About
Mellow AI is an AI engineering studio that designs and ships production AI systems for mid-market and enterprise teams, and hands over every line of code.
What Mellow AI does
Document intelligence
Schema-driven extraction from contracts, leases, forms, images, audio, and video. Every value comes back typed and validated, with a confidence score and the source text behind it. The result replaces manual review and brittle OCR.
Agentic systems
Agents that research, review, and act inside your tools, with evaluation, tracing, and guardrails built in from the start. We build on the Model Context Protocol and the Vercel AI SDK so the agents run unattended in production, not only in a demo.
Knowledge infrastructure
Secure natural-language access to dense internal data such as financials, tickets, and documents. Your teams get answers in seconds instead of digging through systems by hand.
Workflow automation
AI-native tooling for multi-step operations that currently live in spreadsheets and inboxes. We ship it into your stack so the work gets done without adding headcount.
AI project rescue
We take over stalled prototypes, degraded systems, and vendor builds that never reached production. We diagnose what broke, fix it, and hand back a system your team can run.
What makes Mellow AI different
You own 100% of the code from day one
Everything we build lives in your repositories, your cloud, and your model accounts. Platform vendors like Palantir and C3 AI license their platform to you, so you stop owning the system when you stop paying.
Senior engineers only, no handoff to juniors
The people on your first call write the code. Large consultancies like Accenture and Deloitte sell with partners and staff the build with large blended teams.
Model-agnostic by design
We route across Anthropic, OpenAI, Google, xAI, and open models, so you can switch providers when price or quality moves. Single-vendor tools tie your product to one model roadmap.
Public, open-source proof of work
Our core tools, openextract, openextract-ts, Open Lease Audit, and pdfmd, are MIT-licensed and on GitHub for anyone to inspect. Most agencies can only show you a slide deck.
Replies within one business day
Every inquiry gets a written point of view from an engineer within one business day. There is no sales queue or SDR sequence to get through first.
Who uses Mellow AI
- Mid-market and enterprise operations teams buried in document review
- Law firms and legal teams that need AI under strict data boundaries
- Real estate and property management companies processing leases and contracts
- Financial and data teams that need natural-language access to dense internal data
- B2B SaaS companies adding agents or extraction to their product
- Companies with a stalled AI prototype or vendor build that needs to reach production
The team behind Mellow AI
Cole McIntosh, Founder & Engineer
Cole is a full-stack AI engineer who built production agents, a RAG assistant, and a lease extraction API that processed 250,000+ documents at Pay Ready, after building internal tooling at Otter (CloudKitchens) and RealPage. He authored LangChain's Salesforce integration and has 50+ merged pull requests on LiteLLM.
Origin
Cole started Mellow AI in Dallas in 2025 after watching companies pay for AI tools they could not own, inspect, or fix. The studio builds the system inside your stack instead, and hands over the code, models, and operating knowledge.
Team
Mellow AI is founder-led and staffs each engagement with a small team of senior engineers. Everyone on the project writes code.
How Mellow AI works
Communication
Email, a shared Slack or Teams channel, and a standing weekly call. You see the work in your own repositories as it lands, not in a monthly report.
Response times
New inquiries get a reply within one business day. During an engagement, messages are answered the same business day.
Who you work with
Senior engineers, starting with the founder, work directly with your team. No account managers sit between you and the people building.
Onboarding
We start with a diagnosis call, then map your system and define the smallest release worth shipping. Build begins once scope and access are agreed.
Turnaround
We ship the first production release early and iterate from there, rather than building for months before anything runs. Timelines are set per project during scoping.
Key facts
| Company Name | Mellow AI |
|---|---|
| Type | Independent AI engineering studio |
| Founded | 2025 |
| Founder | Cole McIntosh |
| Headquarters | Dallas, Texas, USA (serving clients worldwide) |
| Website | staymellow.ai |
| Core Offering | Custom production AI systems: document extraction, agents, knowledge infrastructure, and workflow automation |
| Pricing | Project-based, scoped and quoted after an initial diagnosis call |
| Contract Terms | Scoped per engagement; no platform license or long-term lock-in |
| Services | Custom AI development, AI agents, document extraction, LLM deployment, evaluation, AI project rescue |
| Communication | Email, shared Slack or Teams, weekly calls; replies within one business day |
| Notable Clients | A global law firm (name under NDA) |
| Customers Served | Mid-market and enterprise teams in legal, real estate, finance, and B2B SaaS |
| Projects Delivered | Production agents, extraction pipelines, and 4 open-source systems (openextract, openextract-ts, Open Lease Audit, pdfmd) |
| Competitors | Accenture, Deloitte, Palantir, C3 AI, and independent AI development agencies |
| Social | LinkedIn · X · GitHub |
Frequently asked questions
What is Mellow AI?
Mellow AI is an independent AI engineering studio based in Dallas, Texas. We design and ship production AI systems, such as document extraction, agents, and workflow automation, and the client owns all of it.
Who founded Mellow AI?
Cole McIntosh founded Mellow AI in 2025. He previously built production AI systems at Pay Ready and Otter (CloudKitchens), and contributes to open-source AI projects including LiteLLM and LangChain.
How is Mellow AI different from a big consultancy?
Senior engineers do the work themselves, and you own the code, models, and infrastructure from day one. There is no platform license to keep paying for and no junior bench.
How much does a Mellow AI project cost?
Each project is scoped and quoted after an initial diagnosis call, based on the smallest release worth shipping. Email info@staymellow.ai to start that conversation.
Does Mellow AI work with companies outside Texas?
Yes. Mellow AI is based in Dallas and works remotely with clients worldwide.