Your accounts, your keys, your data: the question to ask first

Dependency on a provider is never discovered at the start. It is discovered the day you want to change, and realise that the mechanism running part of your company lives in an account you cannot access.

So the question belongs before the signature, item by item. Here is the list we suggest having filled in, including by us.

The eight lines to tick

• The automated chains. In whose account do they live, and can you export them?
• The code. In a repository you own, with administrator access on your side.
• The instructions given to the models. They contain your know how. They must be versioned and readable.
• The agents and their configuration. Scope, authorised tools, safety rules.
• The knowledge bases. Your documents, their splitting, their index. They are rebuilt from your material: they belong to you.
• The accounts of the services used. AI models, email sending, payment, hosting. In the company's name, paid by the company.
• The documentation. Clear enough for a third party to take over without calling you.
• The data. Yours, exportable in an open format, at any time and without negotiation.

The case of model access

This is the most telling point, and the easiest to check. Two business models coexist. In the first, the provider runs the AI on their own account and resells you the consumption: you do not see the real price, you can neither cap nor switch off, and you cannot leave without rebuilding everything. In the second, the AI runs on your account, with your access and your invoice.

We chose the second. Our price covers piloting, not resold consumption: calls leave from your access, you see what it costs, you set a cap, and you keep your hand on the switch. We write it on the AI Orchestrator page because it is a commitment, not a technical preference.

If you cannot switch it off yourself, it is not your automation.

What a contract must say

Three clauses are worth more than any speech: ownership of the deliverables passing to your company once paid, a reversibility obligation describing what you receive at the end, and a ban on reusing your data elsewhere. Add the personal data question to that: who is the controller, who is the processor, where the data is hosted, and on what legal basis it is processed.

The one sentence test

Ask this question, and listen for any silence: "if we end the contract in a year, what exactly do we receive, within what time, and what stops working?" A precise answer is worth every sales argument. An uncomfortable answer is itself the answer.