessment agent on a private knowledge base. The rate card in this demo is the private KB. A loan-assessment agent would swap the card for the client's policy pack and keep the fork.
What moves a real quote
Same structure, different point on the band. These are the knobs intake actually uses. None of them are a licence to invent a fourth commercial model.
| Knob | Why it moves the number |
|---|---|
| Proven in Claude vs greenfield | Discovery is already paid, or it is still ahead of you |
| Named connectors this phase | Each wrapper is integration risk with a schedule |
| Read vs write | Writes need harder evals and often a human step |
| Internal staff vs external users | Identity and tenancy get heavier |
| Self-use vs resale / multi-tenant | Uplift on rails, not on every agent |
| Compliance stated | Hardening language and evidence paths — not a cert fee |
| Delivery lane | Calendar and staffing. Same scope. |
Two proven Claude bots plus HubSpot and Microsoft 365, internal staff only, is a different quote from one greenfield agent that writes into a core system for downstream customers. Both use the same three lines. Cipher will not pretend they cost the same.
What this demo is, and what it is not
Sign in, complete MFA, describe the agents and the systems, and Decipher will ask only the follow-ups that change architecture or band position. Then it persists an indicative quote you can reopen. That is the product shape Cipher stamps: a real app, not a Claude share link.
It is not a signed proposal. It is not SOC 2 or ISO 27001 certification — the base supports those controls and does not block them; assessors certify the organisation. It is not Cipher's internal costing. Eng-week rates and margin do not appear in chat, in the client document, or on a viewer session. Cloud token meters are operational spend, excluded from the build quote.
The commercial bands and the longer pricing argument live on Cipher's site: How we price production AI agents, and the shorter cutover note Claude workflow vs production agent. This page is the working instance of both.
If you already have the Claude workflow, bring the tool list and the systems it touches. Sign in to Decipher and walk a phase, or book a 30-minute scoping call. The quote you get here is a first draft. A human still has to stand behind it.