Engineering standards

Code you can still maintain in year three.

Most software does not fail at launch, it fails eighteen months later when nobody dares change it. These are the practices that decide which of those you end up with — and they are the same on a $20,000 build as on a $200,000 one.

Ask for a code audit

How we work

What we do on every change, not on the good days.

None of this is optional per project. It is what makes a codebase safe to change, and it is why our clients can take the work in-house whenever they want to.

Review on every commit

No change reaches a main branch without another engineer reading it. It is slower on the day and much faster over a year, and it is the single practice most correlated with a codebase still being pleasant at month eighteen.

Automated tests that run in CI

Unit tests on logic, integration tests on the paths that carry money or data, and end-to-end on the two or three journeys that must never break. Tests that only run locally are decoration.

Static analysis and formatting

Linting, type checking and formatting enforced by the pipeline rather than by argument. Nobody should spend review time on whitespace.

Dependency and vulnerability scanning

Automated scanning on every build with a policy for what blocks a release. Most breaches come through a dependency nobody was tracking.

Documented architecture decisions

Short records of what was decided and why, kept in the repository. The value is not the decision, it is the reasoning being available to whoever questions it in two years.

Ownership transfers in full

Code, history, documentation and infrastructure definitions are yours on final payment. We do not build on a proprietary framework, and knowledge transfer is part of the engagement rather than an exit fee.

Want an honest read on code you already own?

A paid audit — usually a week — telling you what is salvageable, what needs rewriting and what each path costs. Roughly half of the takeovers we do keep most of the existing codebase.

Ask for a code audit

How we work

Where this sits in delivery.

Quality practices are not a phase. They live inside build and test, which is why they cannot be cut when a deadline moves.

  1. Discovery

    A written scope and a costed roadmap, from one structured conversation about what "done" looks like.

  2. Design

    Journeys, wireframes and a clickable prototype — so layout arguments cost an afternoon, not a sprint.

  3. Build

    Two-week sprints against the agreed scope, with a working demo at the end of each.

  4. Test

    Functional, performance and security testing, plus user acceptance on real data.

  5. Launch

    Staged rollout with monitoring and a rollback path, planned before go-live.

  6. Support

    Ninety days included: fixes, patching and performance. Then a retainer or a clean handover.

From the team

Notes on building software.

What we have learned shipping products, written up for the people who have to make the same calls.

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