How is custom software cheaper than hiring an agency?

AI now does most of the build, so a custom tool typically costs a fraction of what an agency would charge - often up to 20× less. An agency's price pays for a whole team's hours and months of work; with AI, one person can deliver the same tool in a fraction of the time.

How long does it take to build?

Weeks, not months. You get a working prototype on your real data within days, then a production tool tuned until it disappears into the routine - saving hours every week once it's live.

Do I own the software, or is it a subscription?

You own it outright - the code, documentation, and keys, built on a standard, well-documented stack any developer can maintain. No monthly SaaS fees, no vendor lock-in.

What kinds of tools can you build?

Custom internal tools, workflow automation that removes repetitive busywork, tools that turn your documents and data into answers, and honest AI advisory on where AI actually pays off.

Small and medium businesses that have outgrown spreadsheets and off-the-shelf SaaS but don't want the cost or overhead of a full agency. Remote, working with clients worldwide.

Who actually builds it?

Valters Cakss - an AI Solutions Architect with nearly six years leading delivery at Scandiweb, most recently as AI Competence Center Lead. One person, end to end: the person you talk to is the person who builds.

What about changes and maintenance later?

You own the code outright, so there's no lock-in - it's yours to keep. For changes, improvements, or ongoing support, you work directly with me.

How two custom tools made our feedback loop 5x faster

Drawn to the same time scale: the old loop filled hours of manual steps; the tools do the same job in the cobalt sliver - about five times faster.

On MyPhysio - a physiotherapy app built by two people - we made the loop between "we noticed something" and "it's fixed" roughly 5x faster: from hours down to minutes. Two small custom tools did it, each built in under a day. Here's the before and the after.

Before: a decision took hours

The old way wasn't one thing - it was a pile of them. Go through the app by hand and take notes. Write them up in a doc. Keep a spreadsheet to track what's outstanding. Hold a meeting to agree what actually matters. By the time anything was decided, an afternoon was gone - and the detail a developer actually needs (the exact click, the console error, the failing request) had usually been lost in the retelling. You'd end up with "the booking page feels off" and a round-trip to find out what that meant.

After: minutes, end to end

Now the same loop is four steps and runs in minutes:

Capture - our QA recorder grabs the screen, your voice, every click, and the errors underneath, into one shareable link. What would take a qualified QA tester hours, in the detail that makes a bug fixable on the first try, captured in minutes. No meeting required.
Prioritise - the feedback lands in our own PM tool, a lean Kanban tracker, where we decide if and when it's worth doing (and add items by hand too).
Push to Claude Code - change a ticket's status and a coding agent picks it up and makes the change.
Review - we check the result and feed it back into the same loop.

One loop: capture feedback, plan it, an agent builds it, you review - and round again.

We stay in the loop at every step - nothing happens we didn't direct. And because it all runs through one tracker, we keep the full history of every change, a roadmap of what's next, and the dependencies between pieces. Classic software discipline - backlog, review, traceability - at a fraction of the usual overhead.

Why it pays off, even for two people

Each tool took under a day to build. That's the part that surprises people: they didn't need to save hundreds of hours to be worth it. Cutting a loop you run every single day from hours to minutes compounds faster than any one-off saving. The build paid for itself in the first week.

That's the real case for custom tools on small projects. It isn't headcount you're replacing - it's friction. A tighter loop lets a two-person team move like a much bigger one: feedback captured in minutes, planned in one place, built by an agent you're steering, reviewed, and round again.

If your team is small and the gap between "we noticed something" and "it's fixed" is measured in days, that's exactly what a custom tool closes. Start a project and we'll look at where your loop is slowest first.