Forward-Deployed Engineering
Forward-deployed engineering is a model where engineers work directly alongside a client, embedded in their environment, building custom solutions against real problems rather than shipping generic product from a distance. Palantir popularized the term, but the approach is older than the label—it is how defense contractors, management consultancies, and bespoke software shops have always operated when the problem is too specific for off-the-shelf tools. Alephic practices forward-deployed engineering because the gap between what AI can do in a demo and what it needs to do in a specific company's workflow is where most AI projects die. That gap does not close with better documentation or more features in a SaaS dashboard. It closes when an engineer who understands the model also understands the business context, the data, and the humans who will use the system.
Related terms:
AI Governance
AI governance comprises the policies, processes, and technical controls that organizations use to manage the risks of AI deployment, from deciding appropriate use cases and evaluating models to ensuring accountability, data privacy, bias mitigation, and regulatory compliance under frameworks like the EU AI Act. Without clear governance, “shadow AI” can proliferate as employees use unmonitored AI tools with no oversight or audit trails.
AI for Marketing
AI for marketing leverages language models, predictive analytics, and automation to accelerate traditional workflows like content creation, audience segmentation, campaign optimization, personalization, and attribution modeling. While vendor hype promises autonomous campaigns and predictive omnipotence, in practice most teams in 2025 rely on AI primarily for first-draft content generation and use it to speed up familiar tasks rather than replace strategic marketing judgment.
Model Context Protocol (MCP)
Model Context Protocol (MCP) is an open standard from Anthropic that standardizes how AI models connect to external tools and data sources via a client-server interface, eliminating custom integration code. It handles tool discovery, authentication, and structured I/O so developers build each connector once for use by any MCP-compatible model.