Production-grade software, built at AI speed.
We use AI coding tools to build faster and smarter — and help engineering teams do the same. Whether you're building AI-powered products, trying to move quicker with AI-assisted development, or need someone to make the AI you already have actually work, that's what we do.
The problem we solve
Most teams can ship a prototype. Far fewer can make it reliable, cost-effective, and defensible under real conditions. The gap between those two things is where projects stall — and where Six Protons operates.
The prototype works because one person held it together. It can't take real load, has no tests, no observability, and breaks in ways nobody can diagnose.
We harden prototypes into production systems — adding the test coverage, monitoring, and architectural changes that turn a demo into something you can operate.
The previous consulting firm delivered a working demo and a maintenance nightmare. The code is fragile, the architecture is wrong, and nobody on your team understands it.
We do honest technical audits, untangle what's salvageable, and rebuild what isn't — without the resume-driven architecture choices that got you here.
The AI feature works in the demo. In production it hallucinates, drifts, costs ten times what you projected, and pages your on-call when the edge cases hit.
We build the eval harnesses, observability, cost controls, and agentic scaffolding that turn "it worked in staging" into something you can actually operate.
Services
Production engineering for AI features
Infrastructure, observability, evals, and cost control for LLM-powered systems. We move teams from "it works in a notebook" to something that holds up under real load, passes real evals, and doesn't bleed money.
AI agents & workflow automation
Designing, building, and hardening agentic systems for real business workflows. Includes tool design, eval harnesses, and the operational scaffolding — retry logic, fallbacks, audit trails — that makes agents safe to deploy.
Project recovery & productionization
Inherited a system that doesn't work the way it was promised — from a previous vendor, a departed team, or a prototype that outgrew its weekend origins. We assess what you have, identify what's salvageable, and get it to production-grade. Honest about what's worth saving and what isn't.
Approach
Advisory
Fractional engagement, typically a few days a month. Roadmap reviews, architectural guidance, a second opinion on hard calls. For teams that have engineers but want senior judgment on AI direction without a full-time hire.
Project
Fixed-scope, fixed-timeline delivery. Ship a specific capability — an eval harness, an agent, a production-ready RAG system, a cost-optimization pass — over four to twelve weeks. Clear deliverables, clear end date.
Embedded
A deeper engagement working alongside your team for a quarter or two. Best when you're building something significant and want senior engineering capacity that compounds your team's knowledge rather than replacing it.
Every engagement starts with a no-cost discovery call.
About Six Protons
Principal
Wayne Meissner
Wayne has spent 15+ years in systems engineering and distributed systems — building software at SiteMinder, Cognizant, and the Australian Department of Agriculture across infrastructure, reliability, and production operations. Applied AI work is a recent extension of that foundation, not a pivot away from it.
The through-line is the same regardless of the engagement: knowing what production-grade actually means and building toward it. Whether that's an LLM system that needs evals and cost control, an agent that needs hardening, or a codebase inherited from a vendor that delivered less than it promised — the work is the same kind of engineering.
Six Protons is currently a one-person practice. Engagements are taken selectively.
Let's talk about what you're building.
Thirty minutes. No slides. Bring the hardest problem you're stuck on. If we're not the right fit, I'll say so and point you somewhere better.