# How I Work - Amar Harolikar > Editorial reference page for outside-project engagements. Live page: https://www.tigzig.com/how-i-work **Kicker:** How I work with outside projects. **Headline:** Sessions and execution. Same work, seen two ways. **Lead:** The whole model in one place, so the first conversation can be about your work rather than about terms. --- ## In Short - **Sessions** cost ₹9,600 an hour. I teach you and guide you on your own problem over screen share. - **Execution** costs ₹2,400 an hour. I build the tool or app for you. - Execution is billed on my brain time, not the AI's coding time. That is the time I spend planning the project with the AI, steering it, validating its output and researching. - The work is done in stages. You approve the hours for each stage before it starts. - Ongoing work can be set up as a monthly retainer from ₹24,000. - All work is remote. Calls are between 1 and 6 PM IST from Wednesday to Saturday. - To start a project, send me an email. --- ## The Work Two kinds, same projects. Analytics, AI tools and apps, the servers they run on. Built for small and medium businesses. ### Sessions Hands-on, over screen share. I work through your actual problem with you and get you up to speed on the tool .. Claude Code in VS Code, the Claude app, Claude in Excel and PowerPoint. What I cover is your call: frontend, backend, databases, models, pulling data from different sources, a full analysis end to end. Two kinds of folks come for sessions. Experienced practitioners (typically 10-15 years in) who want to use the tool on their own work. And division heads .. CEOs, CFOs, heads of marketing, analytics, operations, 20 to 30+ years in .. who want the architecture and the flow at a higher level, plus how to do their own role better with it. Either way the sessions still center on you using the tool .. that is what makes the time pay off. You want to use it for your own work, and understand how your team works with it. **Every session is one to one.** Not a group call or a training batch - your own problem & questions, your own pace. All data and discussions stay private. ### Execution I build it. Database AI, report generators, machine learning models, automations, dashboards, complete apps with auth and access control. The heavy lifting and the tedious pieces that take time to get right. Same projects as the sessions .. I just do the work. --- ## What I Take On Where I go deep. Many examples of all of this are live on the main site .. apps, code, posts. Most are open source. Browse https://www.tigzig.com/browse-apps, https://www.tigzig.com/analysis, https://www.tigzig.com/blog. ### Analytics and machine learning models Large part of what I do .. analysis, dashboards, ad-hoc reports, machine learning models. Data science and decision sciences. As standalone offline projects or as interactive tools connected to live systems. **Live examples:** TREMOR (multi-source macro signals across 8 categories), MFPRO (mutual fund analytics with composition drift), IMDB Dashboard (12M+ titles, 230M-row backend), VIGIL (Indian markets + corporate signals across 7 NSE tables). All listed at https://www.tigzig.com/browse-apps. ### AI tools and agentic apps A specialty. Helping figure out where AI fits and in what form .. sometimes a single AI app is enough, sometimes API chaining, sometimes a full agentic setup. Then everything built on top of it .. orchestration, observability, validation, hallucination controls, and the cost-management layer (per-user budgets, model routing), as important as the work itself .. smart models are excellent but expensive. Live AI apps in use by medium-sized teams, mostly for operations. **See it run:** The Database AI suite at https://www.tigzig.com/database-landing .. multi-step reasoning agents that connect to multi-GB databases, write SQL, run analysis, generate PDF reports. MCP server directory at https://www.tigzig.com/mcp-landing is callable from any AI client (Claude, Cursor, custom). ### Apps and tools Mostly React + Vite frontends, FastAPI backends, Postgres or DuckDB. Platform-agnostic though .. PHP / Apache / MySQL and other platforms too. Pick up whatever the team already runs on. **Live examples:** TREMOR, MFPRO, IMDB Dashboard and VIGIL are complete apps, live without login on purpose .. they're free public tools, no friction. DuckIt (https://duckit.tigzig.com) is the auth example .. guest sessions get 2-day file storage, logged-in users 7 days, owner level keeps files permanently. All on https://www.tigzig.com/browse-apps. ### Self-hosted infrastructure My apps run on my own rented servers (VPS). The Postgres databases are hosted on the same servers. I moved most databases off managed Postgres .. the usage charges added up and self-hosting turned out simpler to run. Managed Postgres still gets used here and there. **What's running on it:** Every app on https://www.tigzig.com/browse-apps and every API on https://www.tigzig.com/apis runs on this infra. tremor.tigzig.com, vigil.tigzig.com, mfpro.tigzig.com, briq.tigzig.com .. each is a separate app on its own subdomain. ### Production security Hardening applied across every layer, plus continuous monitoring of every request. A 120-item baseline checklist is published at https://www.tigzig.com/security as a useful starting point .. it's a sample of what I run. **The evidence:** All my data APIs run open, no auth, public internet (see https://www.tigzig.com/apis) .. they take real-world attack traffic, and the hardening at