(x + 1)
Governance
IT policy, data-handling guidelines, acceptable use, access and retention standards — written down, agreed, and enforceable.
Rational Root · Toronto · Est. 2017
Most IT depreciates.
Yours should compound.
We run three disciplines as one system: the governance that sets your rules, the managed services that hold your environment steady, and the agentic operations that put your own judgment to work. Separately, each is a line. Multiplied, they are a curve.
(x + 1)
Governance
The rules your business runs on.
(2x − 1)
Managed Services
The environment, held steady.
(x − 2)
Agentic Operations
Your judgment, put to work.
y = (x + 1)(2x − 1)(x − 2) — three factors, one curve
The compounding thesis
Three factors. One curve.
Our mark is not decoration. It is the cubic with rational roots −1, ½ and 2 — the product of three linear factors. It is also, precisely, how the practice works.
(2x − 1)
Managed Services
Microsoft 365, Entra ID, Intune, endpoint security, hosting and the helpdesk. The floor everything else stands on.
(x − 2)
Agentic Operations
Context capture, harnesses, bounded pilots and a running operating model that carries more of the work each month.
Any one of these, bought alone, is a cost line. Bought together, each one raises the return on the other two. That is what the curve is.
Why the combination
Each pair does something neither can do alone.
Governance×Managed Services
A posture you can prove
Policy without enforcement is paperwork. Enforcement without policy is guesswork. Together they produce a security position you can put in front of an auditor, an insurer, or a client's procurement team.
Managed Services×Agentic Operations
Automation on a stable floor
Agentic systems inherit the reliability of what they run on. Identity, device posture and data structure decide whether an agent is useful or dangerous. We already run that layer, so the automation is built on ground we control.
Governance×Agentic Operations
AI you can defend
The question that stops most AI programs is not technical. It is 'where did the data go, and who approved it.' Governance answers that up front, which is why our agentic work survives contact with legal and compliance.
How we work
Start with an hour. Climb only as far as the value warrants.
We don't sell software, and we don't sell hours. We stand up and run your agentic operating system — the context, the playbooks, and the judgment that let your business carry more of its own work.
Capture
See the value in an hour.
Context Capture — Personal Setup
We put the plumbing in place so you can start building your context — the foundation everything agentic compounds on. Yours alone, secure, piped into the AI you already use.
$500
$950
USD · approx. one hour
Build
One project, proven.
A Bounded Pilot
We automate one well-defined playbook end to end — an offering-memorandum engine, an underwriting workflow, a reporting cycle — and deliver a finished result. Fixed scope, fixed price.
$10,000
USD · fixed · from
Operate
Run it as a living system.
Agentic Operating Model + Retainer
We map your business, stand up the full operating model, and keep it sharp and producing month over month — absorbing the churn as the technology changes so you never run a stale tool.
$5,000
USD / month · from
2017Serving Toronto organizations since
3Disciplines run as one system
1 hrSmallest way to start
30 dNotice to conclude. No lock-in.
Trust is the cornerstone of a successful relationship, and this is especially true in the periodically-opaque realm of IT consulting.Rational Root engagement proposal
We plan, price and explain IT without surprises. Every recommendation carries its reasoning, every invoice carries its detail, and waived time stays visible on the invoice rather than quietly disappearing.
Explainers
The things we end up explaining anyway.
Written for directors and owners who are being asked to make decisions about AI without having been given the vocabulary to make them. No hype, no jargon tax. Each of these started as something we wrote for a specific client conversation.
Governance
Why governance comes first
The question that stops most AI programs is not technical. It is whether anyone can say where the data went and who approved it.
FundamentalsWhat is a harness?
Why the same underlying intelligence behaves completely differently in different products — and why that difference, not the model, is what your governance actually cares about.
Context captureYour judgment is the asset
Your best thinking happens where you cannot write it down. The whole loop that fixes this stands up in about an hour.
Start here
One hour. Five hundred dollars. A foundation that keeps paying.
The Context Capture hour puts the plumbing in place so your judgment starts accumulating somewhere it can be drawn on — yours alone, secure, piped into the AI you already use. It is the smallest possible commitment that still produces something durable.