Inheritors of a mystery system
The developer left, the documentation never existed, and the business runs on it anyway.
Rescue for the codebase nobody wants to touch
The system the business depends on, that the last vendor abandoned or the author took with them when they left. We audit it, stabilise it, and modernise it piece by piece, without a bet-the-company rewrite.
What is included
- Two week written audit of code and infrastructure
- Stabilisation: backups, monitoring, security patches
- Test coverage around the scariest paths first
- Strangler-pattern modernisation, piece by piece
- Documentation recovered as we go
- A prioritised plan you can fund in stages
Who this is for
If one of these sounds like your week, the scope call will be a productive 45 minutes.
Victims of an abandoned project
An agency shipped 80% of something and stopped answering the phone.
Teams afraid of their own deploys
Nobody touches the old system because nobody knows what breaks.
How this engagement runs
Audit
Fixed price, two weeks, written honestly. Rescue work is a regular part of what we do.
Stabilise
Stop the bleeding first: backups, monitoring and the two or three fixes with the worst risk-to-effort ratio.
Modernise
Replace components behind stable interfaces, so the business never has a day without a working system.
- Whatever you have
- TypeScript
- Postgres
- Docker
- Terraform
A typical engagement · Rescue and modernise
Modernising a legacy platform without a rewrite
The audit maps what actually runs and what it risks. Then we stabilise: backups, monitoring, tests around the scariest paths. Only then do we replace components one at a time behind stable interfaces, so the business never has a day without a working system.
- Written audit of code and infrastructure
- Tests around critical paths first
- Component-by-component replacement plan
Common questions
Rewrite or refactor?
Usually refactor: big-bang rewrites fail at a famous rate. The audit tells you which parts genuinely need replacing and which just need tests and documentation.
The previous developer is gone and nothing is documented.
That is our normal starting condition. We recover understanding from the code, the database and the users, and write it down as we go.
Is the audit really independent?
Yes, and it is credited against a later build if you continue. You can take the audit report to any vendor, including not us.
Stop comparing agencies. See a real plan for your build instead.
- 45 minutes with an engineer, not a salesperson
- Written scope and fixed quote in two working days
- NDA signed before the call if you want one
Book a call
No obligation. If we are not the right fit, we say so on the call.