You built it with Lovable, Bolt, Replit, Cursor or Claude Code. It shipped, people signed up, and some of them are paying. What nobody has checked is whether your API keys are sitting in the browser, whether anyone can read your database, or what happens the first time a deploy goes wrong at 2am. A $500 review tells you exactly what you’re sitting on. Fifteen years of production architecture, pointed at finding out.
An AI builder will write you an app that works and never mention that the database is readable by anyone who asks, or that the payment webhook trusts whatever is posted to it. It has no view of what happens under load, no memory of the decision it made last week, and no stake in what a leaked key costs you. It builds. It doesn't judge.
So the app ships, users arrive, and the problems that matter are the ones you have no way of knowing about. That's not a failure of nerve on your part — it's the whole point of the thing you don't know yet.
What's needed here is smaller than hiring an engineering team, and more useful: someone senior who can look at what you already have, tell you plainly what's dangerous, and fix it.
The number of people between you and the person writing your code.
Almost everyone starts at the same place: a review of what you’ve already built. You get a written report, a risk list ordered by what could actually hurt you, and a remediation plan with real numbers. Whether you go further is a decision you make afterwards, holding the findings.
Review $500 · fixes from $1,500 · full from $4,500
Built with Lovable, Bolt, Replit, Cursor or Claude Code, and now it has real users and real money moving through it. Exposed keys and permissive database rules closed, deploys made survivable, backups and error monitoring put in, the parts that matter covered by tests. Three sizes, so you can take only what the review says you need.
How stabilization works →If the review only turns up a couple of small problems, I’ll fix them as part of the $500 rather than quoting you for an engagement you don’t need.
Not ready to pay for anything? Run the free ten-point check on your own app first. No email address, no form.
Infrastructure cost reduction on a financial media platform re-architecture
Visitors an hour served by that platform at peak
Insurance policies sold monthly through applications I built
Client engagements are under NDA. Figures are from named work, described by sector and scale only.
Financial media platform · India
A legacy PHP system serving market data to retail traders, re-architected onto microservices. Infrastructure costs fell roughly 76% and the rebuild paid for itself inside eighteen months.
Insurance group · Pan-African
Application flows for two insurance products with KYC and risk assessment, serverless on AWS. Around 2,000 policies sold monthly.
Consumer application · production traffic
Manual deploys that took the site down, replaced with load-balanced infrastructure, an automated pipeline and auto-recovery. Releases stopped causing downtime.
Full engagement detail, domain experience and the technical background are on the about page.
Once the app is safe, the question stops being “what’s broken” and starts being “what’s next”. Most engagements carry on into one of these. None of them is a prerequisite, and none is assumed.
From $250 / month
The usual next step after stabilization. Monitoring, backups, security patches and small fixes, so the work you just paid for doesn’t quietly decay. Priced as an operating cost rather than a project.
How support works →From $2,200 / month
For when the roadmap is the point. Reserved days each week committed to building what’s next, with maintenance included. Planned delivery rather than reactive support.
How ongoing development works →From $2,500 · ~2 weeks
A single core flow, built properly. For when the idea is narrow enough that a full MVP is more than you need — one thing that works, rather than a product with edges you haven’t thought about yet.
What a small build covers →From $6,000 · 4–6 weeks
A new product from idea to something real users can sign up for. Starts with a $500 discovery that produces a real specification and a fixed quote. Separate from stabilization — this is for what you haven’t built yet.
How MVP builds work →Also available: fractional CTO, from $2,000/month, for when the decisions matter more than the code.
