Your team runs on an app nobody can maintain.
Someone built it with AI. It worked, so people started using it, and now part of your business runs on code nobody has opened since. I read it, tell you what will break and what it leaves exposed, then turn it into something you own outright. Your team keeps working the whole time.
30,000+ hours reading other people's code · Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor, Claude and the rest · NDA and GDPR DPA as standard
It stays yours. I won't talk you into a rebuild you don't need, and I won't leave you dependent on me to keep it running. I make what you already have hold up, then stay only as long as that's worth paying for.
It worked. That was the problem.
Someone built it in a week. It saved the team hours, so everyone started using it, and nobody stopped to ask what happens the day it breaks. It's infrastructure now. It was never built like infrastructure.
The person who built it has left. Nobody else has ever opened the code.
It holds real customer data, and nobody is certain where that data physically sits.
Nobody will touch it. Any change risks breaking the thing half the team needs on Monday.
Someone saw a record they had no business seeing. Or you've worked out that they easily could.
Starting over is the expensive answer. Owning it properly is the right one.
Read it. Fix it. Keep it running.
You get a straight answer before you commit to anything. No unpaid discovery call, no proposal theatre. We talk once the report is in your hand, not before.
Show me what you've got
A repo, a login, or a screen recording. We sign the NDA first if you'd prefer. Ten minutes of your time.
The Reality Check, in three days
Finding the problem takes minutes. It's everything else I find on the way that fills the report: what will break, what it exposes, what it costs to run, and what it would cost to own. Then a call to walk you through it, and the report is yours whether you hire me or not.
Fix it, then keep it running
The report doubles as the quote. I do the work for the number written in it and hand it back documented. After that I stay on call only if you want me to.
Prices you can see before you decide.
Half the teams running a tool like this lose six hours a week or more when it misbehaves. Work out what that costs you in salary, then read these numbers.
The Reality Check
A written report on the app your business leans on. What will break, what it exposes, what it costs to run, and what it would cost to own. Plus a call to talk it through.
Make It Yours
Two to four weeks. Off the builder platform and into your own accounts, or secured where it stands. Real access control, data you can find and back up, a deploy nobody dreads, and documentation written for whoever comes next. The number in the report is the number you pay.
Kept Running
The person who already knows your codebase, on call. Changes, fixes, upgrades, and someone watching it who will notice before your customers do. Three sizes at €900, €1,800 and €3,500, depending on how much of me you need. Month to month, cancel whenever.
NDA and a GDPR data processing agreement as standard, signed before you send me anything.
I keep four Kept Running clients at a time. When those seats are full, they're full.
If the Reality Check tells you nothing you didn't already know, you don't pay for it.
You sold it. I'll make sure it holds.
You're shipping AI-built work faster than you ever could before. Every so often one of them hits a wall with the client watching. I'm the engineer you put behind it, under your name.
Your brand, not mine
I don't appear anywhere. No logo on the deck, no name in the repo, and no contact with your client unless you put me there.
Capacity, not a rescue
A fixed monthly block you draw down across whatever's live. Overflow weeks, the deploy nobody wants to own, the client build that got away from you. I work with studios in English and in Italian.
Priced so you keep the margin
From €2,000 a month, fixed in advance, so you can quote your client without guessing. Mutual NDA and a GDPR DPA before anything starts.
Not sure how bad it is?
Tell me what you've got and I'll tell you straight whether you have a problem. Ten minutes, free, no report. The free answer is my opinion. The Reality Check is written evidence you can put in front of a board, an auditor, or a buyer.
Prefer to talk? Message me on WhatsApp.
Open the chat and tell me what you're sitting on. A repo, a login, or a screen recording. I'll come back with what I think you're dealing with.
We can sign an NDA before you send anything
You see the exact number before any work starts
The questions people actually ask.
You do, at every stage, including anything I write. I don't keep a copy, I don't reuse it elsewhere, and no part of it stops working when you stop paying me. If we part ways, you keep the lot, documented.
Both as standard, before you send me anything. A mutual NDA and a GDPR data processing agreement. I'm based in the EU, so the DPA is simply how I work rather than something you have to ask for. If your legal team has its own paperwork, send it over and I'll sign that instead.
Yes. English and Italian, both native. It matters more often than people expect: an Italian team that would rather explain the problem in Italian, an Italian client of yours who needs to be kept comfortable, or paperwork and invoicing that has to work on this side of the border. I am based in the EU, so contracts, VAT and GDPR are all straightforward either way.
A written report you can forward to anyone: what the app really does, what will break and roughly when, what data it holds and who can reach it, what it costs you to run today, and what it would cost to own properly. Then a call to walk through it. If none of it is news to you, you don't pay. The report is yours either way, whether you hire me afterwards or not.
It's the most common version of this. I don't need them, and I don't need documentation. Reading code that nobody can explain is the job. What I do need is access to the app and someone who can tell me what it's supposed to do.
No, and I'd be wary of anyone who tells you otherwise. In most cases IT never approved this thing and has no wish to inherit it. I turn it into something they can actually take on, documented and secured and safe to deploy, or I keep it running alongside them. Either way I work with the people you already have.
Yes. That's a separate way of working: your name on everything, no contact with your client unless you want it, and a fixed monthly block from €2,000. There's a section on it further up the page.
Lovable, Bolt, v0, Replit, Cursor, Claude, Base44 and the rest, plus whatever it's running on. Supabase, Firebase, Vercel, Netlify, AWS, Shopify, WooCommerce. After fifteen years, the platform matters far less than you would expect. If there's code somewhere, I can read it.
A fair question when you're depending on one person. Everything I do lands in your repo and your accounts, with the documentation written as I go. None of it lives in my head or on my machine. Any competent developer can pick it up cold. On a Kept Running plan that documentation is part of what you're paying for, precisely so you're never stuck with me.
Especially. Established companies are where this bites hardest. The tool has spread through a real team, it touches real customer data, and sooner or later somebody will ask a compliance question about it. Most of my work is with businesses that never set out to own custom software at all.
No. Most people take the Reality Check and stop there, or do the project and bring it in house. Kept Running is for the ones where the app keeps changing and it works out cheaper to have someone who already knows it. Month to month, cancel whenever, no notice period. If you aren't getting value from it, leaving should be easy.
Francesco G. Lombardo
Fifteen years and more than 30,000 hours reading messy, undocumented, inconsistent codebases in every language you can name, and making them make sense again. Three times over the 10,000 hours people like to call mastery.
An AI-built app is just a new kind of legacy code. Undocumented, inconsistent, and nobody remembers why it works.
That's the mess I've spent my career reading. The only thing that's changed is how quickly it now gets made.
I work in English and Italian, both native. Useful when your team, your client or your paperwork is Italian.