Software designed around the task
Screens built for the job someone is doing, not generated from a data model and handed over.
Build & accelerate
Put a senior teaminside your roadmap.
A dedicated team inside your codebase and delivery rhythm from week one. AI accelerates the work; senior engineers stay accountable for what ships. Three months minimum, priced to the outcome after a free initial audit.
Every mark here links to the engagement it belongs to. See the work →
An AI-Native Engineering Pod is a dedicated software team that works inside a company’s own codebase and delivery rhythm from the first week, on a three-month minimum, priced to the outcome after a free initial audit. AI accelerates the work while senior engineers stay accountable for what ships. The engagement suits companies with a roadmap that needs continuous capacity rather than a fixed one-off project.
Choose thiswhen
- The roadmap needs continuous capacity
- You want one accountable team, not placements
- Context and continuity will compound
You get
A delivery lead, senior engineers, product and QA, weekly working demos, and tests, CI and deployable releases.
Pricing
Priced Outcome
One agreed price for an agreed outcome, quoted after a free initial audit and approved before delivery begins.
What the estimate depends on- The scope of the outcome you want
- The stage the application is at
- The condition of the existing codebase
- The team the work requires
- How the system is used in production
- The operational complexity around it
Work out what it has to return first: the ROI calculator for operational work, how we measure for everything else.
The other route
Building it and owning it are two different engagements.
A pod moves a roadmap forward week after week. Product Care keeps software already in production running and carries no roadmap. Most companies buy the pod first and Product Care after launch; they are scoped and priced separately.
Deliverables
What weactually deliver
Permissions, logging and an audit trail
Who can see what, who changed what, and when - the three things a spreadsheet can’t give you.
Connections to your systems of record
So the new application is not another island that needs somebody to reconcile it.
Documentation and a handover path
Written as a deliverable, not as an upsell, so taking it in-house is always available to you.
Where it starts
The four places thisusually shows up
Operations
Work moves between people by hand, and every handoff can stall.
- The same record is typed into two systems
- A spreadsheet sits between two applications
- Volume grows, headcount is the only lever
Finance operations
Invoices and approvals depend on somebody remembering to check a folder.
- Month end is a week of copying
- Approvals live in an inbox rather than a system
- Nobody knows the cost per document
Customer support
The answers exist, in documents and past tickets, and finding them is the job.
- The same answer is rewritten daily
- Response time depends who picks it up
- The demo worked, production did not
Reporting and data
The number the business runs on is assembled by hand, twice, differently.
- A report is rebuilt weekly from exports
- Two dashboards disagree
- The data cannot be queried safely
Proof
Engagements thatlooked like this
COCOLI How COCOLI automated furniture supply across three European markets
No baseline was captured on this engagement.
Fastyr AI How Fastyr turned an AI-agent vision into a coherent operating workspace
No baseline was captured on this engagement.
Five to Nine How Five to Nine connected event operations, calendars and secure access
No baseline was captured on this engagement.
Is this the right engagement for you?
Describe what is actually going wrong. We come back with the outcome, the engagement that fits and the price basis - after a free initial audit.
Recognise this?
Where the spreadsheet problemusually shows up
One spreadsheet runs the operationEveryone knows which one, and everyone is slightly afraid of it.01
The off-the-shelf tool doesn’t fitYou are paying for software your team works around, and the workaround is now the real process.02
The internal app is unmaintainedIt still works. The person who built it left, and nobody will touch it.03
Management can’t see the workThere is no screen showing what is in progress, what is stuck, and what needs a decision today.04
Onboarding takes monthsBecause the real process is tribal knowledge and every new hire has to be told the workarounds one at a time.05
How we decide
The spreadsheet is not the enemy. It is the specification.
Somebody built it because the business needed something the software did not do. It encodes years of real requirements - we read it rather than dismiss it.
- We start from what the spreadsheet actually does, including the parts that look wrong until you ask why.
