Comparison 12 // Client Onboarding for Boutique Ghostwriters.
grai Agency ($149 once) compresses the calibration into one sitting: 5 to 20 client posts in, a measured Voice DNA profile out, and an A4 Client Voice DNA Dossier signed with a SHA-256 hash the client can verify. A retainer agency charges $3,000 per month for the same artifact wrapped in a team.
| Option | Best For | Starting Price | Key Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
grai (Agency $149) |
A solo ghostwriter or a small studio that needs fast onboarding and a client-facing proof artifact. | $149 once (25 client profiles) | Local workbench, measured Voice DNA per client, A4 SHA-256 Dossier, deterministic gate. The writing stays with you. |
| Ghostwriting agency | Companies that want strategy, a team and reporting on retainer. | About $3,000/month (market rate) | A team owns the channel and the calendar. The voice calibration is usually a document, not a measured profile you can verify. |
Voice calibration is the expensive part of ghostwriting. A client sends old posts, takes a call, answers a questionnaire, and waits. Two weeks pass before the first draft, and the client has no artifact to hold while they wait.
The agency version is not faster. It is a junior writer plus an editor plus a project manager, and the $3,000 monthly retainer pays for that layer. The calibration document lives in a shared drive and nobody outside the team can verify it.
grai replaces the document with a measurement. The client pastes 5 to 20 posts, the profiler extracts cadence, and the first gated draft proves the profile works. That is the demonstration a client can see in the first meeting.
The Agency flow has four steps. Open a client profile, paste their last 5 to 20 posts, run the profiler, and print the A4 Client Voice DNA Dossier. The dossier carries the measured profile, the 6-rule result, the CV value, and a SHA-256 hash over the payload.
The hash matters. Anyone can edit a Google Doc after the fact. A dossier whose SHA-256 no longer matches its content is visibly altered, which turns a soft promise into a checkable claim.
Then the real work starts: you write in the client's voice, run each draft through the gate, and ship the ones that pass. grai does not write for you, and the dossier does not replace your judgement. It removes the two weeks of guessing.
An agency retainer at $3,000 per month is $36,000 per year. A boutique ghostwriter with the Agency Edition pays $149 once, keeps the client relationship, and prices the writing instead of the coordination layer.
The comparison is not a like-for-like swap. An agency sells strategy, distribution and reporting alongside the writing. If the client needs a team to own the channel, the retainer is the right product.
But a large share of founder clients need one thing: posts that sound like them, delivered on time. For that job, $149 once against $36,000 per year is not a close call, and the dossier is the artifact the client keeps.
| Criterion | grai Agency ($149 once) | Ghostwriting agency (about $3,000 per month) |
|---|---|---|
| Price model | $149 once, no renewal | About $3,000 per month, so $36,000 per year |
| Onboarding | One sitting: 5 to 20 posts, a profiled voice, a first gated draft | Calls, questionnaires and a calibration document over one to two weeks |
| Proof artifact | A4 Client Voice DNA Dossier with a SHA-256 hash the client can verify | A shared document, usually not hashed |
| Who writes | The ghostwriter, with every draft gated locally | A junior writer, an editor and a project manager |
| Client profiles | 25 isolated profiles in one local workbench | One per account, stored in the agency workspace |
| Where client text lives | On the ghostwriter's machine, no upload | In the agency cloud workspace |
| Setup | Month 1 | 12-Month Total | 24-Month Total | What Is Included |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Full agency retainer | $3,000 | $36,000 | $72,000 | Writing, strategy and distribution from a team |
| Mid-size boutique retainer | $1,500 | $18,000 | $36,000 | Writing and scheduling with a smaller team |
grai Agency Edition (one-time) |
$149 | $149 | $149 | 25 client profiles, A4 SHA-256 Dossiers, local gate |
grai Founder Edition (solo, one-time) |
$69 | $69 | $69 | One personal voice profile and the full gate |
grai.html): Ships with a Content Security Policy (default-src 'none'; style-src 'unsafe-inline'; font-src data:; img-src data:; script-src 'unsafe-inline'; connect-src 'none'; object-src 'none'; base-uri 'none') that allows inline styles and inline scripts (plus data: fonts and images) while blocking direct API connections (connect-src 'none') from the page. Out of the box, it runs in Copy-Paste mode.localStorage when available. If your browser settings or private-browsing mode block localStorage on local file:// pages, grai falls back to in-memory session storage (memStorage), which lasts until the tab closes. Export a .grai backup file to save your profiles permanently to disk.Choose an agency retainer (about $3,000/month) if: the client needs strategy, distribution and a team that owns the channel, with reporting attached. The writing is one line item in a larger service.
Choose grai Agency ($149 once) if: you already write well and the bottleneck is calibration and proof. One sitting to a measured profile, and a dossier that survives scrutiny.
Run both models if: you keep a retainer for strategy and use grai to onboard the writing layer in a single meeting, which takes ten minutes. The dossier becomes the artifact the client shows internally.
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