Product studio without agency bloat
Big agencies are slow to decide, and a single freelancer can struggle with the full breadth of a product. A studio-sized team sits comfortably between the two.
We bring product thinking and engineering together, so structure, UI, APIs, and the launch checklist live in one plan.
Most people who reach this page are companies evaluating software development agencies. Custom software delivery across web, mobile, AI, and backend systems, owned by senior engineers.
What you get
- Custom software products
- Clear scope and timelines
- Senior engineering quality
- Post-launch support
- One studio accountable for the result
- Design and engineering on the same schedule
- Support available after launch
How engagement works
As your software development agency, we run a shared backlog, design reviews, and engineering sprints, and you keep one point of contact throughout.
- 01
Discover
Goals, constraints, data sources, and success metrics, all settled before we touch architecture or prompts. On software development projects we favour practical architecture over trendy defaults.
- 02
Design
System design, AI/tool boundaries, interface direction, and interaction prototypes. The work for teams in San Francisco stays tied to the outcome you asked for.
- 03
Build
Modern stack, clean architecture, evaluated AI behavior, and iterative demos you can react to. You see progress on the critical path every week.
- 04
Launch
Ship, monitor, harden, and keep improving models, tools, and product after go-live. Nothing here waits on a handover between separate teams.
How we build it, and why
The stack is chosen per project, not applied from a template. For software development agency work these are the defaults, and the reason each one is on the list.
- TypeScript
- types across the whole stack, which catches the class of bug that only shows up in production
- Next.js
- server rendering and static generation in one framework, so marketing pages stay fast and app routes stay dynamic
- NestJS
- structure and dependency injection on the backend, which keeps a growing API from turning into a pile of route handlers
- Cloud
- managed infrastructure sized to the traffic you actually have
- AI
- model-backed features scoped to the parts of a product where they measurably help
What the first weeks look like
- Week 1
Scope and architecture
Users, data, integrations, and constraints, ending in a written plan for the software development that you approve before anyone opens an editor.
- Weeks 2-3
Design the critical path
The screens that carry the product, prototyped and clickable. Design and engineering review together, so nothing gets drawn that cannot ship.
- Weeks 4-8
Build in weekly slices
Every week ends with something on a real URL. custom software products lands early, because the rest of the plan depends on it working.
- Launch
Ship, measure, hand over
Release, monitoring, analytics, and a documented handover, so your team can carry it without calling us.
Weighing up your options
There are three realistic ways to get this built. Each is the right answer for someone.
A solo freelancer
Cheapest per hour and fine for a contained task. The risk on software development is breadth — one person covering design, backend, infrastructure, and launch usually means one of them is weak, and there is no cover when they are unavailable.
A local agency in San Francisco
Same timezone and a face to meet, which genuinely matters for some teams. You are also paying SF Bay Area expecting modern stacks and AI fluency. rates for the whole team including the layers that never touch your software development, and a local shortlist is a small shortlist.
Arcode
A small senior team. The people who scope the software development write the code, you get weekly demos instead of status decks, and the engagement ends when the thing is live and handed over.
Work we have shipped
Dumbiez
Frontend · NFT product
NFT comics platform for exploring and interacting with digital comic collectibles.
Independent Next.js product for browsing and engaging with NFT comics, styled with Tailwind and shipped on Vercel.
- · NFT comics browsing
- · Interactive collectible UX
- · Responsive Next.js UI
- · Vercel deployment
Next.js · React · Tailwind · Vercel
StudioX Localization
Frontend · i18n
UI polish and language translation pages for the StudioX product experience.
Contract contribution implementing UI fixes and localization pages with Next.js, React, and Tailwind to improve accessibility and multi-language use.
- · Language translation pages
- · UI accessibility fixes
- · Next.js page delivery
- · Clearer multi-language UX
Next.js · React · Tailwind
React Email Templates
Email systems · Resend
Reusable React Email templates sent through Resend for production transactional mail.
Freelance email kit using React Email, Resend, TypeScript, and Tailwind to create and send branded emails from a React app.
- · Reusable email templates
- · Resend delivery integration
- · TypeScript-safe composition
- · Tailwind-styled layouts
React Email · Resend · TypeScript · Tailwind
Working with teams in San Francisco
SF Bay Area expecting modern stacks and AI fluency. We work with clients in San Francisco remotely and keep overlapping hours in PST/PDT. We usually collaborate in English.
How we work with San Francisco teams
San Francisco is on PT, which is the widest gap we work across. We hold one fixed call in your morning and run everything else in writing, so the time difference costs you a day at most on decisions.
What San Francisco clients usually need
Bay Area briefs are the most AI-heavy we see: agents with real tool access, RAG over internal knowledge, MCP servers connecting models to existing systems, and evaluation harnesses to prove any of it works.
Contracts, data, and compliance
Teams here expect modern defaults, so we work in TypeScript, ship through CI, and keep infrastructure reproducible. Expect direct technical conversation with whoever is writing the code.
