Questions we hear most.

Ship Check (from $497) is for a smaller personal or SMB app that is mostly built and needs targeted fixes, hosting, and deployment. Vibe Rescue ($4,800 flat, 14 days) is full production hardening for a real app with real users coming, on any platform. A Build engagement is custom work from the ground up: a Prototype Sprint, a Signature Site, or a Flagship Build, priced flat with a written quote in 48 hours.

If your app is built but something is broken and you just need it live, start with Ship Check. If it works but needs to hold up before real traffic, a compliance audit, or a serious customer, that is Vibe Rescue. If you need something built from scratch, that is a Build engagement. If you are not sure, send a brief and we will route you to the right one, or tell you plainly if none of them fit.

Send a GitHub link, a zip, or a brief. We review it ourselves, ask any clarifying questions in writing, and come back with a written scope and a flat number within two business days. No discovery call. No statement of work theater. If the number works, we start the day you say go. If not, you keep the audit.

No. Two paragraphs, a Loom, a sketch, or a memo is enough to start. We read it ourselves and ask any clarifying questions in writing. You do not need a finished PRD to get a real answer from us.

You get one number for the agreed scope, in writing, before we touch a line of code. No hourly billing, no mystery line items. If scope changes, we quote the change up or down in writing before doing the work. The number you agree to is the number you pay.

Scope inside any tier can be adjusted up or down, in writing, before we touch anything. If something new comes up mid-engagement, we quote the change before doing the work. Nothing gets added to your bill without your written sign-off first.

Ship Check: 3 to 7 business days. Vibe Rescue: 14 days. Prototype Sprint: 5 to 7 days. Signature Site: 7 to 10 days. Flagship Build: 2 to 5 weeks depending on complexity and compliance posture. Retainers activate the day the engagement ships. Comparable traditional agency timelines run 8 to 16 weeks.

Every Build and Vibe Rescue engagement ships with 30 days of free fixes for anything that surfaces post-handoff. You also get a written runbook so you can run it without us. (Ship Check carries a shorter 5 to 7 day fix window scoped to regressions from our work.)

After day 30, most clients move into a Cardinal retainer for hosting, monitoring, AI search visibility, content, and ongoing development. Some take the keys and run entirely. Both are fine. We built it to last either way.

Three named founders and a senior US-based team. Every engagement is led by a named senior engineer from scoping through handoff. No junior handoffs. No account manager sitting between you and the people doing the work.

AI handles code generation, content drafting, layout exploration, and parallel engineering work through our Worktree orchestration. Cardinal engineers handle strategy, design direction, brand voice, security review, regulated compliance, and QA. The result is custom-coded delivery in 2 to 5 weeks instead of 8 to 16, at pricing that reflects how we work, not what traditional agencies charge to cover their overhead.

Six proprietary tools that ship with every Cardinal engagement: Pulse (health monitoring), Triage (feedback management), Redactor (AI privacy guard), Worktree (parallel-agent delivery orchestration), Bug Catcher (one-click in-app feedback), and Scout (AI sales and support agent).

Scout is Cardinal's custom AI sales and support agent. Brand-trained on your business, grounded in retrieval-augmented generation so it does not hallucinate, and CRM-integrated at Accelerator tier and above. Scout qualifies leads, books appointments, handles FAQs, and routes humans when escalation is needed. Compliance-aware (HIPAA, attorney-client) at Apex tier. Every Flagship Build includes Scout.

Yes. Cardinal's leadership team has years of production experience under HIPAA (mental health, anesthesia), attorney-client privilege (plaintiff-side legal technology), SEC compliance (EDGAR filing and regulatory reporting), and regulated document workflows. That experience is proof of the standard we build to, not a limit on who we work with. BAAs and DPAs available on request.

Yes. Every site or application we build ships with WCAG 2.1 AA baseline. Ongoing monitoring, quarterly spot-checks, and a legal-ready compliance statement are available as a retainer add-on starting at $149 per month. Cardinal does not sell standalone ADA audits.

HIPAA (with BAA available on request), attorney-client privilege requirements, SEC EDGAR-adjacent workflows, and GDPR (with DPA available on request). Compliance posture is configured during the build, not retrofitted after the fact. For full detail on how we handle code and data, see our trust page.

Cardinal's proprietary Redactor tool sits between client applications and any external LLM call, swapping personally identifiable data for stable tokens before any external model processes it. PII does not leave the client's environment unredacted during a Cardinal engagement. See our trust page for the full data-handling standard.

Engagements are flat-fee project deliverables: Prototype Sprint, Vibe Rescue, Signature Site, Flagship Build. They produce a working artifact in 1 to 5 weeks. Retainers are ongoing monthly programs that pick up after the engagement ships: hosting, monitoring, AI search visibility, content, the AI agent, and ongoing development.

Foundation, Accelerator, and Apex. Each is a flat monthly fee covering hosting, monitoring, and a level of ongoing development and AI search visibility that steps up by tier. Accelerator adds CRM-integrated Scout and content; Apex adds compliance-aware support for regulated work. Full inclusions are on the Retainers page.

No. After the 30-day fix window, most clients move into a retainer and some take the keys and run entirely. Both are good outcomes. We built it to last either way.