Where the money goes
How we can charge $599 for software.
A low price with no explanation is not reassuring, it is suspicious. So here is the whole of it: what is already built, what you are actually paying for, and the point at which this stops being the right purchase and you should buy a sprint instead.
Free 1-minute fit check · no equity · no retainer
The short version
You are not paying us to write software. You are paying us to finish it.
Most of what makes a product take months has nothing to do with your idea. Accounts, roles, making sure one customer cannot read another's data, the admin screens, the empty states, the deployment, the tests. That part is identical whether you are building a reptile forum or an alumni network — and we wrote it once.
| The work in any build like this | Where it stands | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Accounts, roles and permissions | Done | Sign-in, who is who, and what each role can touch. Written once, enforced in the database, and the same in every skeleton. |
| Making sure nobody reads anybody else's data | Done | The single most expensive mistake in fast-built software. There is a test per collection that signs in as one customer and tries to read another's rows. The build fails if it ever works. |
| The core workflow | Done | The retry ladder, the confidence threshold, the way doubt resolves, the offline sync. This is the part that takes the longest to get right and it is already right. |
| Admin screens, empty states, errors that say what to do | Done | The unglamorous two-thirds of any product. Loading, empty, error — handled once in the shared kit instead of forgotten on one screen out of nine. |
| Deploying it, securing it, handing it over | Done, repeatedly | Your own cloud project, rules deployed, keys transferred. We have done this enough times that it is a script, not an afternoon. |
| Your vocabulary, your fields, your roles, your words | This is what you pay for | Renaming everything to your world, adding the fields you need, removing the ones you do not, rewriting every screen and every email. Two days of actual work. |
One line in that table is yours. The rest was paid for by building it once and is why the number is $599 rather than five figures.
The method, since that is the actual answer
The product is generated from a specification, not typed out.
This is the part most studios cannot do, and it is the only reason the price works. A skeleton is not a folder we copy and edit by hand. Its entities, its database rules, its permission checks and its isolation tests are all produced from one written specification — so changing what your product is made of means changing that specification, not hunting through files.
One source, not four
Who can read a row is written once. From it come the database rule, the check in the code, and the test that proves it. They cannot drift apart, because nobody writes them separately.
Renaming is a real change, not a find-and-replace
When a space becomes a species group, the column, the screen, the permission rule and the test all follow. That is why it is safe to do in two days.
The gate does not know what you paid
Security review, isolation tests, load behaviour: the same bar as a $2,490 sprint. 176 tests across the four skeletons, run before anything ships.
You do not have to take that on faith. Sixty specifications written this way are published on this site, and one full blueprint is there end to end. That is the input the machine takes.
Which one you need
The honest split.
Buying the wrong one of these costs you more than buying neither. So here is the line, as plainly as we can put it.
Pre-built skeleton · $599 for now
Your idea has the same shape as something we already built.
- You opened a demo and recognised your own product in it with different words on it.
- One core workflow — people posting, people paying monthly, documents arriving, work happening off-site.
- You want it live in a week, with real users on it, before spending more.
- You are proving whether anyone wants this at all.
Full sprint · $2,490
Your product is its own thing and needs to be built as one.
- None of the four demos looks like what you are picturing, even squinting.
- It has to talk to systems you already run — your accounting package, your CRM, a supplier's API.
- Several workflows have to work together, not one.
- It belongs in the App Store or Google Play.
- Money moves between people inside it, with the rules and the records that come with that.
Ten working days, one fixed price, quoted before anything starts. You see it running on day 5 and decide on day 10.
If you are not sure which side you are on, that is what the free fit check is for. It takes a minute, costs nothing, and the answer we give is the one we would give ourselves — we would rather lose the $599 than sell you a shape that is not yours and spend the week arguing about it.
Questions
The ones people actually ask.
Is a pre-built skeleton just a template?
No. A template is a design you fill in. These are running products with a database, accounts, roles enforced at the data layer, a business engine and automated tests. What we change for you is the vocabulary and the shape of the data, not the surface.
Why is a sprint five times the price, then?
Because a sprint builds a workflow that does not exist yet. The skeleton price is low precisely because the workflow is already written, tested and in production. The moment your product needs something none of the four do, that saving disappears and we say so.
Does cheaper mean lower quality?
It means less new code, not looser standards. Every skeleton goes through the same gate as a full build: 176 automated tests across the four, an access-isolation test on every collection, and the same security review. The gate does not know what you paid.
What happens if I pick the wrong one?
We tell you before you pay. The first thing we do with your answers is check that the shape really matches, and if it does not we say so and refund it rather than bending a skeleton into something it is not.
Next step
Find out if your idea fits in 10 working days.
Tell us what you want to build. We reply the same day with a straight yes, no, or here is what we would cut.