Product engineering
We design and build web applications, APIs and internal tools with a small team of senior engineers. Work is split into milestones, each with a written specification and a fixed price, and each one ends with working software in your hands rather than a progress report.
What it covers.
A specification first
Each milestone starts with a short written specification: what it does, what it doesn't, and how you'll know it's done.
Working software weekly
A deployed preview every week, so you are reacting to the product, not to descriptions of it.
Your repository from day one
Code lives in your accounts from the first commit. Nothing is held back until an invoice is paid.
Tests where they count
Payments, permissions and data integrity are covered by tests. The rest is kept simple enough not to need many.
Plain technology
Mainstream languages and frameworks your next hire will already know, chosen for the product and not for novelty.
Documentation
How it is built, how to run it, and how to change it, written for the people who will maintain it.
How it runs.
Conversation
What exists, who it is for, and what a good result would be. Usually an hour.
Specification
The first milestone in writing, with a price and a date. Nothing starts until both sides agree.
Milestones
Weekly previews and a short review. Each milestone ends on your acceptance, then the next is specified.
Handover
Code, accounts and documentation are yours. Care can follow, or your team takes over.
Is it a fit.
A good fit
New products or substantial features for web products, APIs and integrations, and internal tools. Founders and teams who want to understand what was built.
Not a fit
Native mobile applications, staff augmentation, and open-ended work without a defined outcome.
Questions.
Why milestones and not hourly billing?
A fixed price per milestone puts the risk of our estimates on us, and gives you a working result at each payment.
Will you build it on Dianthan?
Where it saves you time and money, we suggest it and explain why. It is never a condition, and the code is written so it could move.
How big is the team?
Small, on purpose. The engineers you speak to are the engineers who write the code.
Other engagements.
Production readiness
For a product that works but is not yet ready for paying customers. We review it, close the gaps that matter, and hand back a written report.
From $3,000AI integration
Bringing models into a product so that they are dependable and their cost is understood: retrieval, tool use, evaluation, and a cost on every call.
Milestones from $5,000Operations and care
Monitoring, upkeep and incident response for systems we have built or reviewed, with a fixed allowance for small changes each month.
From $400 a month
Tell us what you're building.
A few lines about the product and what stands in the way. An engineer replies within two working days.