Why Quote Agent ships before any other agent at Kerf.
Six agents are on the Kerf roadmap. Quote Agent is the only one that ever ships first to a new customer. We have shipped it first to every deployment for the last 14 months, and every time we have tried to start with a different agent, we have regretted it. Here is why.
The deployment math
A Kerf deployment is a four-week ramp: two weeks of read-only observation, one week of calibration, one week of supervised live operation before sign-off thresholds relax. The first two weeks are where we learn your shop’s operating model. The third week is where we configure that model into agent rules. The fourth week is where the customer’s team builds trust by watching the agent do what they would have done.
Every single week of that ramp is funded by the value the customer is already getting. If you cannot point at a number that moves in week four, the program is dead in week six.
Quote Agent moves a number nobody can argue with
RFQ-to-quote turnaround is one of the few operational metrics that everyone in a manufacturing business cares about and everyone can read on a single dashboard. Sales cares because slow quotes lose deals. Estimating cares because they are buried. Operations cares because faster quotes mean better-loaded schedules. Finance cares because the quote is the start of the cash cycle.
Cut RFQ-to-quote from five days to four hours and the room agrees the program is working. That agreement buys the runway to deploy the next agent. There is no other agent in our portfolio that produces this much organizational alignment this fast. Schedule Agent moves OTD, but OTD is a quarter-long signal. Quality Agent cuts NCR cycle time, but most QE teams will not let an agent near an NCR until they have seen a different agent operate cleanly for a quarter.
What we got wrong on Build #2
Our second customer was a defense subprime that wanted to start with Schedule Agent because their planner was on the verge of quitting. We agreed because the pain was acute and the request was emotionally compelling. The deployment took eight weeks instead of four — partly because MES integration is harder than ERP integration, partly because OTD does not move in four weeks. By week six the customer was anxious; by week eight we were defending a program that was working but invisible.
The second deployment shipped Quote Agent third, after Schedule and Supply. By the time it landed, the executive sponsor had already told the board that Kerf was a worthwhile bet — but the board had asked twice in the meantime. We never want a customer’s board to ask twice.
The build order today
Quote Agent first, always. Supply Agent within 60 days because it shares the same data envelope. Schedule + Quality + Change in months 4–9 in a sequence we negotiate with the customer based on which pain is more chronic. Insight Agent last, because its value depends on having three months of agent activity to analyze.
If you are evaluating Kerf and your CEO wants to start with a different agent, we will tell you why this order works. If you have already tried our competitors and they let you start anywhere, ask them how the first deployment went.
— Marcus Chen, CEO