THE OBSERVABILITY & CONTROL LAYER FOR AI CODING

Meet Nico Your AI coding copilot's copilot.

Session recording, analytics, guardrails, and prompt governance for agentic coding workflows. Built in Zurich. Already in production.

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100% session visibility

0 cold starts with memory

Real-time secret detection

THE PROBLEM

AI coding tools are powerful.
But they're flying blind.

72% of organizations adopted AI coding tools. Nearly half lack metrics to evaluate their success. Speed at the individual level doesn't translate to organizational velocity. Here's what keeps coming up.

[ 1 ]

Can't Prove ROI

"We're spending $100K–$2M/year on AI tools and can't answer the board: is this investment paying off?" CTOs get asked this question and literally can't answer. A majority of leaders expect velocity gains, yet almost none actually measure impact.

1.1 No cost tracking per session, project, or developer

1.2 Token spend invisible — cache hits unmeasured

1.3 Can't correlate AI usage with shipped outcomes

1.4 Board asks "is it paying off?" — no data to answer

[ 2 ]

Traditional Metrics Are Broken

Lines of code, commit counts, PR volume — all become misleading when AI generates code. Teams that ship 21% more tasks also see 91% longer PR review times. Speed at the individual level doesn't translate to organizational velocity.

2.1 Lines of code meaningless when AI generates them

2.2 PR volume up but review quality down

2.3 Commit counts don't reflect actual progress

2.4 Need session-level metrics, not repo-level vanity stats

[ 3 ]

Visibility Gap, Not Tool Gap

Leaders can't answer fundamental questions: Which tools deliver measurable value? Where are teams encountering friction? Developers use Copilot, ChatGPT, Claude, and Cursor in the same hour. Only 15% naturally adopt without structured enablement.

3.1 No structured record of what the agent actually did

3.2 Tool calls vanish after the session ends

3.3 Impossible to debug failures post-session

3.4 Multi-tool usage creates blind spots everywhere

[ 4 ]

Security & Governance Lagging

AI-assisted teams ship 10× more security findings while PR volume actually falls. 40% higher credential exposure in enterprise AI tools. Boards are now saying: "No governance, no deal."

4.1 Secrets exposed in tool calls and prompts

4.2 No permission layer between model and codebase

4.3 Audit logs missing for compliance requirements

4.4 Prompt governance nonexistent across teams

[ 5 ]

Cold Start, Every Single Time

Each new session starts from scratch. The agent doesn't know what you built yesterday, what failed, or what branch you're on. Context-setting wastes tokens and time. Failure patterns aren't carried forward. It's like onboarding a new developer every morning.

5.1 No memory of previous sessions or decisions

5.2 Repeated context-setting wastes tokens and time

5.3 Branch and git context lost between sessions

5.4 Failure patterns not carried forward

NICO'S CAPABILITY SUITE

Introducing the
Nico engine.

[ 1 ]

CORE

Session Recording

session s_7f3a started — mode: build

tool file_edit src/auth.ts +42 -8

tool git_commit "fix: token refresh"

cost $0.12 · 4.2k tokens · cache hit 67%

session s_7f3a ended — duration: 8m 32s

Captures every prompt, tool call, file edit, git commit, and conversation transcript. Sessions are classified by mode — orient, plan, build, debug, ship — and exportable as markdown or JSON.

1.1 Full tool call recording with parameters and results

1.2 Automatic session mode classification

1.3 Conversation transcript reconstruction

1.4 Git commit and branch tracking per session

1.5 Export to markdown, JSON, or dashboard

[ 2 ]

Analytics & Dashboards

Developer velocity metrics, friction analysis, and API cost tracking. Know your commits per session, time-to-first-commit, tool failure rates, and spend per day.

2.1 Velocity: commits/session, branch cycle time

2.2 Friction: tool failures, edit-test cycles

2.3 Cost: tokens, cache hits, cost per session

2.4 10-page static dashboard with live data

[ 3 ]

Inter-Session Memory

Nico queries past sessions for recent commits, file history, and branch context — so the agent never starts cold. Context is injected automatically based on configurable strategies.

3.1 Cross-session context from same directory

3.2 Failure memory carried forward

3.3 Temporal decay and pinning

3.4 Configurable seeding strategies

[ 4 ]

Security & Guardrails

Secret detection in tool calls, pledge/unveil-style permission enforcement, and full audit logging. Every violation is recorded and surfaced.