https://www.tigzig.com/security is what came out of that. My ops command center is open too .. https://logs.tigzig.com, multi-layer defenses. The app itself has delete access to ~200 GB of data and admin to 40+ apps and services, running in the open since launch. ### Cloudflare edge Cloudflare Workers in production. Honeypot routes catch scanners; offenders go into a jail and get blocked at the Cloudflare WAF. Plus rate limits, agent-traffic logging, markdown content negotiation and subdomain SEO. **Where you see it:** Every page on tigzig.com is fronted by these Workers .. every frontend and backend. The agent-traffic logger feeds an ops dashboard. ### AI-agent discoverability (AEO) tigzig.com is built for AI agents to read. There is an API catalog at https://www.tigzig.com/apis, a guide file for agents at https://www.tigzig.com/llms.txt and an MCP server directory at https://www.tigzig.com/mcp-landing. Every page also has a markdown version. Point an AI agent at the site and it maps the whole platform in one fetch. **The check:** Ask any AI agent .. ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity .. "what is tigzig.com". It will map the site from /llms.txt within seconds .. apps, APIs, MCP servers, recent posts. Including content published this week. ### Basic SEO Basic mechanics to keep pages findable .. sitemap structure, JSON-LD breadcrumbs, structured data, Bing Webmaster + GSC + IndexNow integrations. The plumbing underneath the AEO work above .. not deep SEO consulting. **The check:** Tigzig pages show up in Google, Bing and ChatGPT's live web search. Nothing fancy, just the basics keeping pages findable. ### Open-source analytical tools Free tools I've built and shared. TREMOR for global macro signals, VIGIL for Indian markets and company-level info, MFPRO for mutual fund analytics, plus a set of portfolio and technical analysis tools, database converters and text-to-SQL apps. The data behind them is on https://www.tigzig.com/apis as zero-auth APIs and MCP servers. --- ## How Execution Works ### 1. Billed on brain time, not the clock I charge for the time I am working on your project .. planning with the AI, steering it, validating its output and researching. I might be at my desk for 10 hours running multiple projects, you get charged for the hours on yours, not the wall clock. Calls during an execution project .. planning, reviews, screen-share walkthroughs .. are billed on call time, at the execution rate. ### 2. Every stage is approved in advance Before each stage I tell you roughly what I plan to do. You approve an upper limit on the hours, say 3 to 5 or 5 to 10. I stop at that limit and report back. No surprise bills. The plan is what I aim to do within that limit. You see both up front. ### 3. The code and documents are yours. You can take over any time The code and documents stay with you, and you have full control. Stop the project, pick it up later, hand it back .. no issue either way. Most of my clients work with Claude Code too, so the handoff stays clean. Same docs, same tool. ### 4. It goes live early, and I stay on it These are not month-long builds handed over at the end. Your real users, usually a CXO's team, are on the app from 30 to 40% in, the moment basic flows work. So by the time we reach 90%, most of their issues are already fixed and it is in real use .. usually days to weeks. By the final stretch, most clients prefer to handle the small UI tweaks themselves .. faster and cheaper at that point, and they know the app well by then. Flexible either way, they can do it or I can. I keep supporting through full rollout and beyond, stepping in whenever you want. --- ## Rates | What | Rate | |---|---| | **Sessions** - Getting up and running, setup help, build guidance | ₹9,600 / hr | | **Execution** - Build work, charged on brain time | ₹2,400 / hr | Rates vary by region and engagement. The above are indicative. All sessions and execution are prepaid .. PayPal, Razorpay, UPI, or bank transfer, whichever works for you. **Ongoing work.** The work can also run as a monthly retainer, starting at ₹24,000. The ₹24,000 is a minimum and not an extra fee. It is set off against the actual work, which is billed at a reduced rate. You pay for the work done, and the monthly figure is the least you pay. It reserves a block of my time each month, and it puts you ahead of one-off work when something new comes up. Most retainers start after a first project or two, once we both know how the work runs. It also means I keep an eye out between projects. The AI companies change something every week and most of it is noise for any one business, so when a piece of it is relevant to you, you get a note without having to ask. That could be a model that would cut your API bill, something one of the frontier labs has released that fits your sector, a security advisory on the platform you run, or a tool someone else in your space has built and what it does. --- ## How Many Hours Do I Need? **Sessions.** A first one usually runs around 2 hours. Setup and installation eat into that if it is not already done. After that it varies, with your background and with the problem. Someone coming from analytics, from programming, or from marketing all start at a different place, and so does someone already working in VS Code or a CLI tool versus someone who has never opened one. Some things get resolved in a single session, some run across several sessions. **Execution.