No standing retainers, no padding. We work in 4–8 week scoped engagements with explicit deliverables on day one — fixed price, not hourly.
Three phases, time-boxed. You get a deliverable at the end of each one — and a hard exit ramp.
We map your stack, talk to your team, and produce a concrete scope with deliverables, milestones, and pricing — fixed, not hourly.
Focused work in dedicated cycles. Weekly demos in your timezone. Direct Slack channel. Zero status meetings — progress is visible in the work.
Documentation your team can actually use, runbooks, and a 30-day support window. Optional ongoing advisory if you want it. No lock-in.
These are the non-negotiables. Mostly they exist because the alternatives didn't serve the work — or the people paying for it.
Hourly billing rewards padding. We scope tightly, agree a number, and ship the thing. If we underestimate, that's our problem, not yours.
Async by default. Weekly demo + written update. If you want a sync call, you can have one — but you don't have to sit through one to know we're working.
You work with the person reading your code. No account managers, no project coordinators, no proxies. Slack me; I respond.
We say no to most projects. Saying yes to too many means saying yes badly to all of them. If we're a fit, we're committing.
The work has to outlive the engagement. Real docs, real runbooks, and tests your team will keep running. Not a knowledge silo with a price tag.
When in doubt, the well-trodden choice. Boring tools because they're maintainable, hireable-for, and won't trap you.
A row-by-row map of where we diverge from a typical consulting shop. None of these are accidents.
Some things we say no to so often it's easier to put them on a page. If your engagement looks like one of these, we're probably not a fit.
If the scope can keep growing, the bill can keep growing. Bad incentive for everyone.
Decks without code. If we're writing the recommendation, we're also writing the patch.
Security theatre, long PDFs, no behaviour change. Hire someone else.
Real software takes real time. Two-week MVPs are someone else's game.
Two paragraphs about the system and the deadline. 48-hour reply, with the names of the people who'd staff it.