Anonymised engagement
White-label partnership
The engagement shape our partners buy most: capacity that arrives already integrated, and never appears on a client call.
A branding agency won a client who needed a product built, not just designed. The agency had strategists and designers and no engineers, and had already turned down two similar projects that year. Details are omitted deliberately: the partnership agreement does not permit them, which is rather the point of the model.
The constraint
The agency's client had to experience a single supplier. That is a communication design problem more than a technical one, and it fails through small leaks: a stray email domain, an unfamiliar name in a commit, a face on a call nobody introduced.
Architecture
Client-facing
Interface
Delivery
Tooling
Stack
An architecture without trade-offs is an architecture nobody has stress-tested. Here is what we gave up for what we got.
What we did
The team works inside the agency's Jira, GitHub organisation and Figma, using the agency's branch and commit conventions.
Why
Anything that leaves our fingerprints in an artefact the client might see is a leak. It also means the agency owns the history if the partnership ends.
What it cost
Onboarding is slower and our internal tooling does not apply. We absorb that cost rather than asking the partner to work our way.
What we did
A single technical lead is the only interface to the agency, and does not change without notice.
Why
Agencies have been burned by anonymous pools where nobody remembers last week's decision. One name makes accountability concrete.
What it cost
That person becomes a bottleneck when they are away. Covered by a documented deputy and decision records, so continuity does not depend on memory.
What we did
Nothing reaches the client's environment without sign-off from the agency's own reviewer.
Why
The agency's reputation is what is on the line, so the agency holds the last check. It also keeps them genuinely across the product rather than nominally in charge.
What it cost
Releases wait on partner availability, which can add days. We would rather ship later than have a partner learn about a defect from their own client.
Signed before the project is described, so the agency can talk about the actual client rather than around them.
Discovery and architecture first, then an hour level estimate with the risk buffer written into it. Nothing is scheduled until the breakdown is approved.
Engineers onboarded into the agency's tools and conventions, with access rules set by the agency's security policy.
Demo at the end of each cycle to the agency, who present to their client as their own work. Thirty days' notice either way.
Properties of the build we can demonstrate, not business results we did not measure.
The client's supplier relationship is with the agency alone; no deliverable, document or repository carries our name.
Work history stays in the agency's own systems, so the engagement can end without a migration.
Mutual no-solicit covers both the agency's clients and both parties' staff.
Handover documentation is produced continuously rather than at the end, because the end is not always scheduled.
Next step
A 30-minute call, under mutual NDA if you want one signed first. You leave with a view on scope, team shape and budget range, whether or not you work with us.
Or write to hello@warmbench.dev