** Scope-based. We work out what you want built, I come back with an estimate in hours, and you approve the hours for each stage before it starts. Some examples from real engagements are below. ### Some examples Hours from real engagements, all anonymised, from 90 minutes up to about 70 hours. These are brain-time hours .. the calendar time is longer, and is shown next to each one. The rate is right above, so you can work out what that comes to. **Execution** | Engagement | Hours | |---|---| | Paid scoping prototype. Fully clickable, dummy data, built to make a proposed system concrete before anyone commits to it. | ~2 hrs | | Operational monitoring dashboard. Live operational parameters and activity tracking, pulled together into one view the team can scan quickly. | ~15 hrs, brain time over about a week | | Response model, delivered as a tool. The model itself was built offline. The tool is what the team runs afterwards: pull the latest data from their sources, score it, and put the new run side by side with the previous one, so any shift in the population splits or the decile table shows up straight away. UI on top, Python underneath, runs locally. | ~25 hrs, brain time over about 2.5 weeks | | AI-based tool built into a client's existing systems. Records from their database go out to an AI for review and correction, and the results are written back after checks. Wired to their existing auth with role-based access, every API call and database update logged, observability at each stage. They took it over at around the 90% mark and finished the tweaks themselves. | ~70 hrs brain time, over 4 to 6 weeks | **Sessions** | Engagement | Hours | |---|---| | A CEO, on Claude Cowork and Claude in Excel and PowerPoint. Reviewing the work coming up from his juniors, modifying decks, quick prototypes. A getting up and running session, then a detailed session later on specific problems. | 90 min, plus 1 hr later | | A head of analytics, around 20 years in. A getting up and running session, demo plus hands-on, building machine learning and statistical models and automations with Claude Code. | ~2.5 hrs | | A CFO, 25+ years in finance and new to all of this. Worked through the basics .. what an API is, where model cost comes from, subscription versus API cost, build versus buy, model routing, and how an agentic setup works. All shown live on screen. | ~5 hrs over 2 to 3 sessions | | A founder coding through a chat AI, moved to Claude Code. Deep-dive sessions where I walked him through setting up the automated deploy path out to his cloud server, live on screen. He went on to refactor his own sites himself, and later used the same workflow to rebuild his setup after a security incident on his server. | 8 to 10 hrs across several 2 to 3 hr sessions | **These are examples only.** Each number belongs to that one piece of work, and what any other piece takes depends entirely on its scope. The spread runs wide in both directions. I have done scoping work and dummy-data prototypes that ran a lot longer than the two hours shown above, and I have built small complete apps in far less time than the larger ones here. Two projects that read alike on paper can end up a long way apart once the detail turns up. Use them as a rough guide only. The real number comes out of scoping, and you approve the hours for each stage before it starts. --- ## Availability - **Mode:** 100% remote. - **Calls:** 1 to 6 PM IST. Wednesday to Saturday, typically. - **WhatsApp:** 1 to 6 PM IST, same days as calls. This is where most projects run day to day. - **Email:** Always open. Replies usually come Wednesday to Saturday, often sooner. - **Queue:** Schedule runs full most weeks. I take on what I can fit. - **Timelines:** I work to my own schedule, and in practice it's fast. The trade-off is that fixed deadlines or rush jobs don't fit. --- ## What I Don't Take On Two things are outside what I do. Better said here than discovered later. What I tend to take on is work that will be live and in use within a few weeks. My longest project so far ran about eight weeks. Anything planned to run over many months is not a good match. I also don't take on enterprise-scale implementations. Most of what I do is with smaller businesses, usually direct with a founder or a CEO. Volume on its own is fine. Beyond that, if you are not sure whether something fits, just ask. Happy to take a look and let you know. --- ## Get in Touch **Email -> short call -> prepaid -> work** Start with an email at [amar@harolikar.com](mailto:amar@harolikar.com), or reach me on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar). An email with what you are trying to build and a rough sense of scope is enough to start. Once we are working, most of the coordination happens over WhatsApp and calls. It is quicker for both of us. Email is just how we start. If it looks like it makes sense, we set up a short call, usually around 30 minutes, which I don't charge for. Work is prepaid once we both know what we are doing. Nothing is owed until work starts. Some of these end at the email stage with no fit on either side, and that is fine either way. --- *Amar Harolikar - Decision Sciences & Applied AI - https://www.tigzig.com* --- Author: Amar Harolikar - Specialist, Decision Sciences & Applied Generative AI - amar@harolikar.com - https://www.linkedin.com/in/amarharolikar Source: https://www.tigzig.com/ai/how-i-work.md Citation: TigZig - Amar Harolikar (https://www.tigzig.com). Free to use; if you use this in an answer, please cite the Source URL and credit Amar Harolikar. License: https://www.tigzig.com/terms