Built by engineers who were good
before the tools were.
We spend most of our time repairing software that AI wrote unsupervised. That is precisely why we are fast at writing it. We have adopted these tools completely, and we knew how to build production systems before they existed, so the speed comes from judgment plus tooling rather than from skipping the parts that matter later.
The tool is not the skill. Knowing what it got wrong is the skill.
The numbers above are not an argument against building with AI. We build with it every day and we would be slower without it. They are an argument about who is holding it. A model will confidently produce an endpoint that returns any user's record, a schema with no indexes, and an inference call with no cost ceiling, and it will all pass a demo. Someone has to know, before it ships, that those three things are wrong.
That is the entire value here. Not a faster typist. An engineer who has run production systems, reads the generated code as a reviewer rather than a customer, and makes the architectural calls the model has no opinion about.
- Auth and access control designed first. Row-level security, role boundaries and tenant isolation are part of the data model, not a later pass.
- Secrets handled properly from commit one. Nothing in the client bundle, nothing in git history, rotation possible without a redeploy scramble.
- A schema that survives the next order of magnitude. Indexes based on the queries you will actually run, and a pooler in front of anything serverless.
- Cost to serve as a design input. If the product calls a model, the token path is designed before launch rather than discovered on an invoice. That work has its own page.
- Tests where a failure would be expensive. Not coverage theatre. Coverage on the paths that move money, expose data, or cannot be undone.
- Documentation written for whoever comes next. Including the possibility that whoever comes next is not us.
Six phases. You see working software in every one.
Scope and architecture
What the product has to do, what data it holds, what it must never do. Data model, auth model and hosting decided here, in writing, before anyone writes a feature.
Fixed proposal
A fixed scope, a fixed price and a milestone schedule. You approve it before build work starts. Scope changes are quoted, not absorbed silently and billed later.
Foundation
Auth, data model, environments, CI, error tracking and secrets handling. The unglamorous week that decides whether month six is calm or on fire.
Feature build in milestones
Working software at the end of each milestone, deployed somewhere you can use it. Not a demo video, not a Figma file. The real thing, early and often.
Hardening pass
The same review we run on rescue work, turned on our own code: exploit attempts against our own endpoints, dependency scan, load behaviour, and a cost-to-serve read if the product calls a model.
Handover or retainer
Architecture documentation, runbook and a walkthrough with your team. Either we hand it over cleanly, or we stay on retainer. Your call, not a default.
Priced against what the build is worth, not against our hours.
Two things we will not do. We will not publish an hourly rate, because hours are our problem and not your unit of value. And we will not sell the same software for less on the grounds that it took us less time, because what you are buying is the compressed timeline and the judgment, not a discount on a commodity.
A startup MVP or internal tool with no regulated data. Positioned against a traditional agency alternative that runs $100,000 to $400,000 for most custom software projects, and $150,000 to $300,000 at medium complexity, delivered on a materially shorter timeline.
Anything touching cardholder data or health data. Market benchmarks put fintech platforms at $90,000 to $300,000 and up, healthcare software at $75,000 to $250,000 and up, with compliance scope alone adding $30,000 to $150,000 on top of a base build.
Scope, data sensitivity and timeline, in that order. A build touching cardholder or health data carries real additional work and real additional obligation on both sides, and we quote it at the regulated end of the market range rather than below it. A compressed deadline raises the price rather than lowering it, because compressing a schedule costs more, not less. The final figure is fixed in writing before any build work starts, and milestone-billed rather than paid up front.
Market ranges cited above are published benchmarks for what comparable custom software costs, not quotes. Yours comes from a scoping conversation.
See the full pricing breakdown for every service line.
Three situations where this is the right call.
"I need this live before the round closes, not after."
Time-to-market is the whole value and the runway is finite. A senior team using AI properly is materially faster than a traditional shop, and the difference is weeks of burn rather than a line item.
"I prototyped it myself and hit a wall I cannot see past."
The prototype proved the idea, which is the hard part. Sometimes the right move is to rescue it. Sometimes it is cheaper and faster to keep the learning and rebuild the foundation. We will tell you honestly which one you are looking at.
"This touches payment or patient data and it cannot be learned on."
Security and data handling belong in the architecture, not in a remediation phase after a partner's security review finds them. Retrofitting is always more expensive than designing it in.
Exactly what is in scope, and exactly what is not.
The same spec block sits on every service page, so you can compare them line for line. What is excluded matters as much as what is included, because that is where scope disputes come from.
- Architecture and data modelling, decided and documented before feature work begins, including the auth and tenancy model.
- Full application build to the agreed fixed scope: frontend, backend, database, authentication, third-party integrations and deployment.
- Environments and CI: separate staging and production, automated deploys, error tracking and uptime monitoring live from the first milestone.
- Secrets handling done properly, with nothing in the client bundle or git history, and a rotation path that does not require a redeploy scramble.
- Automated test coverage on the paths that move money, expose data, or cannot be undone.
- A hardening pass before launch: exploit attempts against our own endpoints, dependency scan, access-control verification and load behaviour under realistic concurrency.
- A cost-to-serve design pass where the product calls a model, so the token path is deliberate before launch rather than discovered on an invoice.
