Service
Stop guessing whether your idea will work. We build clickable, usable prototypes in days — so you can test with real users before spending a quarter on the real thing.
Not Figma mockups. Not a deck with screenshots. Actual functioning software your users can log into, click around, and break. AI-accelerated development gets you to something real in days or weeks, cheap enough to throw away if the hypothesis doesn't hold — and solid enough to become the backbone of the full build if it does.
Who this is for
You have an idea you believe in, but the next step is real money — a seed round, a year of runway, a team. A working prototype in front of ten real users will tell you more than three months of customer discovery decks ever will.
You have a hypothesis for a new feature, module, or product line. Pulling engineers off the roadmap to build it costs a quarter. A parallel prototype team lets you validate — or kill — the idea without disrupting delivery on what's already committed.
You're assessing a new concept — internal, portfolio company, or acquisition target. A deck doesn't survive first contact with real users. A working prototype tells you, quickly and cheaply, whether the underlying thesis holds.
What we build
A prototype isn't a small version of a product. It's a testing instrument. Each capability below is a lever we pull based on the specific hypothesis you need to test.
Not mockups, not wireframes. A browser URL your user types in, a real interface that responds to real input, and flows that actually go somewhere. Users can't tell it apart from a finished product until they look under the hood.
Accounts, auth, persistence — enough of a backend that ten testers can use it concurrently without stepping on each other. Realistic seed data so the thing looks alive when they first log in, not like an empty demo.
Some tests need a real Stripe charge, a real Slack message, a real database write. Others just need the appearance of one. We pick per-integration: stub where stubbing is honest, wire it live where the test requires it.
v1 on day three. v2 after the first user test. v5 inside two weeks. The whole point is to be changing shape fast based on what users do — not to polish one version forever. We schedule for three to five iteration cycles, not one big reveal.
Event tracking, session replay, and a dashboard you can share. When your five test users drop off at the same step, we can show you exactly where and how long they stared at the screen first. Gut feel isn't data; we instrument so you have data.
If the idea works and you green-light the real build, the prototype shouldn't be dead weight. We write the parts that matter cleanly — typed, documented, tested — so your engineering team can absorb it as a starting point rather than rebuild from scratch.
Outcomes
A prototype's job is to make a decision cheaper and more honest. The scenarios below are the three patterns we see most often — including the one where the answer is "no."
Kill the bad idea early
Prototype goes in front of ten target users. Three sign up, none come back. The hypothesis was wrong, and $40k of prototype spend prevented a $500k wrong turn. The best outcome is often a clean "no" backed by evidence you can show investors.
Example scenario.
Validate before committing
A parallel prototype tests the hypothesis with fifteen existing customers over three weeks. Engagement data, recorded sessions, and pricing-intent signals give the product team a clear "yes" before they pull the trigger on a quarter of engineering capacity.
Example scenario.
Ship faster when it works
When the hypothesis holds and the team moves into full build, the prototype's core models, integrations, and key flows carry forward. The real build starts weeks ahead of a from-scratch effort, because the hard product questions are already answered.
Example scenario.
How we work
We pin down exactly what question the prototype is answering. Not "is this idea good" — too vague — but "will a small-business owner actually sign up and configure this in under ten minutes." Output is a written scope: the hypothesis, the metric that settles it, the flows we'll build, and what we're deliberately leaving out.
We ship a usable v1 within the first week. Then we put it in front of real users — your existing customers, a target list you source, or a panel we help you recruit. We iterate on what they actually do, not what we predicted they'd do. Expect three to five versions over two to three weeks.
We write up what we learned: the data, the patterns in user behavior, the parts that worked, the parts that didn't. You get a clear recommendation — ship it, kill it, or pivot on a specific axis. If you're moving forward, we hand off clean code and a build plan your engineering team can run with.
FAQ
It depends on the part. The scaffolding — the parts we wrote fast to make the flow work — is usually throwaway, and that's intentional. The parts that represent real product decisions (data model, core business logic, key integrations) we write cleanly enough to carry forward. We're explicit in the handoff about which is which, so your engineering team isn't guessing.
Enough that a user can't visually tell it's a prototype. Not enough to handle a thousand concurrent users, edge-case error paths, or the full admin surface. We scope to the happy path plus the two or three failure cases that matter for the test. If someone tells you they can ship a production-ready product in three weeks, they're either lying or shipping something that will embarrass you in month two.
Yes, if you want us to. We can recruit testers, run moderated sessions, synthesize the findings, and write up what we learned. Many clients prefer to run the sessions themselves because they want the raw exposure to users — we're happy either way, and we'll tune the prototype's instrumentation to match.
Three paths. One: you kill the idea based on what you learned, we write up the decision memo, and you've saved yourself a bad quarter. Two: you iterate further, either with us or internally. Three: you greenlight the full build, and we either continue on it (as Agentic Product Development) or hand off cleanly to your team. All three are normal outcomes; none of them require you to pre-commit to what comes next.
Defaults: Next.js or SvelteKit on the frontend, Postgres for data, a Python or Node API, deployed on Vercel, Fly, or Cloudflare. For AI-centric prototypes we reach for the Anthropic, OpenAI, or an open-source model depending on what the prototype needs to do. We'll match your eventual stack if you have one; we won't pick exotic tech that makes handoff harder.
Most land between $15k and $60k. A tightly scoped one-flow prototype with stubbed integrations lands on the low end in about two weeks. A broader MVP with real auth, a few live integrations, and three to five iteration cycles over a month lands on the high end. We quote a fixed range after the scope phase so you're not watching a meter.
Related services
Tell us the hypothesis, who you want in front of it, and what decision it needs to inform. We'll come back with a scope, a fixed cost range, and a two-to-four-week timeline — usually within two business days.