Own Your StackOwn Your Stack · Self-Build · for companies whose own teams already build software

You already built it.
Now take back control of it.

Your people know your business better than any software company. With AI coding tools, they can now build the software themselves, and fast. What they can’t easily tell is whether it will leak a customer’s data, survive a bad day, or quietly stop doing what the screen says. That’s the part we take on. And if there’s a system you’d rather not build yourselves, we’ll build it, to the same standard, in your accounts.

Find out if your software is safe to run on →See a sample report

Is this you?

This works well when:

Someone on your team is already building software with AI tools, or is about to.
The hard part is your business, not the technology: quotes, scheduling, records, calculations, reporting.
Something already runs the business, and nobody knows how solid it is. This is the most common reason people call us.
You don’t have an engineering team, and you don’t want to build one.
You can name one person to work with us. They don’t need to be technical. They do need the authority to make decisions.

It’s the wrong fit when:

The technology itself is the hard part: huge scale, real-time systems, machine learning. Hire engineers. We’ll tell you so.
Nobody on your team knows the business deeply. That knowledge is the whole advantage.
It’s a one-off build that won’t change. You want a vendor, not a standard.
A regulator requires an outside company to build it. We’re not that.
Nobody has time to fix what we find. A review without fixes is just an expensive list of worries. Choose an option where we fix things too, or don’t start.

Before we quote, we’ll ask who fixes things and how many hours a week they really have. If the answer is thin, we’ll point you to an option that includes our hands.

What you get

Six things you get to keep.

A baseline report within 10 days

Every risk we find, ranked by how much it could cost you, with the cause and the fix for each.

Safety rules inside your code

Written where AI coding tools read them automatically, so the rules reach whoever is building, even if they’ve never heard of them.

Automatic checks on every change

A change that breaks a rule can’t go live, and nobody can wave it through.

A regular review

Every week or two at first, with a scorecard, so progress is a number, not a feeling.

An engineer to call before the risky decisions

Payments, logins, permissions and personal data. A quick call before building costs far less than a fix afterward.

Your code, your cloud, your keys

In your name from day one, not signed over at the end.

02How it works

Three things, in the order they happen.

1. The rules reach the work before it’s written

Your builder may have no engineering background, and the AI tool starts every session knowing nothing. So we put the rules where the AI reads them: inside the risky parts of your code. Each code repository also keeps a short record of what was decided and what must never be undone.

What we learned: rules the computer enforces held every single time. Rules that relied on someone remembering held until the first busy week. So when the same problem shows up twice, we don’t write another reminder. We add an automatic check.

2. A call before the risky code

Some decisions aren’t about writing code well. They’re about picking the safe design out of several that all look fine, and an AI tool will offer every one of them with the same confidence. For payments, logins, permissions and personal data, your team calls our engineer first.

This is the cheapest thing we do. A decision made on a call costs a conversation. The same mistake found later costs a finding, a fix, a re-check, and sometimes a real exposure in between. It’s included in every option. It’s a line for important decisions, not a helpdesk, and we won’t write your features on a call. If a request is really “please build this,” we’ll say so and quote it.

3. A regular review that gets cheaper over time

Step 1
You build
Your team works at its own pace, on its own priorities. We never decide what gets built.
Step 2
We review
Everything built since last time is checked by several reviewers, each looking for one kind of problem. Every serious finding is confirmed in the actual code.
Step 3
You get a report
Dated, in the same format every time. Each finding explains how serious it is, why it happened, what it risks and how to fix it, in plain language.
Step 4
It gets fixed
By your team, by us, or both. Nothing counts as fixed until the next review checks the actual fix.
Step 5
It can’t come back
Anything that shows up twice gets an automatic check. That’s why each review finds less than the last.

We start close, every week or two. As your numbers improve, reviews spread out and your cost goes down. Two numbers decide that, and you see both every time: how many of your rules the computer enforces, and how many problems turn up per piece of new work.

