Failure PatternDecision layer
The Not Quite My Tempo Retainer Trap: Billing Clients for Reviews Nobody Reads
Symptom: Client engineering leads report pull request comment threads filling with Fletcher severity flags that their developers mute or resolve without reading. Root cause: The .fletcher.json file is set once during onboarding and never revisited, so severity threshold, intensity, tone, and ignore globs drift away from what the client's team actually tolerates.
By InnovaAI ResearchPublished
How do you recognize it?
- •Client engineering leads report pull request comment threads filling with Fletcher severity flags that their developers mute or resolve without reading
- •Agency invoices show review credits consumed on Fletcher's keys while the client's own Gemini API key sits unused in the repo secrets
- •The same critical severity flag reappears across successive pull requests because nobody tuned the .fletcher.json threshold after the first week
- •Delivery managers discover the client expected white-label review output and objects to Fletcher branding in every PR comment
- •Review volume spikes after a client migration and the per-workspace usage line on the agency's bill outpaces the retainer line item
Why does it happen?
- •The .fletcher.json file is set once during onboarding and never revisited, so severity threshold, intensity, tone, and ignore globs drift away from what the client's team actually tolerates
- •Agencies default to Fletcher's own review credits (200 a month on Fletcher Pro) instead of configuring the client's Gemini API key, which quietly moves usage cost onto the agency's margin
- •Not Quite My Tempo reviews only the GitHub pull request surface and cannot be white-labeled, so agencies sell a branded deliverable the tool structurally cannot produce
- •Pricing scales per workspace, and agencies that scope retainers on a flat monthly fee absorb the variance when a client adds repositories or review volume grows
How do you fix it?
- •Open the client repository's .fletcher.json and rewrite severity threshold, intensity, tone, and ignore globs against the last 30 days of PR comments, then push a test pull request to confirm the new output
- •Switch the workspace to the client's own Gemini API key so reviews on their key never consume Fletcher credits, and document the key rotation owner in the handoff notes
- •Add an AGENTS.md or CLAUDE.md file to the repository so Fletcher reads project guidelines and dependency manifests, cutting the noise from context-free comments
- •Renegotiate the retainer line to price per workspace and per review volume, or cap the number of repositories covered so usage variance stops landing on the agency
More on Not Quite My Tempo
- StrategyWhy Not Quite My Tempo Is a Retainer Add-On, Not a Standalone Agency Product
- ConceptNot Quite My Tempo Retainer Fit Matrix
- Evaluation RuleNot Quite My Tempo Rule: Bill It Only Where the Client Owns the Gemini Key
- Decision FrameworkNot Quite My Tempo: Buy vs Skip (Agency PR Review Add-On)
- Implementation BlueprintNot Quite My Tempo PR Review Retainer Setup (5-7 days)
- Operating ProcedureNot Quite My Tempo Client Repo Onboarding (.fletcher.json Setup) (Onboarding)
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