Direct answers to the questions we are asked most: what working with SGS looks like, what it costs, and how we build and verify AI agents. Don't see yours? Call (808) 824-5960 or use the contact form.
Yes. Fixed-price packages, software planning, and technology-leadership engagements stand on their own. You do not need a managed-service subscription, and you are not expected to buy one afterwards. The Workflow Starter ($1,200) and Software Delivery Blueprint ($5,250) are one-time, fixed-scope engagements; larger work is scoped at a fixed price or billed at $225/hour.
A fractional CTO gives you senior technology leadership for part of the week instead of a full-time executive. In practice that means working with the owner, staff and developers to agree what a system needs to do, settling conflicts between their requirements, writing those decisions down so a developer can build from them, reviewing vendor and developer plans, and staying accountable for whether the result works. It suits firms with real software or systems decisions to make but no in-house technology leader.
SeraphimGate Systems was founded in 2018 and has been based in Kihei, Maui, Hawaii since 2026. Phone: (808) 824-5960. The firm is locally owned and operated, not a mainland MSP with a Hawaii satellite office, and serves technology-leadership and project clients nationwide from there.
Use the contact form at seraphimgate.com/contact.html or call (808) 824-5960. Graham Fischer-Corners reads every inquiry and leads the first conversation himself. It is free and focuses on the problem you want solved, the people involved, and whether SGS is the right fit. SGS replies within one business day.
SeraphimGate Systems turns business needs into software that works. We provide fractional CTO leadership: we work with owners, staff and developers to resolve competing requirements, document what needs to be built, and guide implementation through to a result the business can use. Engagements range from fixed-price packages to ongoing technology leadership, alongside managed IT, security and infrastructure for Maui businesses. We also build AI agents and automation, and publish research on how agent systems should be limited and verified. Founded in 2018; based in Kihei since 2026.
A chatbot answers questions. An agent does work: it reads your files, calls your systems, drafts the document, runs the report, opens the ticket, and keeps going until the job is done or it hits a limit. That difference is the whole point and the whole risk. An agent that can act on your business needs a defined scope, a record of what it did, and a review step before its output is treated as finished. Most of what SGS builds is that surrounding structure — the agent itself is the easy part.
It starts with a conversation about the work, not the technology: what takes too long, where your team gets stuck, which systems hold the information. From that we scope one bounded first project with a clear definition of done, often as a fixed-price package. We then build it, review it with independent AI reviewers and a human engineer before it is called complete, run it alongside your existing process, and hand it over with documentation someone other than SGS can maintain. Larger work is scoped as a fixed project or billed at $225/hour; no managed-service subscription is required.
By design, not by hoping the model behaves. Each agent gets a narrow role with only the tools that role needs. Credentials are never placed in the agent's context — it asks a broker to use a secret on its behalf and sees only the result. Anything consequential — spending money, changing a live system, sending a message outside the business — requires a human to authorize it. Every action is written to an audit record before the agent is told it succeeded. We treat a model's own good behavior as a bonus, never as the control.
The same way you would verify a contractor: someone who did not do the work checks it. In our own practice, code written with one AI model is reviewed by a different model from a different vendor, and a reviewer's job is to find what is wrong, not to confirm what is right. A separate check walks the original requirements to make sure nothing was quietly dropped. A human engineer makes the final call, and a requirements record outlives the session so nothing agreed to gets lost. Agreement between models is not proof — they can share the same blind spot — so testing against the real system is always part of the close.
We work with Anthropic Claude, OpenAI models, and local inference running on hardware we own, and we choose per task rather than per vendor. For client work we start by asking what data the agent genuinely needs and where it is allowed to go. Business-tier and API accounts that exclude your data from model training are the baseline; where confidentiality demands it, the model runs locally and nothing leaves your environment. The tradeoff is honest: an agent gets more useful the more context it has, and that cuts against privacy. We put that choice in front of you rather than making it silently.
Negative Alignment is the essay that sets out our position on AI safety. The short version: making a model refuse things is not the same as making it safe. Refusal-based filters stop honest users and are routed around by sophisticated ones, while giving everyone a false sense of assurance. The constructive alternative is verification — checking what a system actually did — and building that into how agents are deployed. It is published on this site under the SGS name, and the way we build agent systems is that argument put into practice.
