Frontier
Custom Engineering
Some of the most valuable work a business needs has no product category and no vendor selling it.
We take on the awkward, specific problems: a browser extension that removes a daily task, a desktop utility for a team of four, a device integration nobody has documented, a data migration between two systems that disagree, or an inherited codebase that everyone is afraid to change.
These engagements are scoped tightly and quoted in phases, because the honest position on genuinely novel work is that the second phase should be priced after the first has taught us something. We would rather revise a number in the open than pad the original one.
Scope
What the work includes.
Written into the scope before anything starts, so there is nothing to discover on the invoice.
Browser extensions
Chrome, Firefox and Edge extensions, including Web3 wallet interaction and enterprise deployment.
Desktop and internal tools
Cross-platform utilities for the small teams whose specific problem no product addresses.
Hardware and device integration
Serial, USB and network interfaces to scanners, printers, biometric devices and instrumentation.
Data extraction and migration
One-off or scheduled extraction and reconciliation between systems that were never designed to meet.
Rescue work on inherited code
A written assessment of what you have, what will fail first, and whether repair or replacement is genuinely cheaper.
Questions
Before you commit.
In phases. A short, fixed-price discovery establishes whether and how it can be done, and produces a written finding. The build is then quoted against what that discovery learned. Quoting the whole thing up front on genuinely novel work means either padding the number heavily or revising it later, and neither is a good way to start.
Yes, and it is a large part of what we do. We begin with a paid assessment — what exists, what state it is in, what will break first — and give you a straight recommendation on repair versus replacement, including when the answer is that it is fine and needs leaving alone.
Yes. Anything designed to deceive users, scrape data in breach of terms or law, or evade a regulator. We also decline projects where we think the client would be better served by an existing product, rather than take the budget and build a worse version of it.
Also in Frontier
Ready to scope custom Engineering?
Tell us what the system has to do. You get a fixed written scope and a quote that does not move after you sign.