Technology, from idea to production.
Hlido is a technology consulting and implementation practice based in Prague. We work with businesses on strategy, advisory, design, development, delivery and post-production support: standalone technology projects, and AI where it earns its place. We work in English across the EU, and with Indian and other international organisations entering the Czech and EU markets.
Ankit Kapur
Founder, based in Prague.
Hlido isn't a faceless agency. I lead the client work, stand behind what we publish, and answer your email. Every engagement is scoped and quoted in writing before work starts, and you always know who is accountable for it.
One named person, one accountable standard. Reach me →
What Hlido does
One practice, from the first idea to a system running in production, with two specialist lines beside it.
The practice consulting, implementation and support
- Technology & strategy consultingStandalone technology projects and the strategy behind them: what to build, buy or leave alone, and how to run it.
- AdvisoryAI adoption, EU AI Act readiness, procurement evidence, vendor due diligence and governance.
- Implementation & deliveryFrom ideation through design, development and delivery into your real workflows, accepted against an agreed list before go-live.
- Post-production supportMonitoring, fixes, improvements and hands-on help after launch. All services →
Specialist lines under the same engagement
- CybersecurityRegulatory compliance, security risk and gap assessment, VAPT, AI security and governance, threat intelligence, endpoint protection, and cloud and network security with SOC/NOC support. Delivered with our channel partner.
- Independent AI review deskAI agents and tools tested by hand against what their makers promise, with the evidence published. Free to read, for people and for AI agents.
How we work
Ideation & strategy. A short call on the problem, then a written assessment: what to build, buy or leave alone, and what it costs to run.
Design & development. Architecture, build and integration with the systems you already run. Milestones in writing.
Delivery. Acceptance against an agreed list of what the system must do, your team trained, a hand-over you can maintain.
Post-production support. Monitoring, fixes and improvements on a cadence you choose, and a person to call.
Our partners and memberships
IrisInfosec s.r.o. is a Prague-based cybersecurity solutions company, initially focused on Central Europe. Security work in a Hlido engagement is delivered by their specialists, while you keep one engagement and one point of contact. Security services →
AutomationEdge builds an agentic automation platform for IT, HR and finance operations. AI transformation and IT operations automation in a Hlido engagement are delivered on their platform, with Hlido as your point of contact. Automation services →
Memberships
The Council of EU Chambers of Commerce in India (EU India Chambers, Mumbai). Hlido is a member of the apex chamber for business between the European Union and India, and a Prague-based point of contact for its members entering the Czech Republic and the EU. euindiachambers.com ↗
The independent AI review desk
Alongside client work, Hlido keeps a public record of AI agents and tools tested by hand against their own claims. It is the evidence our AI advice rests on, and it only has value if it stays independent. The rule: no company we rate pays for its score, the practice is paid only by the organisation we work for, and advisory work never changes a published verdict. The rest of this page is how that independence is kept.
Our independence pledge
These aren't aspirations. They're the rules the whole platform is built to enforce, in code, not just in copy.
- We never take payment to rank or review.No sponsored placements, no pay-to-list, no "featured" tiers. A vendor cannot buy a better score, a faster review, or removal of a bad one. Reviewing an agent is always free; being reviewed confers no obligation.
- Vendors cannot influence the verdict.We test the shipped product from the outside, the way a real user or agent meets it. Vendors can submit corrections and request re-tests, but they don't see the weights, set the score, or approve the writeup.
- The score can't be gamed, because the weights are private.Our scoring formula is deliberately not public. Publish the weights and vendors optimise the rubric instead of the product, the exact contamination that has broken public AI benchmarks. Outcomes and evidence are fully public; the recipe that would let someone game it is not.
- Every verdict ships with tamper-evident proof.Screenshots and recordings are C2PA cryptographically signed, so you can verify the test ran as we describe. We don't ask you to take our word for it; we show the receipts.
- Reviews expire, and we re-test.Products change. Every review carries a staleness date and is re-run when an agent ships a new version. A Hlido score reflects the product now, not a one-time snapshot.
How Hlido sustains itself
A review desk that hides how it makes money is asking you to trust a blind spot. So, plainly:
- The record is free, and stays free.Every review, score, scorecard, claim audit and the full open dataset are free for humans and agents alike. No paywall on verdicts, ever.
- No one we rate pays us for the rating.Vendors never pay to be reviewed, ranked, badged or re-tested, and revenue never crosses that wall. A score you can buy is worthless, including to the buyer.
- Hlido charges the buying side for work, never the rated side for scores.Revenue comes from the practice: technology and strategy consulting, advisory, implementation and delivery, and post-production support for businesses, plus procurement checks and compliance evidence files, all built on the same public record you can read for free. Where we have worked with a company whose product is on the record, the record says so. What the practice does →
How a review actually happens
We test the real product. Hands-on, against the agent's own public claims: every marketing claim mapped to PASS / FAIL / UNVERIFIED with the evidence that backs each call.
We sign the evidence. The screenshots and recordings that produced the verdict are cryptographically signed and published, so anyone can audit what we saw.
We publish one score, plus the reasoning. The Laddoo Score (0–100), a tier, what it does well, what it fails at, and named comparisons to alternatives. Full methodology →
We track it over time. Re-tests on new versions, plus a public incidents registry and reliability reports: the record of what we caught, and when.
Why an independent score matters
The AI agent market is drowning in claims no buyer can verify. "Independently reviewed by Hlido" is the one credibility signal a vendor cannot issue about itself, the same reason a security audit, a Michelin star, or a Rotten Tomatoes number carries weight that self-marketing never will. Our verdicts are read by humans choosing tools and by other agents deciding, at runtime, which tools to trust, through our free trust checker, our MCP server, embeddable badges, and an open dataset.
How the desk differs from everyone else
| Type | What they do | The catch |
|---|---|---|
| Self-eval / observability tools | Let a vendor instrument and grade its own agent. | The score is private and interested: you can't grade the hand that pays you. |
| Directories & "top tools" lists | List vendor marketing, rank by upvotes and paid features. | No independent testing, no claim verification, often pay-to-feature. |
| Benchmarks & leaderboards | Score models on fixed tasks. | Increasingly contaminated and gamed; they rate models on tasks, not shipped products on their claims. |
| Consultancies & integrators | Advise on and deploy AI, often as a vendor's partner. | Recommendations shaped by partner margins; no public evidence behind the tool choice. |
| Hlido | Independently tests shipped agent products, verifies each claim with signed evidence, tracks them over time, and advises the buying side on that evidence. | Weights stay private so it can't be gamed, and no rated vendor pays us. The whole point. |
Get in touch
If you have a technology project, a decision in front of you, or a system that needs looking after, one message is enough: a person replies, usually within one working day. If you build an AI agent, being reviewed is free and confers no obligation; if we have reviewed yours and something is wrong, tell us and we will re-test.
Tell us what you are trying to do.
Engagements are scoped and quoted in writing before work starts.