--- title: "AI / ML mentor — Sell the architecture review, run group mentorship with two live sessions a week · ApplyForm use case" description: "“Can I pick your brain about our RAG pipeline?” How a ai / ml mentor runs it on ApplyForm: Architecture or ML-system review (€200) → Async repo / notebook review (€79 · 3 days) → Group mentorship, two live sessions a week (€99 / mo) → One paper or incident, broken down (€12 / mo) → LLM evaluation…" url: https://applyform.app/use-cases/ai-ml-mentor --- Use case · Career & Tech · ML engineers, applied-AI leads and data scientists who mentor # “Can I pick your brain?” _The RAG review is €200._ A founder you met once wants thirty minutes on their retrieval pipeline. A junior wants you to “glance at” a notebook. Both are real work: you read the code, you draw the diagram, you tell them what breaks at ten times the load. This is the setup that prices it: a sixty-minute review with intake and a written verdict, an async repo review with a three-day deadline, and a mentorship group that runs on two live sessions a week instead of a Discord role. [Set this up with the agent](https://applyform.app/#hero-chat) See the whole stack Free to start. You keep 80%. Unanswered reviews refund themselves at the deadline. _applyform.app/c/tomas-ml/book/architecture-review · 60 min · €200_ Stack and scale LangChain + pgvector · 40k documents · ~2k queries a day · GPT-4.1 mini for generation What is the problem? Answers degrade on multi-hop questions. Our eval is “does it look right”. Cost per query has tripled since we added reranking. **Wed 23 · 19:00–20:00** Europe/Berlin · Google Meet · free reschedule until 24 h before Book and pay · €200 Rung one · Paid session ## The review they book instead of _“picking your brain”._ One session type with two intake questions: the stack at its scale, and the problem in their words. That is enough to read the repo before the call rather than during it. Your evening windows, a fifteen-minute hold while they pay, a Meet link in both calendars. Price it where independents already are: premium AI mentorship runs $250 to $1,000 a month, and a single 60-minute review at €200 is the entry to that. [How bookings work](https://applyform.app/products/bookings) What you send back ## The deliverable is _the written verdict._ Five parts of the system, a score each, one sentence of evidence, and the one change to make first. Written within the hour after the call, sent from the booking. It is what they paste into the team channel, what justifies the €200 to whoever approves it, and what makes a refund dispute almost impossible: the work is on the page. _Review · RAG pipeline · Tomas → Nadia · 23 Sep_ Retrieval **2/5** Chunks are 1,000 tokens with no overlap; multi-hop fails because the second hop is never retrieved. Try 300-token chunks with parent lookup before touching the model. Evaluation **1/5** No golden set. Build 60 question–answer pairs from support tickets this week; score faithfulness and recall separately. Generation **4/5** Model choice is right. The system prompt is 1,400 tokens; half of it is dead instructions. Serving and cost **3/5** The reranker runs on every query. Gate it on retrieval score and you recover most of the 3× cost. Observability **2/5** You log the answer, not the retrieved chunks. You cannot debug what you did not store. **First change: the golden set, then chunking** Everything else is guesswork until you can measure it. Eval checklist attached. Sent The whole stack ## Five products, switched on _in this order._ Sessions first, because that is what the “brain-picking” already is. Then the async form for the quick looks, the group priced like the mentorship it is, and the letter that keeps a fast-moving audience reading. 1. 1 Day one · Bookings ### Architecture or ML-system review _€200 · 60 min_ Intake: stack and scale, the problem. Written verdict within the hour after the call. A 30-minute follow-up as the second session type for teams that come back. 2. 2 Day one · Forms & Requests ### Async repo / notebook review _€79 · 3 days_ Repo or notebook link, one question, target of the work (production, portfolio, interview). Written reply within three days or an automatic refund. Cap it at five a week; code review is the heaviest delivery in the cluster. 3. 3 Week two · Community ### Group mentorship, two live sessions a week _€99 / month_ Architecture review on Tuesday, project or CV teardown on Thursday, an office-hours channel with a one-day reply norm. Yearly plan on; cap at 40 with a waitlist. 4. 4 Week four · Newsletter ### One paper or incident, broken down _€12 / month_ What broke, why, the fix, the pattern. The code and the eval harness sit behind the paid tier. The agent drafts from your notes; you edit. 5. 