The Notus is a product studio. We design, build, and ship software: our own products and yours. Bring an idea, a prototype, or the build you're stuck on, and we take it to production, with real auth, real payments, real AI engineering, and a codebase you own. Engineering, brand, and content under one roof.
We've shipped four products end-to-end. Two are our own, built on our own money: Song Cage, a songwriting app on web, iOS, Android, and inside DAWs, and The Curious Thing, which turns a photo of your kid into a printed fantasy jigsaw. Two were built for client founders, taken from an AI-generated starting point to production. Your project gets the same standard: real auth, real payments, AI pipelines that hold, the security passes no AI tool runs for you, and a codebase a second developer can actually maintain. Song Cage launched to 92 signups in its first month with zero ad spend. Fixed scope, fixed price, you own the code outright. No retainer, no platform subscription, no hourly billing from us.
Bring an idea, a prototype, or an AI build that mostly works. Notus takes the fractional CTO seat, designs and builds what's missing, and ships it: real auth, real payments, real database design, AI calls that don't burn your runway, performance, and the security passes no AI tool runs for you. You ship to real users. You own the code.
A custom website redesign, or a brand-new site from scratch. Our in-house team handles brand, design, and engineering. Webflow, WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix get migrated to custom code you actually own. Then we set you up to keep editing it yourself by talking to Claude or Cursor, with guardrails so nothing in production breaks while you do.
Song Cage is our own songwriting app, designed and built from a blank file: one React codebase shipped to web, iOS, Android, and inside DAWs. The Curious Thing turns a photo of your kid into a printed fantasy jigsaw, from AI portrait to doorstep. Every standard we sell runs on our own products daily, where we can't blame anyone else.
Logo, colour system, typography, brand guide. Standalone if you only need brand work, or bundled into any site or app build. Designers, not auto-generators.
Most dev shops bolt on Stripe and call it done. We've shipped real AI in production: Groq, OpenAI, Replicate, Parallel AI, BM25 search, vector retrieval, multi-model pipelines that don't crash and don't bleed cost.
Once it's shipped, we take it further. A done-for-you engine built on your real product: demo video, social across up to nine channels, and blog posts engineered to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude. We run it daily on our own products. See the content engine →
Portfolios full of logos you can't verify. Case studies with no live product behind them. Code written by rotating contractors you'll never meet. By the time you find out what a team can actually ship, you've already paid for the answer.
Song Cage and The Curious Thing are ours: designed, engineered, launched, and run by the same hands that build client work. When we say real auth, real payments, and AI pipelines that hold, you don't have to take it on faith. Sign up and check.
The same standard runs through client work: Cardify went from a founder idea to a live marketplace, Pulse from a Google AI Studio shell to a 15-worker production system. Real products, in production, with real users, not demos that fall over the first time someone hits them.
Song Cage: blank file → three platforms → shipped and live.
Our songwriting app, designed and built from a blank file: one React codebase shipped to web, iOS, Android, and inside DAWs. Cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude for its category within seven days of launch, with zero ad spend.
Personalized photo puzzles for kids: a parent uploads a photo, our AI repaints their kid as the star of a fantasy world, and a premium jigsaw prints and ships. First commit to live paid pipeline in five days.
Read the case study →
An AI trading-card platform built for its founders from an idea: a custom multi-model image pipeline, a 3D card-slab viewer, a full creator marketplace, and Stripe plus crypto payments.
Read the case study →Also shipped: Pulse. A client build taken from a Google AI Studio shell to a 15-worker production system across 107 topic verticals. Its founder paused the product in mid-2026 to refocus on his core business; the system ran unattended for the six months before that.
All four case studies →
When you hire The Notus for engineering, you hire me. I read your codebase, make the architecture calls, and write the code that ships. I've designed and shipped four products end-to-end, two of them my own (Song Cage and The Curious Thing, both live and taking orders) and two for client founders (Cardify and Pulse), taken from an AI-generated starting point to production. The person who scopes your project is the person who builds it, on the other end of every call.
Send us your repo, your live demo, your AI-tool project link, or just the idea. We read it, run it, and send back a written estimate within 48 hours: what's in scope, what's risky, what it takes to ship. Free. No call required.
You get a real engineer's read on your codebase.
Fixed scope, fixed price. App side: auth, payments, real database, AI pipelines that hold, performance, security. Site side: brand, design, custom code, AI-legible markup. The same standards we hold our own products to. We share progress weekly and hand back code you actually own.
3–4 weeks for prototype-to-production. 2–3 weeks for sites. 6–12 weeks for full builds.
You get the code, not a login to our platform. Sites ship with an AI-editable handoff, so you keep editing yourself by talking to Claude or Cursor. Clean markup, schema, and llms.txt are baked in, so AI tools can read the site too. Add the content engine later if you want more reach. Or don't.
You own the code outright. No platform lock-in, no retainer.
Bring an idea, a prototype, or an AI build that mostly works. Notus takes the fractional CTO seat, designs and builds what's missing, and ships it to real users. Fixed scope, fixed price. You own the code outright. No platform lock-in, no SaaS subscription to us.
A custom website redesign, or a brand-new site from scratch. Our in-house team handles brand, design, and engineering. Then we set you up to keep editing the site yourself by talking to Claude or Cursor, with the guardrails that make it safe to do so on a live business. Every page also ships as clean, fast, standards-based markup that people and AI tools alike can read.
"It's hard to pay a dev agency for two weeks of work knowing I already built most of it in a weekend."
We hear this. So we don't charge for what AI already did, and we don't charge for what a template builder already gave you either. We charge a fixed price for the part neither of them could do. We've shipped four of these end-to-end, twice on our own money.
