What disconnected AI context costs your team.
When teams usually call us.
After one of these happens. For some teams it is a surprise. Others have handled it before for themselves and now need it for the whole company.
Something went wrong.
One of these happened, and now someone is asking why.
Your third, fourth or fifth agent starts disagreeing with the others.
Each one was set up with its own copy of the instructions and documents. The copies drifted, and nobody can say which one is current.
Where it shows up: Rework, and upkeep of each agent's own copy
Two agents, or two people, send the company contradictory answers.
Each agent answered from its own copy of the context, and the copies disagreed. People acted on both answers before anyone noticed.
Where it shows up: Rework from conflicting answers
You switch models, or run out of credits, and the context stays behind.
Everything the old tool had collected lives in that vendor's projects or memory. The new one starts cold, and someone re-explains the business from scratch.
Where it shows up: Time re-explaining context
You've set this up before, for yourself.
It worked for you or your team. Now you're asked to do it for the whole company.
You're asked to take a setup that works for you, or your team, to every department.
You built it once in a personal wiki, a project folder or a few prompt files. It worked because you curated it by hand. Now ten teams need it, with owners, permissions and a history of changes.
Where it shows up: Upkeep of each agent's own copy
An auditor or a customer asks: what did the AI read when it said that?
You know someone will ask. To answer it you need a record of every read and every approved version, starting now.
Where it shows up: Risk (not priced)
Your numbers.
We filled in illustrative assumptions you can change. Change any number and the totals update. Every assumption is listed further down, with its source where there is one.
Today's cost, savings and ContextNest
200 users × $10 a month, billed annually.
What you pay today
Each line shows its math.
- Time lost re-finding or re-explaining context200 people × 20 min a week × 46 weeks × $47/hr$144,133
- Rework from conflicting or stale answers200 people × 1 a quarter × 4 × 1 hr × $47/hr$37,600
- Keeping each agent's own copy of context up to date19 extra agents × 3 hr a month × 12 × $96/hr$65,664
- Extra context tokens$10,000 a month × 12 × 25% context × two thirdsAbout a third of the input tokens of keyword search (BM25): preprint, not peer reviewed, small corpus, arXiv:2607.02116.$20,000
- Risk exposureIf an auditor, a regulator or a customer asks what the AI read before it answered, can you show them? Not included in the total.Not priced
- Total per year$267,397
Three years
No value is counted for the first 3 months. Setup is paid in year one.
| Year | Value counted | ContextNest and setup | Net |
|---|---|---|---|
| Year 1 | $100,274 | $31,500 | $68,774 |
| Year 2 | $133,699 | $24,000 | $109,699 |
| Year 3 | $133,699 | $24,000 | $109,699 |
| Three-year net | $288,171 |
What changes with ContextNest.
One approved source for every agent
- Today
- Each agent and tool keeps its own copy of the instructions and documents.
- With ContextNest
- Every agent reads the same approved context. Update it once and they all pick it up, so you get the same answer every time.
Every read logged
- Today
- Nobody can say what the AI was working from when it answered.
- With ContextNest
- Every read is recorded: which person or API key, which document, which version and when.
Changes wait for an owner
- Today
- Anyone can change what an agent knows, and old versions keep answering.
- With ContextNest
- Edits go to a named owner for approval. Retired documents stop being eligible.
No infrastructure to run
- Today
- A retrieval stack means hosting, pipelines and an engineer to keep it running.
- With ContextNest
- Hosted runs on our cloud. To self-host, Community is a single Docker container: SQLite by default, Postgres optional.
Every number we assumed.
These defaults are illustrative. Here is why we picked each one and where it came from. Change any of them here or above.
- People using AI
A mid-market default. Count everyone who uses an AI tool at work. Each is priced as a $10 user, which overstates our cost if some are subscribers ($5) or viewers (free).
Your number. Enter yours.
- Agents and AI tools in use
Agents, custom GPTs, assistant projects, coding-tool rule files: anything that keeps its own copy of company context. A mid-market default.
Your number. Enter yours.
- Monthly AI spend
Seats plus API usage. A mid-market default. Only the metered context share below changes the case.
Your number. Enter yours.
- Loaded cost of a person, per hour
Average employer cost per hour worked for all US private industry workers, June 2026: $46.89. People who use AI at work usually cost more, so this runs low.
- Minutes a week each person spends re-finding context or re-explaining it to an AI tool
About four minutes a working day: pasting the same background into a new chat, or hunting for the current version of a document.
Illustrative. Change it.
- Conflicting or stale answers that cause rework, per person per quarter
One a quarter: an answer from last year's policy, or two tools saying different things, caught and redone.
Illustrative. Change it.
- Hours to catch and redo each one
Finding the right source, correcting the work and telling whoever acted on it.
Illustrative. Change it.
- Hours a month keeping each extra agent's own copy of context current
Updating prompts, instruction files and uploaded documents in each tool separately. The first agent is not counted. Priced at $96 an hour, the BLS-based engineer cost used on our cost comparison. The hours are our assumption.
- Share of AI spend that is metered context tokens
Flat-rate seats don't save anything here, so only metered API input counts. ContextNest sent about a third of the input tokens of keyword search (BM25) in our preprint (arXiv:2607.02116, small corpus, not peer reviewed), so two thirds of this share is counted. The share itself is our assumption.
- Share of the cost we count as saved
We count half of each line above as saved, in case our estimates are high.
Illustrative. Change it.
- One-time setup
The published price of our Company distillation, five business days. Set it to zero if your team sets up the nest itself.
Source: Pricing, Expert setup
- Months before value starts
We count no value while the nest is set up and teams switch over, but the subscription is paid from month one.
Illustrative. Change it.
Our cost uses the published per-user price on the pricing page, billed annually, with every person counted as a full user. Enterprise is quoted, so for large organizations the published price is a reference, not a quote.
Payback counts the setup and the subscription paid during rollout, then divides by the monthly value counted, less the subscription. This is a model built on assumptions, not a measured result. Your numbers will differ. For what each retrieval stack costs to run, see the cost comparison.
Check the numbers against your own.
Bring your team size and AI spend. A short call checks the assumptions and shows ContextNest running on documents like yours.