01 Software development
Software, engineered to outlast the trend.
We design and build custom software, web applications, internal platforms, and SaaS products on modern, typed, well-tested foundations, then stay for the operating discipline that keeps them maintainable. Not a feature factory. A studio that owns the architecture.
02 The position
Most software fails slowly, not loudly.
It ships on time, demos well, and then calcifies. Six months in, every change takes twice as long. A year in, the team is afraid to touch the thing they built. That decay is not bad luck, it is the predictable result of optimising for the launch instead of the decade that follows.
We build the other way. Architecture decisions are made deliberately and written down. Types and tests are not optional ceremony, they are how a small team moves fast without breaking the things it already shipped. And we are honest about scope, the cheapest software is the software you do not build, so we tell you when a smaller system, or no system, is the right answer.
This is the discipline behind everything we ship, from product-grade web applications to AI features wired into real products. The stack changes; the standard does not.
03 Philosophy
We are engineers who happen to run an agency, not the other way around.
The market is full of shops that assemble software, gluing templates and plugins until the demo works, then handing you the maintenance bill. That is a fine business. It is not ours, and it is not what a company playing a longer game should buy.
Boutique means we take a limited number of clients so that the people who scoped your system are the people who build it. No bait-and-switch from senior sales to junior delivery. The person in your kickoff is the person in your codebase.
The cheapest software is the software you don't build. The second cheapest is the software you build once, correctly.
04 Capabilities
What we actually build.
- 01
Web applications
Dashboards, portals, and data-heavy interfaces with real state, auth, and APIs. Product-grade web app engineering, not page builders.
- 02
Internal platforms & tools
The software your team runs the business on, admin systems, workflow tools, integrations, the unglamorous infrastructure that quietly decides how fast you can move.
- 03
SaaS products
From MVP architecture to a system that survives its own success, multi-tenancy, billing, auth, and the performance budgets that keep it fast as it grows.
- 04
APIs & integrations
Well-designed, versioned, documented APIs, and the integration work that makes your tools actually talk to each other.
- 05
AI-powered features
Retrieval, search, and agentic features wired into your product with evals and guardrails. AI integration done as engineering, not a demo.
- 06
Legacy modernization
Untangling the system that has become a liability, including WordPress modernization and migrations to a faster foundation.
05 Method
How we think about the work.
- 01
Architecture before code.
We decide the shape of the system, and write down why, before we write the system. The expensive mistakes are architectural, and they are almost free to fix on a whiteboard and brutal to fix in production.
- 02
Small surface, high rigor.
Fewer moving parts, typed end to end, tested where it counts. A boutique team beats a large one not by working harder but by building less and building it correctly.
- 03
We stay for year three.
We optimise for total cost of ownership, not launch-day applause. The measure of our work is whether your team is still moving fast on it long after we have gone.
07 Related thinking
Where this work goes deeper.
· Questions we get
Common questions, honest answers.
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What stack do you build on?
We are stack-pragmatic, not stack-religious. In practice that often means TypeScript end to end, Astro and React on the web where each earns its place, and the right database and infrastructure for the workload. We choose for your ten-year horizon, not our convenience.
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Do you only do greenfield projects?
No. A large share of our best work is rescuing or modernising systems that have become a liability, from legacy codebases to WordPress estates that outgrew their foundation. We are equally comfortable building new and untangling old.
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How big are your engagements?
Engagements start at $2,500 for a focused audit or sprint; a full platform or product build is scoped on the call. We take a limited number of clients each year so the people who scope your system are the people who build it.
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Can you work with our existing team?
Yes. We frequently embed alongside an in-house team, owning a hard architectural problem or a product surface while your team owns the rest. We are senior engineers, not staff augmentation, but we play well with others.
· Working together
Tell us what you're trying to build.
If it is worth building correctly, it is worth a real conversation first. We will tell you honestly whether we are the right team, and whether the system is even the right answer.
Start a conversation