We have keys.
We bring grounded, interactive AI to knowledge work through engineered test-time interventions.
The race to bring premium AI to high-value knowledge work has driven off the track. Industry decision-makers have invested heavily in two primary trends: small specialized models and multi-agent swarms. Both are dead ends for premium interactive use, frequently serving as a cover for the conversion of capital to entropy.
Small, specialized models lack the reasoning skills expected by demanding professionals for interactive use. The savings gained by using a small model are vaporized by the human cost required to review and correct even a single mistake.
By trading generalizability for predictability, small models can succeed on narrow tasks, but broad capability even within a restricted domain remains out of reach. Economically, finetuning trades high upfront costs for lower marginal costs. However, finetuning competes with commoditization in reducing marginal cost, risking the initial investment.
Complex agent swarms destroy the interactivity that makes generative AI revolutionary. By forcing workflows into rigid, multi-agent bureaucracies, the system's role flexibility is diminished and Time-To-First-Token skyrockets.
When extreme latency forces professionals to switch contexts, they suffer from automation complacency. The user loses the opportunity for dialectical learning, and unseen hallucinations can taint downstream output, forcing a long reprocessing.
At Effractive, we believe that professional users want advanced AI features without compromising capability or latency. Given the choice between a good answer now or an excellent answer later, the correct answer is "now" or "both."
We consult with firms to develop and evaluate test-time interventions. By shifting the focus away from altering model weights or building complex agentic systems, we enable you to leverage unmodified, world-class reasoning anchored by ground-truth texts.
KV Cache ManagementWe design solutions to quickly build and manage the KV cache, enabling massive ground-truth context.
Cache FusionMassive amounts of ground-truth documents loaded directly into the prompt at inference time, yet with desirable cost and TTFT.
Hallucination TrappingEngineered methods to catch and remedy hallucinations before they taint the model's critical reasoning path.
Effractive designs and develops AI inference software for test-time interventions. We exist to remove the upfront cost of experimentation so our clients can try these solutions quickly, without initial capital, and at frontier-scale.
Effractive operates primarily through Challenge Engagements. We tie our compensation directly to performance metrics. We take on the technical risk; in exchange, we ask clients to place a firm, contractual value on these metrics prior to commencement, ensuring mutual commitment.
The client approaches Effractive with a problem or bottleneck amenable to Effractive's approach. Non-disclosure and IP agreements are executed.
We collaboratively define rigorous evaluation techniques and success metrics. The client creates validation examples and, crucially, a secret test set.
Both parties execute a contract defining licensing options and Effractive's compensation. This compensation is strictly contingent on achievement of the metrics.
Effractive applies or customizes its pipeline and submits its finalized solution.
The client grades the submitted solution against their secret test set and reveals the results.
A challenge period commences. The client verifies that the results were organically achieved by Effractive's technology, protecting against manual intervention or structural manipulation. Effractive verifies the grading is fair.
Upon successful verification, the client becomes obligated for the compensation defined in the contract and may exercise licensing options to deploy the technology.
Effractive is an AI software development and consulting firm specializing in test-time interventions for demanding professional environments.
Tom Vacek worked for a major legal informatics provider for twelve years before deciding to bet against the current AI hype cycle and try a different approach. During that time, he provided research leadership on three major product launches and many minor ones, creating solutions using tools from all NLP eras and receiving five US patents.
Prior to his work in legal informatics, he studied statistical learning theory, high-performance computing, and numerical optimization.
We are currently taking on new consultancy engagements with specialized information providers and professional service firms. If you manage RAG pipelines for demanding users and want to test the upper limits of your capabilities without compromising interactivity, let's talk.
Engage our team: engagement@effractive.com