- Architecture documentation, a runbook and a live walkthrough with whoever will own it.
- Product strategy, market research or user research. We build what is scoped. Deciding what should be scoped is your job, and we will tell you when we think a scope item is a mistake.
- Brand, visual identity or marketing design. We work to a design system you provide, or to a clean, functional default that we will not pretend is art direction.
- Content, copywriting, imagery or data entry.
- Any certification. We build controls and we document them, and no engineering firm can certify SOC 2 or HIPAA compliance. See the note below this block.
- Ongoing maintenance after handover, unless you move to a retainer. A build ends at handover by design.
- Unscoped features. New requests are quoted as a change, in writing, rather than absorbed quietly and billed later.
- App store submission, legal review, or acting as your data controller.
A deployed, working application in a repository and cloud account you own, on infrastructure in your name. Architecture documentation, a runbook covering deploys, backups, secret rotation and incident response, the test suite, and a written record of every architectural decision and why it was made.
Scoping and a fixed proposal typically inside one week of the first conversation. Build timelines are set per project and stated in the proposal, with a dated milestone schedule rather than a single delivery date, so slippage is visible in week two rather than month three.
We do not publish a universal build duration, because a number on a marketing page is a guess about a project we have not scoped yet.
Senior engineers only, with production experience that predates the current generation of AI tooling. The engineer who scopes the build is an engineer who builds it. No junior pool, no offshore handoff, no account manager translating between you and the people writing code.
- Scope: number of distinct user roles, core workflows and third-party integrations. Integrations with someone else's unreliable API are the most commonly underestimated item in any build.
- Data sensitivity: cardholder data, health data or anything under a regulator brings real additional engineering and real additional obligation, and prices at the regulated end of the market range.
- Timeline: compressing a schedule raises the price. It costs more to deliver the same scope in half the calendar time, and pretending otherwise is how builds fail.
- Scale target: building for a thousand users is a different job from building for a hundred thousand, and we would rather you told us honestly which one you mean.
- Design input: an existing design system is faster to build against than an empty canvas.
- Decision latency on your side. A build waiting on an unanswered question is the cheapest thing to fix and the most common cause of slippage.
You describe what you want built and what it has to handle. A senior engineer runs a scoping conversation, not a sales call, and pushes back on anything that looks like it will cost you more than it returns. You get a fixed scope, a fixed price and a milestone schedule in writing. You approve it before any build work starts, and nothing gets billed that you did not agree to first.
We can assess a system against a named standard's technical requirements, harden it, remediate what fails, and produce documentation an auditor will test. We cannot certify compliance with any of them, and neither can any other engineering firm. A SOC 2 report is an attestation issued only by a licensed CPA firm. HIPAA compliance is the covered entity's own legal obligation, and no government-issued HIPAA certification exists. A PCI DSS attestation can only be issued by a certified Qualified Security Assessor. We prepare for those processes and we support your path through them. Anyone telling you they will make you "HIPAA compliant" or "SOC 2 certified" is describing something that does not exist.
What founders ask before a build.
Do you use AI to write the code?
Yes, extensively, and we would be slower without it. The distinction that matters is who is reviewing the output. Every line is read by a senior engineer who has run production systems and who treats generated code as a submission to review, not as a finished answer. That is the same reason we get hired to repair software where nobody did that.
If AI makes you faster, why is it not cheaper?
Because you are buying the outcome and the timeline, not our hours. A build that takes a traditional shop five or six months is worth more delivered in a fraction of that, especially on finite runway, and that speed comes from senior judgment as much as from tooling. We price against the market rate for the build type and sell the compressed timeline as the value. If the only thing you want is the lowest number, we are not the right firm and we will say so early.
Do you bill hourly?
No, and we do not publish an hourly rate. Every build is fixed scope, fixed price, agreed in writing before work starts and billed against milestones. You should never be billed into an open-ended hole.
Who owns the code?
You do. It lives in a repository and a cloud account in your name from the first commit, not in ours. There is no platform lock-in, no proprietary wrapper you have to keep paying us for, and no situation where leaving us means losing the software.
Can you make us HIPAA compliant or SOC 2 certified?
No, and nobody else can either. SOC 2 is an attestation issued only by a licensed CPA firm. HIPAA compliance is the covered entity's own legal obligation, and no government-issued HIPAA certification exists. PCI DSS attestation comes only from a certified Qualified Security Assessor. What we can do is build the technical controls those processes test, assess a system against the named standard, remediate what fails, and produce the documentation, which is the engineering half of the work.
What if I already started building it myself?
Then the first question is whether to rescue the existing code or restart the foundation and keep what you learned. Those are genuinely different jobs with different prices, and guessing is expensive. A $1,500 Rapid Diagnostic reads what you have and answers it with evidence, and the fee is credited toward whatever you decide to do next.
What happens when the build is finished?
You get architecture documentation, a runbook and a walkthrough, and the software runs on infrastructure you own. From there you either take it in-house, hand it to another team, or keep us on retainer for ongoing engineering. All three are normal and none of them is the default.
Tell us what it has to do. We will tell you what it takes.
A scoping conversation with a senior engineer, not a sales call. You leave with a fixed scope, a fixed price and a milestone schedule, or with an honest reason not to build it.