Engagements

On commissioned work

Public disclosures are the default. Every candidate that clears our quality gate ships as a paired narrative note and public-record technical artifact (a defensive disclosure under 35 U.S.C. §102 or an open dataset under CC-BY-4.0), with a Zenodo DOI for third-party timestamp. Buyers pay Coracle to change the timing or the specificity of that output. The four shapes below describe how, and the terms below apply across all of them.

What a memo looks like

Research Note 01 and its companion technical disclosure are the public analog of a commissioned memo. They show the form the work takes at the level of detail we publish.

Research Note 01: Chromium poisoning and the 4.9-year Bloom stack

Shapes

Engagements run in four shapes, ordered by priority.

Pre-sold candidate: A candidate that surfaces during an existing commissioned relationship is routed to that buyer first, before evaluation for public drop. Applies only to teams already under engagement with Coracle.
Commissioned first-look: A buyer pays Coracle to investigate a specific pain-point on the buyer's own product line. The candidate ships as a private technical disclosure under mutual NDA for an agreed term, and the public drop follows on expiry. Good for buyers who want an implementation head-start on a problem of direct competitive consequence.
Embargo: A candidate already drafted and queued for public drop. The buyer pays to delay the public drop by an agreed term, and receives the disclosure under NDA during the window. The publication calendar slips by the embargo. Good for buyers who want exclusivity without the infrastructure cost of patent protection.
Calibration memo: A candidate already public. The buyer pays for implementation-specific engineering on top: thermal-expansion matching to a specific LSCF or analogous formulation, tape-cast or deposition line calibration, QA integration, IP carve-out analysis against named patent families. Scope is implementation and services; no new public technology beyond what the underlying drop contains.

Terms

The terms below apply across all four shapes.

Scope: One mechanism, one fix architecture, one device or product line per engagement. Bundled scopes are available when several mechanisms share a physical layer.
Deliverable: A 20 to 40 page technical memorandum. Mechanism derivation, composition or geometry windows, integration constraints, predicted magnitude, validation protocol, and a reading list. Written for an R&D engineering audience.
Timeline: Three to six weeks from engagement letter to delivery, depending on scope. Faster on bundled rework of an existing public drop. Embargo shapes run the length of the embargo.
Rate band: Engagements run $25,000 to $500,000. Calibration memos cluster toward the lower end of the band; commissioned first-looks and multi-mechanism bundled scopes toward the upper. Pricing reflects severity and the scarcity of the underlying derivation, scaled by the value of the lifetime or efficiency gain to your business.
IP: You own any patents and process documentation you derive from the engagement. Coracle does not file patents on candidate output. On shapes that begin private (pre-sold, first-look, embargo), Coracle retains the right to publish the candidate on expiry of the agreed term.
Confidentiality: Mutual NDA, signed before any specifics are exchanged. We do not work for direct competitors on the same mechanism inside a twelve-month window.