For agentic projects, partner selection should start with one workflow and its failure modes, not a multi-agent architecture diagram. Ask how they gate releases with evals, how tools are permissioned, and whether the client owns the code, prompts, and cloud accounts. A strong first engagement is a single agentic workflow with human approval on high-cost actions, then expand. Teams that insist on a full agent platform in month one are usually selling complexity. Ascendra Ventures delivers agentic and RAG systems as fixed-price atomic problems with that production bar.