Yes, and that is usually where the value is. We build integrations for Microsoft 365, SQL databases, line-of-business applications, and legacy systems that nobody wants to replace, including MCP (Model Context Protocol) servers that give an agent a controlled, read-mostly view of a system. We also tell you where the risk is: an integration that lets an agent read everything is an aggregation risk even if it can write nothing, so scope, rate limits, and logging are part of the build, not an afterthought.
Usually, yes. The common pattern is a tool bought for everyone and used by no one, because it was never attached to a specific job with a specific owner. We start from the task, not the tool: one workflow, one measurable improvement, one person who wants it to work. We also say plainly when AI is the wrong answer for a given problem — some of our best recommendations have been a cron job or a cleaner spreadsheet.
Yes. Agent development, AI strategy, and automation engagements are delivered remotely for clients across the mainland United States, and we already service mainland clients that way. On-site work is reserved for Maui.
SeraphimGate Systems LLC provides managed IT, cybersecurity, custom infrastructure, and automation to businesses across Maui. Founded in 2018 by Graham Fischer-Corners and based in Kihei since 2026, SGS provides senior-level engineering for professional firms (legal, financial, medical, architecture) that depend on technology to operate.
Managed IT is published in three tiers: Foundation at $1,000/month for small businesses, Growth at $2,000/month for growing technology-reliant teams (most common), and Architecture at $3,500+/month for highly technology-dependent organizations. Project and advisory work does not require a subscription: fixed-price packages start at $1,200, and other advisory, AI, and project work is billed at $225/hour or scoped at a fixed price. Emergency disaster-recovery support for Maui residents is offered at a reduced $55/hour with no contract required.
Break-fix support means waiting until something breaks, then paying hourly to fix it. Managed IT means an ongoing partnership where systems are monitored, patched, hardened, and improved continuously to prevent failures before they happen. For day-to-day IT support, SeraphimGate Systems works as a managed partner rather than a break-fix shop, because reactive support is more expensive and less reliable for businesses that depend on their systems. That applies to IT support only: fixed-price projects and technology leadership are available on their own, with no managed-service subscription.
SeraphimGate Systems serves all of Maui from its Kihei office: Kihei, Wailuku, Kahului, Lahaina, Upcountry (Makawao, Pukalani, Kula), Hana, and surrounding communities. Remote support is delivered island-wide; on-site work is available across the island.
Yes. SeraphimGate Systems offers a discounted Maui Strong emergency rate of $55/hour for residents and businesses affected by fire, flood, ransomware, or other disasters. Service includes in-person and remote support, data recovery, network rebuild, and equipment setup. No service contract is required to access the emergency rate.
SGS specializes in professional firms — legal, financial, medical, and architecture practices — and other established organizations where technology is operationally critical. The firm does not provide consumer or residential help desk service. Typical clients have 5 to 75 staff and need a long-term technical partner rather than ad-hoc repair.
Yes. Microsoft 365 oversight is included in every managed tier — tenant configuration, identity, MFA, conditional access, Exchange Online, SharePoint, Teams, Intune device management, and license optimization. SGS holds deep operational expertise in the Microsoft ecosystem from 20+ years of enterprise IT work, and it is the platform most of our client-facing agent integrations are built on.
Yes. Every managed IT engagement includes security as a core practice: MFA enforcement, endpoint hardening, network segmentation, backup verification, patch management, and incident response readiness. Advanced security hardening and compliance alignment are available in the Growth and Architecture tiers. SGS also provides cyber incident response for ransomware and breach events.
Yes. Custom workstation and server builds are a SeraphimGate Systems specialty. The firm designs and assembles PCs locally on Maui for demanding workloads — engineering, design, financial modeling, local AI inference, virtualization labs — and builds custom server and storage infrastructure including Proxmox hypervisor clusters and TrueNAS storage systems. Hardware is tested in the SGS production rack before being recommended to clients.
Call (808) 824-5960 or send a note. Graham leads the first conversation and replies within one business day.
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