4.1 Real-time secret scanning (regex patterns)

4.2 Pledge/unveil permission enforcement

4.3 Audit trail for every violation

4.4 Configurable security profiles

[ 5 ]

Prompt Governance

Deterministic rewrite rules that transform prompts before they reach the model. Template system with conditions, audit trails, and full traceability.

5.1 Rule-based prompt rewriting pipeline

5.2 Template CRUD with conditions

5.3 Context seeding with budget control

5.4 Full audit trail from prompt to output

[ 6 ]

Plugin & CLI

Ships as a lightweight plugin with hooks and slash commands. Conversational CLI with session resume, model selection, and built-in commands.

6.1 Hook-based integration into coding workflows

6.2 Slash commands: /status, /sessions, /memory

6.3 Interactive and one-shot CLI modes

6.4 Session resume with --resume flag

ARCHITECTURE

Built for speed,
privacy, and control.

Nico deploys into your cloud infrastructure — your VPC, your tenant. Data never leaves your environment and is never used for model training. Hooks into every AI coding session through a lightweight plugin model.

Bun Runtime

Native speed with Bun's built-in HTTP server and embedded database. No Node.js overhead.

Tenant Isolation

Runs in your VPC with dedicated storage. Data never leaves your environment or gets shared across tenants.

Plugin Model

Hooks and shell scripts integrate directly into AI coding tool workflows.

Static Dashboard

10-page HTML dashboard. No framework, no build step. Just open and go.

WHO IT'S FOR

Different roles,
same blind spots.

CTO / VP Engineering

"Is our AI investment paying off?"

Get cost-per-session, tokens-per-commit, and velocity metrics that connect AI tool spend to shipped outcomes. Answer the board with data, not anecdotes.

ROI tracking Cost analytics Velocity metrics

Engineering Manager

"Where is my team hitting friction?"

See tool failure rates, edit-test cycles, and session modes across your team. Identify which workflows produce results and which waste tokens.

Friction metrics Session analysis Team patterns

Security / Compliance

"What is the AI agent actually doing?"

Full audit trail of every tool call, file edit, and prompt. Secret detection, permission enforcement, and violation logging — all within your environment, all auditable.

Audit trails Secret detection Permission control

Developer

"Why does every session start from scratch?"

Inter-session memory means the agent knows your recent commits, branch context, and past failures. No more re-explaining your codebase every morning.

Session memory Context seeding CLI tools

WHY NICO

The observability layer
you actually own.

Every competitor is a SaaS platform that requires sending your data to a third party. Nico is fundamentally different.

Your Cloud, Your Control

Nico deploys into your infrastructure — your VPC, your tenant, your rules. Data never leaves your environment, is never used for model training, and is never shared with third parties. Enterprise-grade isolation by architecture, not by policy.

Session-Level Depth

SaaS dashboards show repo-level stats. Nico records every tool call, every prompt, every file edit within each session. Micro to macro visibility.

Memory That Compounds

Cross-session context means the agent gets smarter over time. Failure patterns, branch history, and temporal context are injected automatically.

Deterministic Governance

Not just monitoring — active control. Prompt rewriting, permission enforcement, and secret detection happen before the model sees your data.

Nico

SaaS Platforms

Data residency

Your cloud, your tenant — fully isolated

Shared multi-tenant infrastructure

Data usage

Never used for training, never shared

Varies — check vendor DPA carefully

Session recording

Every tool call, prompt, and file edit

Repo-level aggregates only

Inter-session memory

Built-in with configurable strategies

Not available

Prompt governance

Rewrite rules, templates, audit trail

Not available

Secret detection

Real-time, in-session scanning

Post-hoc scanning

Deployment

Your VPC — single command deploy

SSO + API keys + vendor onboarding

Access control

Your IAM, your network, your rules

Vendor-managed access policies

BUILT IN ZURICH

Swiss precision for
AI development workflows.

TechFire AI is a Zurich-based startup building the missing control layer for agentic coding. Nico already has customers in production. We're exploring next steps — including partnerships and acqui-hire opportunities with the right team.

Get the control layer
your AI coding tools are missing.

Request a Demo Contact Nicolás