Marliin Residency · Tiburon, California

In development for 2027 · Cohort I waitlist open

An operating model, not a tool stack.

Every company knows they need to work differently in the age of AI. Few have an operating model that lets them. Marliin Residency is where you install one.

Join the Cohort I waitlist →

The premise

an operating model, not training

Most teams know they need to work differently with AI. The tools exist. The reasoning models are capable. What's missing is the operating model that holds it all together. The way people and agents coordinate decisions, surface information, and hold each other accountable across real work.

Workshops give you a day of exposure. Sprints give you a burst of output. Neither installs an operating model that holds after the consultants leave.

Marliin Residency is where that operating system gets installed. Two weeks of embedded work, in a small cohort, building the agent layer that fits your domain. You leave with the system running, documented by its own use, and a team that has already practiced inside it.

The shape of the work.

Two weeks of real work, alongside your team. Not training. Not simulation. The operating model installed while the work gets done.

Team working alongside Marliin practitioners

i.

We do the work alongside you

Your team continues shipping product, running operations, and serving customers for the full two weeks. We embed inside that work. No case studies, no exercises, no parallel sandbox. The methodology installs in the live system because the live system is the only place it can install.

Mapping how the team actually works

ii.

We discover how the team actually works

Org charts describe how decisions are supposed to flow. The actual flow looks different. We map it. The map becomes the input to everything that follows. Workflow Cartography is the first practice.

Team practicing the new operating model

iii.

We adapt the work to the new model, then practice it

Roles get reframed. Outcomes get redefined. Agents take over the coordination tax. Your team starts directing the system instead of doing the system's work. The second half of the residency is your team practicing the new model under our observation. One week would only get you to adapted. Two weeks gives you enough practice that the model survives the trip home.

iv.

You leave with the model running

Agents we built during the residency continue running in your environment. The team has lived inside the operating model long enough that it is muscle memory, not theory. Marliin maintains the agent layer after handoff. The model holds because it is software, not memory.

Who attends

the full stack of the work

The Residency only works if the right people are in the room. That means the people doing the work, the people deciding what work to do, and the people approving or accountable for the outcomes. Operationally that is roughly C-suite to individual contributor, three to six people per company, mixed disciplines, all from the same operating unit.

Before the Residency begins, we work with your leadership to identify the right team. Not the largest team, not the team that can be spared. The team whose work would meaningfully change under a new operating model, and whose decision authority is sufficient to let that change persist.

If the right people cannot attend together, the install does not work. This is the single hardest constraint of the Residency, and it is non-negotiable.

Two weeks, four movements.

fourteen days, four phases of work, one operating model installed

1 7 14 Orient DAYS 1–2 Frame the real problem. Set the operating principles. Pair DAYS 3–7 Daily paired work. Decisions externalized into the agent layer. Compose DAYS 8–11 Your team directs the agents under observation. Carry DAYS 12–14 Hand-off. The system migrates to your environment.

Orient

Days 1–2

Frame the real problem. Set the operating principles.

Pair

Days 3–7

Daily paired work. Decisions externalized into the agent layer.

Compose

Days 8–11

Your team directs the agents under observation.

Carry

Days 12–14

Hand-off. The system migrates to your environment.

Four practices.

The methodology runs on four named practices. They appear in every movement of the residency. They are the vocabulary your team learns to speak in.

I.

Workflow Cartography

Mapping how your team actually works, not how the org chart says it does.

Every team has two operating models. The documented one and the real one. We map the real one. The map becomes the design surface for everything that follows.

II.

Context Engineering

Encoding your domain knowledge into the agent layer that travels home.

Prompt engineering is what you do when context has not been engineered. We do the engineering. Your team works inside a system where the context is already there. This is the methodology's central technical claim.

III.

Role Reframing

Rewriting what each person does in the new operating model.

AI does not replace people. It changes what they are responsible for. The new responsibilities are not obvious from the outside. We work with the team to redefine each role against the work that now actually needs doing.

IV.

Outcome Redefinition

Defining what your team can now pursue, given what AI changes.

Most teams are still operating against goals shaped by their previous capacity. The new capacity makes different outcomes available. We work with leadership to redefine what counts as a meaningful result.

What goes home is the methodology.

Before the Residency, The Sounding.

A one to three day engagement that applies the methodology to one focused problem. Calibration for both sides on whether the Residency is right.

Most teams do not know whether the Residency is the right move until they have felt the methodology applied to their own work. The Sounding is how we both find out.

One to three days, on-site or in Tiburon, focused on a single narrow problem your team is currently working on. We do the work alongside you. You see the methodology in action against your specific context. We see whether the fit is real.

The Sounding is applied, not educational. Small scope, real outcome. If the Residency is the right next step, we both know it after this. If it is not, the work itself has still moved forward.

Duration One to three days
Location On-site or Tiburon
Team size Three to six people
Outcome Applied methodology, real artifact

The Sounding is not a watered-down Residency. It is the methodology applied to one small problem so we can both see if the full install is right.

Inquire about The Sounding →

From Brett

Twenty years ago I worked at a company that hired Pivotal Labs to teach us how to build software. We went to their San Francisco office every day, paired with their staff, and learned the operating model by doing the work in it. The team I came home with was the most generative unit I have ever been part of. I have spent the rest of my career trying to recreate that experience inside other companies and never quite managed it.

Pivotal worked because they paid the cost of getting humans aligned, relentlessly, every day. That cost is what capped the model. Most companies regressed within a year of going home because no organization can sustain that level of enforcement on its own. The thing that changes everything is that the enforcement layer can now travel home as software. This is the bet I am making with Marliin Residency.

Pivotal Labs proved that small teams of high-judgment people ship dramatically better. The cap on that model was the cost of getting humans aligned. The cap just came off.

Brett Marlin · Founder, Marliin

Status

In development for 2027.

Marliin Residency is being designed now. The program structure, the location, the cohort size, the practitioner-to-team ratio. Every detail is being built with the same methodology we will teach.

Cohort I is structured for three to four non-competing companies, each sending a small full-stack team. Limited cohort size, selected for fit.

We are accepting expressions of interest for Cohort I. If your team is serious about building an AI operating model, not just buying tools, we want to hear from you.

Cohort I · Waitlist

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