| Engagement | Price |
|---|---|
| Technical review Written report, risk list and remediation plan for an existing system. Where almost everyone starts. If it only turns up a couple of small problems, I fix them inside the $500 rather than quoting you for work you don’t need. | $500 |
| Critical fixes only The highest-severity findings from the review, remediated at a fixed price. Nothing else touched. For when the review says a handful of things are dangerous and the rest can wait. | from $1,500 |
| Full stabilization Set by scope. Final price after the review. Security, deployment, backups, monitoring and test coverage. | from $4,500 |
| Support plan Monitoring, backups, patches and small changes. Three plans. The usual continuation after stabilization. | $250–1,200/mo |
| Ongoing development Reserved days each week for roadmap delivery. Includes maintenance. | $2,200–6,000/mo |
| MVP discovery Full specification, data model, scope line and a fixed build quote. Yours to keep either way. | $500 |
| MVP build Set by scope and complexity. Final price after discovery. | from $6,000 |
| Small build A single core flow, built properly, in about two weeks. For when a full MVP is more than the idea needs. A smaller product, not a discounted one. | from $2,500 |
| Fractional CTO One or two days a week. Three-month minimum. | $2,000–3,800/mo |
These are real numbers from real engagements, not anchors — enough to tell you whether this is worth a conversation. The final figure comes after we’ve talked, because scope, complexity and what already exists all move it, and quoting before understanding those would just be guessing at your expense.
50% deposit to begin, balance net 14. Discovery and review fees are credited against the work that follows if you proceed within 30 days.
Milestone payments are available instead of 50% upfront, if you’d rather pay as work lands. After the first milestone, if you’re not satisfied, you can stop and have that payment refunded. And if the work overruns against the scope we agreed, I absorb it — the price you were quoted is the price you pay.
Sometimes you can, and sometimes you should. If you're technical, still testing whether anyone wants the product, or building something that's mostly forms and a database, go build it. What the tools don't do is decide. The data model that doesn't need tearing up in month three, the permission boundary nobody thought to check, the payment retry that charges twice, and the discipline to leave features out — those are judgment calls. There's a fuller answer on the MVP page.
If your app has no users and no money moving through it, don't pay me to stabilize it — the risks I'd be fixing aren't real yet. Go and find out whether anyone wants the thing. If you already have a competent engineer, they will do this better than I will, because they know your codebase. If you need someone on Slack all day, or a team of five by next quarter, I'm the wrong shape entirely and I'd rather say so now than three weeks in. And if what you actually want is a second opinion to overrule a developer you've stopped trusting, that's a conversation to have with them, not a purchase.
Then I'll tell you that, and if it's a couple of small problems I'll fix them inside the $500 rather than inventing an engagement. An audit that always concludes you need an audit-shaped amount of work is a sales process wearing a lab coat. Some people take the report and stop there, and that's a completely legitimate outcome.
No. That's the default because it's simple, but you can pay against milestones instead. After the first milestone, if you're not satisfied with what you've seen, you can stop and I'll refund it. And if the work runs longer than I estimated against the scope we agreed, that's mine to absorb — you pay the price you were quoted.
Sometimes, for the narrow things — if you know precisely what to ask for. The problem is that the dangerous items are the ones you'd never think to ask about. No prompt gets written for the permission rule nobody knew existed, because nobody knew it existed. The tool will confidently secure the thing you named and leave the other eight alone.
Mine start at $6,000 for a four-to-six week build, with the exact figure set by scope and complexity after a $500 discovery. Well below US agency rates because there is no sales layer and no project management overhead.
Yes, extensively and deliberately — that's what makes a six-week MVP possible. The difference between that and a vibe-coded app is that every architectural decision is made by someone with fifteen years of experience, and everything ships with tests.
It's me — that's the point. Nobody sits between you and the person writing your code, and you don't get handed to whoever is on the bench. I run a limited number of engagements at a time to keep it that way. When a build genuinely needs more hands, I bring in engineers I've worked with before and stay accountable for the work myself. If I don't have capacity for your timeline, I'll say so rather than stretch.
No. Everything is a fixed price agreed before work starts, set by what's being built rather than how long it takes. You should never have to audit a timesheet to know whether you got value, and I shouldn't be penalised for being fast. If scope changes, that's a change order with its own price, agreed in advance.
You do, entirely, from the first commit. It lives in your repository and deploys to your cloud account. No proprietary frameworks, no lock-in.
Twenty minutes. You describe what you've built and what's worrying you, I'll tell you whether a review is worth your $500 and what it would realistically take to put right. No pitch — and if I'm not the right fit, I'll say so on the call rather than after the invoice.