Before you book
The questions everyone asks.
If yours is not here, ask it on the call. It will probably end up here.
General
You are one person. What happens if you get hit by a bus?
This is the right question to ask any solo shop. The answer is the handoff package: your repo, your infrastructure, standard Rails, a written runbook, and a recorded walkthrough. It is built so that the next developer can pick it up without me. That is not a promise, it is a deliverable you can inspect on day five.
What do you need from me during a run?
About an hour a day, usually less. Day one needs more: access to the repo and hosting, a call to lock scope, and quick answers to questions about what the app is supposed to do. After that you get a daily link and a short end-of-day note, and I need you to look at both so we do not drift for four days.
Do you sign NDAs?
Yes, a reasonable mutual one. If you have your own, send it. If you do not, I have a short one that says the obvious things.
Who owns the code?
You do, from the first commit. It is in your GitHub organization, and I am a collaborator you can remove the moment the run ends. There is no license, no wrapper, and no clause that says otherwise.
Why is the price fixed?
Because an hourly meter rewards the wrong things, and because a five-day run with a locked scope is predictable enough to price. If I misjudge the work, that is my problem, not a change order. If you change the scope mid-run, we write down what moved and what fell off the list, and the price stays put.
Can you work with my existing developer or agency?
Yes, and often that is the best outcome: I do the run, they take it over. The handoff package is written for exactly that person. Agencies that land a Rails project without a Rails bench are welcome to book runs directly.
How do I pay?
Invoice, card or ACH. The diagnostic is paid up front. Runs are half at booking, half at handoff. The Roundhouse bills monthly on the day you start and stops the month you cancel.
The diagnostic and the Rescue Run
Why does the diagnostic cost money?
Because it takes a day of real work and produces something useful on its own: a written assessment of what you have, what is broken, what it would take to fix, and what it would cost. If you go ahead with a run, the fee comes off the price. If I tell you that you do not need me, you get it back.
My app is not in Rails. It is React and Supabase.
Most of them are. The diagnostic tells you honestly whether the app is worth repairing where it stands or worth rebuilding in Rails, and roughly what each path costs. Sometimes the answer is that you should keep what you have and fix three specific things. You get that answer in writing either way.
Can I just keep prompting until it works?
Sometimes, and if that is working you should keep going. It tends to stop working at the point where the problem is structural rather than local: the data model is wrong, the auth is wrong, the thing that breaks is not in the file the model is looking at. If you have been circling the same bug for two weeks, that is the signal.
What if the rescue is bigger than five days?
The diagnostic exists to catch that before money changes hands. It says, in writing, what fits in a five-day run and what does not. If your app needs three runs, you will know that up front and can decide whether to do one, all, or none. Nobody discovers on Thursday that the price doubled.
What happens to my data during a rescue?
Day two of a rescue is a real backup before anything moves. Data stays in your accounts. I do not copy production data to my machine unless the work requires it and you say yes, and then it is deleted when the run ends. It is written into the terms.
The Prototype Run
Can anything real be built in five days?
A working prototype, yes: real data, real accounts, deployed where people can use it. A hardened product serving thousands of paying customers, no, and anyone promising that in a week is selling you a template. Five days gets you something true enough to show investors, test on customers, or hand to a developer. What comes after that is a different conversation with a different price.
Where does it get hosted?
Wherever you want that runs Rails: Heroku, Render, Fly, Hatchbox, or a plain VPS with Kamal. If you have no preference, I pick the boring one that costs the least and write down how to move off it. The account is yours and the bill goes to you.
Do you do the design?
Enough to make it real. Prototypes get a clean, server-rendered interface with Tailwind that a designer can restyle later without a rewrite. If you have designs, I build to them. If you want a brand and a design system, that is a different specialist and I can point you to one.
The Roundhouse
What does it cost after the run?
Nothing, if you want. Take the repo and go. If you want the app kept alive without hiring, the Roundhouse is $1,497 a month and you can cancel any month. Larger builds after a prototype get quoted separately, fixed price, same as everything else.
What is in the Roundhouse each month?
Dependency and security updates applied and deployed. Uptime and error monitoring with a person reading the alerts. Small changes and bug fixes, roughly a day and a half of work in total. A standing call every two weeks. Anything bigger gets a fixed quote, same as a run.
What is not in the Roundhouse?
New features of any size, redesigns, migrations to new platforms, and being on call at 3am. Emergencies get handled, but the Roundhouse is upkeep, not a pager. If you need a pager, say so and we will price it honestly.
Steam it up.
Twenty minutes on a call, free. You show me the app or describe the idea, and I will tell you which run you need, or that you do not need one. No deck, no discovery process, no sales sequence.
Book the 20-minute callbill@atomiclocomotive.com · Austin, Texas · Usually replies same day