One quarter. One keyboard.
Production-grade software
shipped end-to-end.
For founders who don’t want a vendor — they want the studio embedded for a quarter. Productized tiers exist for the work that fits a checkbox. This is for the work that doesn’t.
You should apply if…
- You’re shipping a production fintech, AI-native, or billing-grade product and the wrong architecture decision costs you a quarter.
- You’ve hired agencies before and the handoff is the part that always breaks.
- You want one accountable engineer through scoping, build, deploy, and the first 90 days of operation.
- Your engagement runs at least one full quarter and you want commit-level visibility weekly.
You should not apply if…
- —You need a marketing site or a one-time sprint — use the productized tiers.
- —You want a project manager and three handoffs — use a traditional agency.
- —You’re evaluating five vendors in parallel and lowest bid wins.
- —You have not yet decided whether to build the thing.
For one-shot work, see the productized tiers.
What you actually get for one quarter of the studio.
Founder-grade scoping
A signed scope document before week one — architecture diagrams, data model, API contracts, the rollback plan for every shipped surface. No “we’ll figure it out as we go.”
One keyboard, end-to-end
The person on every call is the person typing every commit. No offshore handoff, no swap-in resource inheriting the runway.
Production-grade by default
CI/CD gates, typed APIs, idempotent webhooks, additive migrations, RLS where it belongs, the 30-second rollback rule on every change. The same standards Sage Ideas runs on its own production fintech.
Weekly written changelog
A Monday changelog with what shipped, what’s shipping, what’s blocked. No status calls that should have been emails.
90-day operate window
After build, the first 90 days of production are covered — monitoring, on-call coverage, incident response, the runbooks, the documentation handoff. We don’t ship and disappear.
IP, source, and runbook handoff
You own the code. You own the infrastructure. You receive a documented handoff package that survives without us on the next call.
Twelve weeks. One operator. Predictable rhythm.
Scope and architect
System design, data model, API contracts, rollback plan, scope sign-off. No code shipped yet — on purpose.
Build and ship
Production code behind feature flags. Daily commits, weekly changelog, fortnightly architecture reviews with you in the room.
Stabilize and handoff
Hardening, runbooks, monitoring, documentation. By week 12 the studio could disappear and the system would keep running.
Operate or extend
Continue as a fractional CTO retainer, scope the next quarter, or hand off to your team — your choice, agreed in advance.
Four steps. No sales theater.
Application
You send a one-page brief. What you’re building, what “done” looks like, what is non-negotiable.
Discovery call
Forty-five minutes. Honest read on whether this is the right engagement — even if the answer is no.
Scope and quote
Within five business days you receive a fixed scope, fixed timeline, and a custom quote. Either it’s a yes or it’s not.
Quarter starts
Contract signed, kickoff scheduled, week 1 begins on the agreed date. No drift between sign-off and start.
Apply if it’s the right shape.
One brief. Forty-eight-hour reply. The studio takes engagements that fit and turns down the ones that don’t. Both outcomes are fine.