- We keep the flexibility that made it useful and add the control that makes it safe.
- We do not rebuild the whole thing at once. The riskiest part moves first.
- The people who used the spreadsheet test the replacement before anyone switches.
In practice
What fixing the spreadsheet problemlooks like
What is moving, what is stuck, what needs a decision
Operations dashboard
One screen a manager opens in the morning instead of asking three people.
Item → reason → context → resolve
Exception queue
The work that needs judgement, in one place, with everything needed to make the call attached.
Request → policy check → approver → audit trail
Approval workflow
Policy enforced by the system rather than remembered by a person.
One place instead of four systems and a shared drive
Internal portal
Where staff go to do the thing, rather than where they go to find out where to do the thing.
Go deeper
The decisions behindthis kind of work
- ArticleInternal software vs. off-the-shelf SaaS: when should you build?A build-versus-buy framework for operations teams comparing fit, integration, ownership, switching cost, implementation risk and total cost.
- ArticleWe mapped the weekly report. Here are 7 automation opportunities.A mapped management-reporting workflow covering data collection, definitions, reconciliation, anomaly review, commentary and delivery.
- ArticleWe mapped supplier product-data updates. Here are 8 automation opportunities.A mapped supplier-data workflow for inconsistent spreadsheets, identifiers, units, price changes, validation, approval and ERP loading.
Questions
About the spreadsheet problem
Buy, wherever something off the shelf genuinely fits - we will say so, and we would rather integrate it well than build a worse version of it. Build is the right answer when the process is a real differentiator, or when the gap between the tool and the workflow is currently being filled by a person.
It becomes the specification, and it usually keeps running in parallel until the replacement has proved itself against real work. Nobody is asked to trust new software with a critical process on day one.
You do. It lives in your repositories, it runs on infrastructure you control wherever possible, and documentation is part of the deliverable. If you want to take it in-house, we hand it over and revoke our own access in writing.
No. Custom code and configuration built for you belongs to you, systems run on infrastructure you control wherever possible, and documentation is a deliverable rather than an upsell. If you stop working with us, your business should not stop working.
The engagements are built around businesses doing roughly $5M to $30M in revenue, with software that matters to how they operate and someone who owns it. Outside that range we will still reply - we will just be honest about whether we are the right fit.
Not this one?
The otherengagements
The AI demo has to work in production.AI Integration Sprint4-8 weeksPriced OutcomeManual work is eating our capacity.Agentic Workflow Automation8-12 weeksPriced OutcomeThe prototype cannot survive real users.Vibe Code Rescue Sprint4-6 weeksPriced OutcomeThe old system is too risky to change.Legacy Modernization2+ quartersPriced OutcomeNobody owns the product after launch.Product CareOngoingPriced Outcome
Before you commit
What you wouldbe signing up for
One bounded outcome
A named result, a fixed window and a scope agreed in writing before delivery starts.
- Commitment
- 4 to 12 weeks
- Price basis
- Priced Outcome
- The problem has an edge you can describe
- You want the cost known first
- Someone inside owns the result
A team against a roadmap
Senior capacity inside your codebase, moving a roadmap week after week.
- Commitment
- 3 months minimum
- Price basis
- Priced Outcome
- The work is continuous, not bounded
- Recruiting would cost a quarter
- You want the same people throughout
Ownership after launch
Monitoring, patching, upgrades and a named engineer for live software.
- Commitment
- Ongoing, cancellable
- Price basis
- Priced Outcome
- It is live and business-critical
- Nobody owns it out of hours
- The risk needs an owner
One agreed price for an agreed outcome, quoted after a free initial audit and approved before delivery begins.
Named quotes go here as clients approve them. See what the engagements produced →
Next step
Show us the spreadsheet the business depends on.
The one person maintains, everyone relies on, and nobody wants to touch. We will tell you what it would take to turn it into something that cannot be broken by a stray paste.