Nearly everything here bends without me: your own fields, your own words, your own panels, your own reports. But one day you'll need something the switches can't reach — a calculation only your trade does, a form your state demands, a report your funder wants in their shape. That's not a support ticket you'll lose. That's a conversation, and it starts the same way everything else does.
You don't choose the path — I do, after I've read it, and I'll tell you which and why in plain words. Guessing wrong in your favour costs me a day. Guessing wrong in mine would cost you trust, so the tie goes to you.
Describe the thing in your own words, with a screenshot of how you do it today. Half a paragraph is plenty. Free, and never rushed.
Often the answer is "you can already do that" — and I'll show you where, at which point this costs you nothing and ends here.
"Three other people have asked for a version of this, so I'm building it and you're not paying" — or "this one's yours alone, here's what it'd take."
Pictures of the actual screen before a line of it is built, going back and forth until you say "yes, that." This is where custom work usually goes wrong, so it's the part I refuse to skip.
The estimate becomes tasks, the tasks become tracked hours, and the bill is what the hours were — lower than quoted if it went quicker, and never higher without asking you first.
Not a script someone runs for you at month end. A real panel, in the sidebar, with your own fields and words on it, that upgrades along with everything else.
Most software promises customization and then quotes you six weeks, because bending it means forking it. Nothing here works that way. Every module is already an Instrument that can be switched on for one workspace and not another, every project already chooses its own panels and fields, and every screen already renames itself to your words. A custom Instrument isn't a special case — it's more of the thing this product is already made of.
Turning something on for you and nobody else is a normal Tuesday here, not an architecture project.
Your request, the mockups, the estimate, the change, the release note and the invoice all hang off the ticket you opened.
Yours is built the same way mine is, so it's covered by the same tests and ships on the same flights. No orphan branch.
Whatever it records exports with everything else, in formats that outlive me. Custom never means locked in.
I'm one person. If a thing needed a second person to keep alive, taking your money for it would be a lie about next year.
An Instrument is a panel, not a platform migration. If what you need is really a different product, I'll tell you that instead of quoting it.
No productivity scoring, no location tracking, no surveillance dashboards — not for any amount. That's not a negotiating position.
Nothing, ever, and I answer every one. A good half of these end with me pointing at a setting you hadn't found, which costs you a ticket and about a day of waiting.
Then you keep it free for as long as you're here — that's the deal, and it's written on your ticket the day I decide. You took the risk of asking early.
Yes. If a thing is your competitive edge, say so up front and it stays yours — that's a Path B conversation regardless of how useful I think it'd be to others.
The estimate says, in weeks, and it's honest about the fact that I have a day job. Small things are days. I'd rather quote you slow and be early.
Your data exports like everything else, and if you come back the Instrument is still switched on. Dormant, not deleted — same as the rest of your workspace.
Yes, and I read them myself. I'd rather that than have you describe your workflow to me with the interesting parts taken out.
You don't need to know whether it's a setting, a report, or a whole Instrument — working that out is my half of this. Just tell me what you're doing by hand at the moment, and roughly how often it makes you sigh.