Standalone brand work if you only need a logo, palette, and brand guide. Or bundled into any site or app build. Same designers, same standards.
No prototype yet. You have an idea and validated demand, not code. We design and build the whole product end-to-end, including the AI engineering most rescue shops can't deliver.
Once your product ships, we run the content operation that gets it found: demo video made from your real interface, social across up to nine channels with verified delivery, and blog posts engineered to be cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude.
Send us the repo, the URL, or just the idea. We'll tell you exactly what it takes. Free, in 48 hours.
Starting from scratch, holding a prototype, stuck mid-build, or escaping Webflow. We'll send back a written estimate either way.
Same shop migrates them all. No monthly platform fees from us. You own the code, and it stays editable by you and Claude after launch without a developer on retainer.
Validated demand, no code yet. We design and build the whole product end-to-end, brand included. It's how our own products started.
Lovable, Cursor, Claude, or Bolt got you most of the way. We finish the auth, payments, security, and AI-cost work and ship it to real users.
Your site fought you for the last time. We migrate to custom Astro on Cloudflare, then set you up to edit it yourself by talking to Claude. Fast, clean, yours.
No site, or one that no longer fits. Our team handles brand, design, and engineering. One bill, one team, one timeline.
Send us what you have: repo, URL, or just the idea. Free 48-hour written estimate either way.
App side, site side, both. We'll tell you what it takes. No call required.
Yes. That's one of our two main service lines. Send us a repo link or a deployed URL, and we'll read it, run it, and send back a written estimate within 48 hours: what's in scope, what's risky, what it'll take to finish. The estimate is free.
Yes, this is the other half of what we do. We rebuild your site in custom Astro on Cloudflare, with brand, design, and AI-legible markup baked in. You keep your content and your domain; you lose the monthly platform fees and the template constraints. Every migration ships with an AI-editable handoff so you can keep updating the site yourself by talking to Claude or Cursor after we hand it back. Start at $4,000, productized.
Yes, and this is the part most agencies skip. Webflow and WordPress can't be safely edited by AI tools today: Webflow has no API for agents, WordPress hides content in serialized database blobs that page builders own. A custom Astro site is the opposite. Claude Code and Cursor can read the whole codebase, understand the design system, and ship changes through plain English. We set you up to do that safely. The handoff includes a project-tuned CLAUDE.md that tells Claude what your brand rules, components, and no-touch zones are; Claude Code hooks that run lint and tests on every change; preview URLs on every edit so you see the change before it goes live; one-click rollback when something does go wrong; and a 60-minute walkthrough so you know exactly how to prompt for edits. Founders are typing things like 'add a testimonial section under the pricing block' and shipping it themselves, same day, without us in the loop.
Both. Our in-house team handles brand, identity, and visual design, standalone if you only need brand work (from $800), or bundled into any site or app build. We don't subcontract this to anyone.
Yes, and it's the best proof we can offer. Two of the four products we've shipped are our own, built on our own money and live today: Song Cage, a songwriting app on web, iOS, Android, and inside DAWs, and The Curious Thing, which turns a photo of your kid into a printed fantasy jigsaw puzzle. Client work gets the same architecture, the same security passes, and the same production standards we run on our own products. You don't have to take our standards on faith; you can sign up and check.
Three things. First: we ship our own products (Song Cage, The Curious Thing), not just client work, so we know what production actually demands and you can verify us by using them. Second: most shops bolt on Stripe and call it done. We've shipped real AI engineering (Groq, OpenAI, Replicate, BM25 search, multi-model pipelines, real audio/3D/payments work). Third: you own everything outright and can keep editing it yourself with Claude or Cursor after we hand it off, and every build ships clean enough for AI tools to read too. We charge for production and real AI engineering, and you can verify all of it by using our own products.
Yes, fixed. After the free estimate we send a scope and a number. That number doesn't change unless you ask for new scope. If we find the codebase is in worse shape than the estimate suggested, that's on us, not you. We'd rather lose money on one project than turn into the surprise-invoice agency. We've shipped enough of these to scope accurately.
We don't guarantee specific rankings. Nobody controls AI tools from the outside. What we can say: every site we build is structured the right way (schema, llms.txt, AI-legible markup), and Song Cage went from launch to cited by ChatGPT, Perplexity, and Claude in seven days with no paid media. We'll be honest up front about realistic expectations for your specific market.
Prototype-to-production work runs 3–4 weeks. Larger rebuilds or full custom builds run 6–12 weeks. Marketing sites ship in 2–3 weeks. We'll agree on the timeline before we start, and you review and approve work weekly, so you're never surprised at launch.
Take It to Production starts at $7,500 and runs to ~$15,000 for tougher rebuilds. Full custom SaaS builds are quoted per scope, typically $25K and up. The custom marketing site is $4,000 fixed, productized. The content engine builds from $2,900 and runs from $1,200/month; a blog-only retainer is $400/month flat. Brand design starts at $800. You own everything outright. No SaaS subscriptions, no platform lock-in, no ongoing fees from us.
No. You tell us what the product is meant to do and where you're stuck. We handle the code, the infrastructure, the AI work, the hosting, the security. All of it. Your job is to review what we ship and approve it. That's it.
Generally no. We take cash so we can stay independent and keep our quality bar high. If you have a genuinely exceptional product and want to talk about a small equity component on top of cash, we'll consider it case by case.
Send a repo link, your current site URL, or just describe what you have. We read it, run it, and send back a written estimate: what's in scope, what's risky, what it'll take to ship (app or site). Free. No call required.
We'll send your written estimate to your inbox within 48 hours. It'll come from hello@thenotus.com — add it to your contacts so it lands.