Tests before the rewrite
We do not replace a system we cannot characterise. Behaviour gets covered first, including the behaviour nobody documented, and then the replacement happens in slices.
How we work
The method, published, so you can hold us to it.
Most firms treat their process as proprietary. Ours is the opposite: it only works as a commitment if you can read it before you sign, quote it back at us during delivery, and check whether we did what we said at the end.
The engagement
Six stages, each with something you receive.
Every stage below ends in an artefact rather than a status update. If a stage produces nothing you can read, it did not happen.
01
Within 1 business day
A conversation with an engineer
Someone who could work on this reads what you sent and replies with questions, an initial view, or a straight answer that we are not the right firm for it. No deck, no discovery workshop you pay for.
02
Day 2 to 4
A 45 minute call about the problem
We talk about the constraint rather than presenting credentials. Bring whoever knows why the current thing is the way it is, because that person has the information that decides the estimate.
03
Within a week
A written approach
How we would build it, in what order, with a cost and time range and the assumptions those depend on. Written plainly enough to forward to a board without translation.
04
When you are ready
A fixed proposal
Scope, price and milestones in writing, with the like-for-like comparison against what conventional delivery would cost you. If we cannot beat that meaningfully we say so and decline.
05
Throughout the build
Built in the open
You get repository access from day one, a running environment as soon as there is something to run, and a weekly written note covering what shipped, what did not, and what changed in the estimate.
06
Before handover
Red-team week
An engineer who did not build it spends a week trying to break it: load, auth, data handling, failure modes. You get the findings, including the ones we did not fix and why.
The standard
What is true of every engagement, without being asked.
Reversible deployment
Every release can be rolled back, and the rollback has been executed at least once as a drill rather than assumed to work.
Decisions recorded
An architecture decision record for every significant choice, including the options we rejected. In three years that document is worth more than the code it explains.
Security is not a phase
Threat modelling happens at design, dependencies are watched continuously, and secrets never reach the repository. There is no security sprint at the end.
Documented for a stranger
The runbook is written for someone who has never met us. If your team cannot deploy it without calling, the handover is not finished.
The 2am rule
If we would not be willing to be woken up for it, we do not ship it. It is a blunt test and it removes a surprising amount of argument.
Where AI sits
What it does in our process, and what it never does.
It does this
- Reads a legacy system faster than any of us can, and produces the map we then verify.
- Writes the first draft of tests, migrations and boilerplate that a person then owns.
- Reviews every change before a human does, catching the ordinary mistakes so review time goes on the interesting ones.
- Turns a specification into an evaluation harness, which is how we know a thing is done.
It never does this
- Merges its own work. Every change is approved by a named engineer who is accountable for it.
- Touches production. Deployment is a human action with a name and a timestamp against it.
- See client data it does not need. Boundaries are set at the start of the engagement, in writing.
- Excuse a defect. If it shipped broken, that is ours, and how it was written is not a mitigation.
What you own
All of it, on the day we finish.
The code outright
Full intellectual property, in your repository, with its commit history intact.
No lock-in
Mainstream technology throughout. Nothing in the stack requires us specifically.
The documentation
Runbook, decision records and infrastructure as code, written for someone new.
The right to leave
No minimum term on retained work. Thirty days notice, and we help you move.
Next step
Talk to the engineer who would run your build.
No discovery call with a salesperson, no deck. A senior engineer reads what you send and replies with a real assessment, including when we think you shouldn’t build it.