See the 12 checks we use

Automatic checkschange #128 · “Export invoices to accounting”

• Password and key scan: passed• Security scan of outside code: passed• Tests on security-critical code: blockedBlocked. This export sends customer records to a new address, and there’s no test for who is allowed to use it. Add the test, or mark the address internal-only, then run again.> Test added · 1 file changed• Tests on security-critical code: passed · 540 tests• Backup restore test: passed · working copy in 6 minutes• Change approved, with the record written automatically

03Options

Three ways to work with us.

The difference is how much of the work sits with you. The rules, the reviews and the reports are the same in all three.

Option A

Review

For a company that already has someone who can fix what we find.

Safety rules installed in your code
Regular reviews and a scorecard
Engineer calls, scheduled around each review
Progress measured every time
You fix everything yourselves
You run your own hosting

Be honest with yourself: this only works if someone really has the hours. Most small companies think they do.

Option B · most common

Review and fix

For a company with strong builders and no engineering team. This is the setup Viya uses.

Everything in Review
We fix problems above a level you agree with us
We run your hosting: releases, passwords, backups and tested restores
Engineer calls when you need them, answered within one working day
Spot checks that key features actually work
Your team’s own work gets better with each review
The core design gets corrected after the fact, not planned up front

Fine for most businesses. Costly if your software is complex underneath.

Option C

Design, review and fix

For software that handles customer money, sensitive data, regulated calculations or anything to do with safety.

Everything in Review and fix
We design the foundations first: logins, data structure, keeping customers separate, and money handling
Full checks that every major feature works
A named expert signs off your calculations, and that sign-off is re-checked
Your privacy and access rules written down

Costs most up front and takes longest to start. Costs least over three years.

Nothing built yet? Start with Option C, then move to Option B once the foundations are in. Foundation decisions cost almost nothing before the first line of code, and a lot after the thousandth.

You choose who builds each system

Your team, us, or both. You decide one system at a time, and you can change your mind.

Your team builds

Best where your team knows the work and someone wants to build. This is why the model costs less than an engineering department.

We build

A fixed-price project, built in your accounts to the same rules your team uses. You get our own review report at handover, at no charge.

Both

We build the foundations. Your team builds the everyday features on top. The most common setup for important systems.

You never pay us to review our own work. Anything we build is reviewed by someone other than the person who built it, and you get that report unedited. After handover, we stay on with active support, because software your team keeps changing needs someone watching it. If you’d rather have an outside company review our work, we’ll support that.

04Who does what

Projects like this usually go wrong at the handoff, not in the work. So here’s the handoff.

Your side

What you bring

At least one person actually building.
One named contact who owns the relationship and has the authority to say no. They don’t need to be technical.
Access to the code and hosting we’re working on.
Agreement that a failed check blocks a change. If it can be waved through, it isn’t a safeguard.
A named expert wherever calculations or regulations are involved.
Decisions. Putting off a fix is fine, but it needs an owner and a date.

Our side

What we bring

The rules, installed in your code, with an owner named for each.
The reviews and reports, on schedule, in the same format.
A scorecard that re-checks every earlier finding against the actual fix.
Automatic checks for anything that happens twice.
An engineer to call before risky decisions, and when your team is stuck.
Hands to fix and run things, in Options B and C.
Whole systems built to the same standard, when you want them.
A clear note on anything we couldn’t check, so you never assume it was checked.

05The first 90 days

What happens, and what you have at the end of each stage.

Days 1 to 10

Baseline

We review everything and tell you where you stand.

You get: a baseline report and a prioritized fix list

Days 10 to 30

Foundations

The rules go into your code. The first automatic checks go live. Serious problems start getting fixed.

You get: automatic checks on every change

Days 30 to 60

Routine

Reviews run on schedule. Your contact settles into the routine. Hosting work lands, if it’s included.