5 Week six · Leads & CRM ### LLM evaluation checklist _free_ A one-field download in your bio. Contacts are tagged by stack and role target; you email the segment when the next group cohort opens. _Tomas · weekly · Thursday 08:00_ #### #19 — The agent that deleted a customer's calendar (and the eval that would have caught it) The incident A scheduling agent with write access to Google Calendar was asked to “clear my afternoon”. It cleared the customer's afternoon. Every afternoon, for a year. Why it broke Not the model. The tool schema allowed a date range with no upper bound, and the eval set had zero destructive-action cases. The fix, with codepaid Bounded tool arguments, a confirmation step gated on the count of affected events, and the 40-line harness that replays the incident as a regression test. The patternpaid Every write tool needs a dry-run mode and a blast-radius check. Here is the checklist we use before any agent gets a write scope. This week AI-engineering listings are up 60% year on year. Next group cohort opens 12 October, cap 40. Two review slots left this month. Rung four · Newsletter ## What the weekly issue _actually contains._ One paper or one production incident. What broke, why it broke, the fix and the pattern behind it. The incident and the diagnosis are free, which is what gets it forwarded in team channels; the code and the checklist are the paid part, which is what gets it renewed. Once a month, a short market note and the slots you have left. AI is the leakiest newsletter category: paid readers churn around thirteen percent a month because the content dates fast. Incidents and patterns date slower than tool reviews, and a yearly plan is the other half of the answer. Rung three · Community ## Group mentorship, not a _Discord perk._ Group mentorship at $99 a month with two live sessions a week is a proven format in this niche, and 1:1 mentorship at $120–450 a month is the alternative buyers compare it with. Run the group as a fixed twice-weekly rhythm with a cap and a waitlist, and it is the mentorship tier that popular mentors hit “no spots left” trying to deliver one to one. ApplyForm grants and revokes the Discord role or Telegram access as people pay and cancel; you run the two sessions. - Tuesday **Live architecture review, 60 min** One member's system on screen, scored against the five parts above. Recorded; the recording goes in the archive. - Thursday **Live project or CV teardown** A repo, a notebook or a CV, taken apart in front of the room. Members volunteer a week ahead. - Always on **Office-hours channel** Production LLM problems, answered within a day. Anything that needs the repo open becomes a €79 form. - Monthly **Hiring-manager or founder session** Someone who ships or hires in the field. The reason people stay after their own system is fixed. Why these prices ## Numbers from the _market._ **$250–1,000** what independent AI mentorship costs per month $250 for one call plus async, $400 for two calls with incident priority, $1,000 for four calls with the whole team. A €200 review is the first step onto that ladder. **$120–450** monthly 1:1 mentorship on the largest marketplace Most plans sit at $150–300; the platform adds 20% on top, and popular ML mentors show “no spots left”. A capped group of forty at €99 is a different business. **$99 / mo** group mentorship with two live sessions a week The proven group format in AI: architecture reviews, CV teardowns, a weekly job digest, $899 a year. The €99 community above is the same shape with your name on it. **13.3%** monthly churn of paid AI newsletters The leakiest category despite the interest, because the content dates. Incidents and patterns hold better than tool roundups; sell the yearly plan. **+60%** AI-engineering job listings, year on year Demand for the mentor is year-round, unlike the spring-heavy general tech market. The CV teardown on Thursday fills itself. **6,700+** data and ML mentors on one marketplace The supply exists and most of it earns around $500 a month there. Keeping 80% of a €200 review and a €99 group changes the arithmetic. Market figures from published industry and platform data, September 2026, rounded. Your prices, volume and retention will differ. Common worries ## “Code review _eats my evenings._” It does, which is why the async form is capped at five a week and the form closes itself when the cap is hit. Scope the intake hard: one repo or notebook, one question, and what the work is for. Most reviews take forty to sixty minutes when the question is specific. The session is where the open-ended conversation belongs, and it has a price that reflects that. **“What about their employer's code?”** Ask for a sanitised repo or a minimal reproduction, never production credentials or customer data, and say so in the form description. You review what they choose to share; the submission stays theirs, and you take no obligation beyond the written reply. Delete the attachment when the review is sent. **“Everything I write is stale in three months.”** Incidents and patterns are not. Write about what broke and why, keep tool-specific content in the office-hours channel, and sell the yearly plan so a bad month does not become a cancellation. **“Am I allowed to do this alongside my job?”** Most employers permit paid mentoring outside work hours; check your contract and keep the calendar to evenings. Use public problems and your own material, never your employer's internal systems, and say so on the page. ## Make “pick your brain” _a €200 review._ Tell the agent your LinkedIn, X or GitHub handle. It reads what you publish, proposes the review, the repo form and the group with prices from the market, and sets them up when you create the account. [Set this up with the agent](https://applyform.app/#hero-chat) [Create an account](https://applyform.app/signup?template=mentorship) More in Career & Tech: [Tech interview mentor](https://applyform.app/use-cases/tech-interview-mentor) [Career coach or recruiter](https://applyform.app/use-cases/career-coach) [Design or product lead](https://applyform.app/use-cases/design-lead) [Sales & negotiation coach](https://applyform.app/use-cases/sales-coach) [LinkedIn ghostwriter](https://applyform.app/use-cases/linkedin-ghostwriter) [All use cases](https://applyform.app/use-cases)