Shimira ITAI development services
AI development that ships to production, not just to a demo.
Most AI projects die in the gap between an impressive demo and a system your team actually uses. The demo takes two weeks. The production system, with reliable outputs, guardrails, evaluation, and integration into your real workflows, is engineering.
That's the part we do. We build AI-powered software that survives contact with real users, real documents, and real edge cases, measured against an accuracy baseline before launch, not judged by how good it looks in a meeting.
What you get
What we build
Document intelligence & automation
Extraction, classification, and analysis of contracts, invoices, reports, and forms, the pattern behind our contract-analysis work for legal teams.
LLM-powered applications
Chat interfaces, copilots, and assistants built on your data and business logic, with the prompt engineering and output validation that separate a product from a toy.
RAG systems
AI that answers from your own knowledge base, internal docs, policies, product catalogs, with citations, instead of hallucinating.
AI workflow agents
Multi-step automations where AI handles the judgment calls inside a deterministic pipeline, triaging, drafting, routing, with human review exactly where it belongs.
AI inside existing products
Search that understands intent, smart recommendations, auto-summarization, and content generation, added to the platform you already run.
- Anthropic Claude
- OpenAI
- Gemini
- PostgreSQL + pgvector
- Node.js
- Next.js
Our AI stack
We're pragmatic about models and rigorous about engineering.
- Models. OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, and Google Gemini APIs, plus open-weight models (Llama, Mistral) where data residency or cost demands it. We benchmark against your task, not the leaderboard.
- Retrieval & data. PostgreSQL with pgvector, purpose-built vector stores where scale requires, and embedding pipelines tuned to your documents.
- Application layer. Node.js, TypeScript, React, and Next.js, the same production stack behind all our web application work, so your AI feature lives inside solid software, not a fragile notebook.
- Evaluation & guardrails. Automated eval suites, output validation, PII handling, and cost/latency monitoring. If you can't measure whether the AI is right, you don't have a product.
What we'll talk you out of: training a custom model from scratch. In 2026, fine-tuning and retrieval on top of frontier models covers the overwhelming majority of business use cases at a fraction of the cost. If your problem genuinely needs custom model training, we'll say so, and explain what that actually costs before you commit.
Proof
We've shipped this.
AI-personalized children's books, story generation inside strict guardrails, wired into a fully automated production line running today.
How it runs
De-risk first, then build.
AI projects carry a specific risk that normal software doesn't: sometimes the accuracy your use case needs isn't achievable at acceptable cost. Our process surfaces that in weeks, not months.
- 01
AI feasibility assessment
1–2 weeksWe define the task precisely, test it against your real data with rapid prototypes, and give you an honest read: achievable accuracy, expected running costs, and whether the ROI holds. If it doesn't, you've spent a small assessment fee instead of a six-figure build.
- 02
Pilot build
3–6 weeksA working system on a bounded slice of the problem, with an evaluation harness measuring accuracy against a test set you approve. Real numbers, not vibes.
- 03
Production build
varies by scopeFull integration with your systems, guardrails, monitoring, fallback behavior, and user-facing polish, delivered in two-week sprints with demos.
- 04
Tuning & handover
ongoingAI systems improve after launch as real usage exposes edge cases. We include a stabilization period in every build and offer ongoing tuning retainers.
Timelines & pricing
Honest ranges, not a lump sum.
| Engagement | Timeline | Typical investment |
|---|---|---|
| AI feasibility assessment | 1–2 weeks | $3K – $8K |
| AI feature in an existing product | 4–8 weeks | $15K – $45K |
| RAG / document automation system | 2–4 months | $30K – $90K |
| AI-first product (MVP to production) | 3–6 months | $50K – $150K+ |
Two budgeting realities worth knowing upfront: AI capabilities typically add 15–30% to a comparable non-AI build (data preparation, evaluation, and guardrails are real work), and there's an ongoing inference cost, model API usage that scales with your volume, which we estimate during the feasibility phase so there are no surprises. Our custom software development cost guide covers how AI affects budgets in more detail. Senior AI engineering from India costs a fraction of US rates ($40–75/hour vs. $110–200+) for equivalent output, and unlike general development, AI work is genuinely senior-skill-dependent, so the seniority-per-dollar arithmetic matters more here than anywhere else.
How you work with us
Three ways to engage.
Fixed price
MVPs from $7,500
Full products $18,000–$55,000+
You know what you need built. We scope it, quote one price, and deliver against it, no meter running.
- One agreed price, agreed before we start
- Milestone-based payments tied to what you can see
- Change requests priced openly, never assumed
Time & materials
from $28 / hour
Blended ~$32; senior specialists to ~$45
For work that changes as you learn. You pay for the hours spent, see exactly where they go, and can steer week to week.
- Billed on real, logged hours, reviewed with you
- Reprioritise or change direction any sprint
- Start small, scale the team as it proves out
Dedicated team
from $2,800 / month
Per developer, full-time, see the rate card
Developers who work only on your product, full-time, as an extension of your team, the offshore model most of our long-term clients settle into.
- The same people, month after month
- Your tools, your standups, your roadmap
- Roughly half the loaded cost of a local hire
Full rate card and what's included on the pricing page. Or see how AI affects your budget.
Why Shimira IT
What you're actually buying.
Production engineers, not prompt hobbyists
Our team's core strength is scalable backend systems and performance optimization, precisely the skills that make AI reliable at scale.
Evaluation-first culture
Every AI system we ship has a measurable accuracy baseline before launch. You'll know how good it is, in numbers.
Honest feasibility calls
We've told clients "don't build this", an assessment that costs thousands and saves hundreds of thousands.
Full ownership
Your prompts, your data pipelines, your code, your IP.
Questions
Before you get in touch.
An AI feasibility assessment runs $3,000–$8,000. AI features added to an existing product run $15,000–$45,000. Standalone systems like document automation or RAG platforms run $30,000–$90,000. AI-first products range $50,000–$150,000+. Expect AI to add 15–30% versus a comparable non-AI build, plus ongoing model API costs that scale with usage, see our custom software development cost guide for how AI affects budgets in more detail.
It depends on the task, and anyone who answers before testing is guessing. We benchmark candidate models against your actual data during a feasibility assessment, accuracy, latency, and cost per request, and recommend based on the numbers, not the leaderboard.
We build with enterprise API tiers where providers don't train on your data, and use open-weight models deployed in your own infrastructure when data can't leave your environment. Data handling is specified in writing before any build.
Usually not for training, modern approaches (RAG, prompt engineering, fine-tuning) need far less data than people expect. What you do need is a modest evaluation set of real examples so we can measure accuracy, which we help you build during feasibility.
The only honest answer is measured, not promised. A feasibility assessment tests against your real data and gives you achievable accuracy numbers before you commit to a build.
Yes, if you need engineers embedded in your own team rather than a scoped, fixed-price build, see our dedicated AI developers page instead.
Not sure what you need yet? That's the usual starting point.
Tell us the problem in your own words. We'll scope it with you and put the plan in writing, free, and yours to keep either way.