You get: a routine that runs without chasing

Days 60 to 90

Evidence

The second and third reviews show the trend, and we tell you what it would take to review less often.

You get: numbers, not opinions

Everything we set up lives in your accounts. If you stop working with us, all of it keeps working. A service you can’t leave isn’t a service. It’s a dependency.

06Proof

Where this comes from.

We didn’t design this in a workshop. It comes from our work with Viya Constructions, a construction company whose small team, none of them engineers, builds its own software with AI coding tools.

What changed

In the first reviews, new features went out with serious flaws. Within weeks, new features went out with customer data properly separated and money calculated correctly, because the rules were sitting where the work happens.

An engineer costs the same every month. This gets cheaper, because the quality of what your team builds keeps rising.

What we also learned

Days after the platform’s best review, a different kind of check, asking “does this feature actually do what the screen says?”, found problems that should have stopped a release. Both reviews were right. They measured different things. So now we check both. Software can pass every security check and still not work, and anyone who doesn’t tell you that isn’t being straight with you.

Read the Self-Build for Viya story

The same standard applies to every Bleno workflow we build. If what you need is AI that works the way your company works, start with Bleno instead.

How Bleno works

07Pricing

How pricing works.

We set prices after the baseline review, because they depend on how much software you have and how risky it is, not on how many features you want.

Baseline review:A one-time fixed fee. Small and self-contained, and the sensible place to start.
Ongoing reviews:Monthly. Covers the reviews, rules, scorecard and engineer calls. Depends on how many code repositories we cover and how often.
Fixing:A set number of engineering days a month. Unused days are shown clearly, never billed quietly.
Running your hosting:Monthly. Your cloud costs stay in your own accounts.
Building a system:A fixed-price project, including our review at handover and active support afterward.
Feature checks:Priced per major feature, scheduled when you need them.

Two promises. We never resell hosting or tools: those bills stay in your name. And as your team improves, reviews spread out, so the monthly cost is designed to go down. If it hasn’t gone down by year two, something isn’t working, and we should talk about it.

Want the full detail of what’s included and what isn’t? Ask us, and we’ll walk you through it on a call.

08Questions

Common questions

Our team isn’t technical. How can they build real software?

They usually already are, and that’s why people call us. The AI writes the code. Your people know what the software should do, which is the part you can’t hand to an outsider without losing something. What they can’t judge is whether it’s safe, or whether it really works versus just looking like it does. That’s what we add.

Isn’t this just outsourced code review?

Code review finds problems. This stops them coming back, because anything that shows up twice gets an automatic check. A review that finds the same thing every month has failed. Ours is designed to run out of things to find. And your team can call our engineer before building the risky parts, which code review doesn’t offer.

Can you just build some of our systems?

Yes, and most companies need that. The team with a keen builder isn’t the same as payroll or tax reporting. We build those in your accounts, to the same rules, as a separate fixed-price project.

If you build it, who checks it?

Someone other than the person who built it, using the same review. You get the report unedited, free. You never pay us to check our own work, and you can bring in an outside reviewer if you prefer.

How is this different from hiring a tech lead?

A good one is excellent, and we won’t talk you out of it. But they’re expensive, slow to find, take months to learn your business, and take the knowledge with them when they leave. This gives you a team of reviewers, written rules, and a cost that falls over time. If you can afford both, they work well together.

What happens if we stop?

Everything stays in your accounts and keeps working: the rules, the checks, the documentation. You lose the reviews and, depending on your option, our hands. That’s the goal: that one day you don’t need us.

Will this slow us down?

A little, for the first few weeks, because checks start blocking things that used to slip through. After that, it usually speeds you up. Most lost time in a small team goes on fixing things that broke. And we never decide what you build or in what order.

Start with a baseline review.

Before you commit to anything, we review what you have and tell you where you stand. Fixed fee, and the report is yours whatever you decide next, including deciding not to work with us.