Starter
20 hrs / month
£3,000per month
The accessible way into ongoing bespoke development. One build in motion, a senior pair of hands about a day a week. Step up to Standard whenever the backlog grows.
Discuss this tier Custom Build · AI-augmented bespoke development
We don't just build faster. We build the right thing faster.
Bespoke software for UK SMEs with unique requirements. Custom dashboards, internal tools, LLM-powered applications. Scoped, built, deployed and documented by a senior practitioner running Claude Code under thirty years of digital judgement. Claude Code multiplies the volume of work; thirty years multiplies what is worth doing. The result is software that fits exactly how your business works, not an off-the-shelf compromise your team bends around.
● Accepting 1–2 new retainer clients for 2026 Claude Code · Make.com 30 years of UK digital strategy
Two multipliers, stacking
Volume from AI. Value from thirty years.
Claude Code multiplies the volume of work one developer can produce. Thirty years of digital strategy multiplies the value of each unit produced. Same hour, more output, on the things that matter.
| Approach | Effective rate | Output volume | Targets the right work |
|---|---|---|---|
| Junior in-house dev | ~£50/hr | 1× | Sometimes |
| Junior with Claude Code | ~£50/hr | 3–4× | Sometimes (faster wrong thing) |
| Mid-level contractor | ~£80/hr | 1× | Often |
| Senior dev shop (blended) | ~£130/hr | 1× | Often |
| Wingenious + Claude Code | £150/hr | 4–5× | Always |
The cheaper junior with Claude Code implements faster than ever, but they implement the wrong things faster. The senior without Claude Code implements the right things slowly. Wingenious is the pair: senior judgement plus AI velocity in one operator. The £150 effective rate on retainer hours is the cost of the judgement, not the keystrokes.
- A 12-week 2023 build is implemented in 3 to 4 weeks in 2026.
- A £60,000 2023 build lands at £18,000 to £22,000 in 2026.
- Iterations that used to take three weeks each happen in three days.
- Every decision in the build has a thirty-year-experienced operator behind it.
The build lifecycle
Twelve steps. Run by a generalist who has seen them break.
Claude Code accelerates the work. It does not replace the discipline of running a build properly. Every Wingenious Custom Build runs through the same twelve steps, in the same order, with a senior practitioner accountable for each one.
- 01
Discovery + scoping
Structured interviews with the people who actually run the business. What the build needs to do, what it should not do, where the value lives.
- 02
Requirements + user stories
Written, signed-off requirements. Acceptance criteria. Non-functional requirements. Nothing builds before this lands.
- 03
Solution design + architecture
Data model, integration topology, auth model, hosting plan. Documented as Architecture Decision Records so the choices survive the build.
- 04
Stack + tooling decisions
Framework, database, hosting, observability, CI. Opinionated choices: production-grade, well-known, well-documented. No bespoke runtime that locks you in.
- 05
Build
Claude Code under senior direction. Volume of output multiplied four to five times against a traditional build. Direction and judgement supplied by thirty years of digital strategy.
- 06
Testing
Unit, integration, user acceptance, security review. Real testing, not "it ran on my machine".
- 07
Deployment
Production deployment into your cloud accounts. No Wingenious-locked infrastructure. You own the keys, the bills, and the data.
- 08
Data security + UK GDPR
Data flow diagram. Role-based access. Audit trails. ICO posture documented. Zero-retention API tiers for sensitive workloads where the use case demands it.
- 09
Documentation
System docs, runbooks, ADRs, README. Written so the next operator can pick it up without us. No tribal knowledge.
- 10
Handover + training
Your team walks through the build, the docs, and the operational runbook. By the end of handover, you can run it without Wingenious in the room.
- 11
Cost governance
Token spend, infrastructure cost, scaling projection. Monthly cost ceilings agreed up front so the build does not surprise the FD in month three.
- 12
Ongoing support
Optional Steward retainer for monitoring, ROI reporting and small monthly improvements. Hands over fully once you no longer need it.
Custom Build Retainer · MRR-shaped
Senior, AI-augmented build capacity, on retainer.
Monthly capacity at a published rate. The retainer shape suits SMEs with an ongoing product roadmap rather than a single one-shot build. Three tiers, published price, no twelve-month lock-in.
Standard
60 hrs / month
£9,000per month
The most common retainer shape. Three days a week of senior, AI-augmented build capacity, embedded in your team. The right size for ongoing development against a real product backlog.
Schedule a retainer callEmbedded
80 hrs / month
£12,000per month
Four days a week. The closest a fractional engagement gets to a full-time senior. Suits SMEs in active product launch, multi-module roadmaps, or replatform programmes.
Discuss this tierMonthly fees are billed in advance. Cancel month-to-month with 30 days notice. Unused hours roll forward for one month. Retainer hours are charged at an effective £150/hr; ad-hoc hourly work outside a retainer is quoted privately.
How retainer engagements run
Well scoped. Well managed. Well delivered.
The same delivery discipline runs on every Wingenious retainer engagement. Built from thirty years in digital and refined into a tooling stack that gives you full visibility into the work as it happens. The reassurance that comes from knowing exactly what is being done, how long it took, and what is coming next.
- 01
Rolling monthly retainer
No twelve-month lock-in. The retainer runs month to month with 30 days notice to cancel. The shape of the work flexes as your priorities flex, without the contractual paperwork getting in the way.
- 02
Hours estimated up front for the month ahead
At the start of each month, we estimate the hours each agreed task will take and publish them. You see the forecast before the work starts. No mid-month surprises, no scope creep that lands on the next invoice.
- 03
Hours credited to your account
Your monthly fee buys a named pool of senior hours, credited to your account at the start of the month. They are yours to direct: scoping calls, build time, refinements, reviews. Unused hours roll forward for one month.
- 04
Logged in ClickUp against every task
Every strategy call, every build task, every refinement is logged in ClickUp against the right project, with the actual time recorded. No "did the work get done?" guesswork. Full audit trail of where the hours went, available to you in real time.
- 05
Custom Client Dashboard in real time
A dashboard tailored to your engagement, showing live: all active projects, all tasks and their status, hours estimated this month, hours utilised so far, hours forecast for the months ahead, and a Gantt view of what is coming. You see what we see, the moment we see it.
- 06
AI on every call
An AI assistant joins every strategy and review call. Takes notes, captures decisions, surfaces the next-step actions, and supports decision-making in real time. The output lands in ClickUp against the right tasks within minutes of the call ending. Nothing slips between meetings.
The point of this stack is reassurance. You should know at any moment what the engagement is doing, what it has done, and what is coming next. Thirty years in digital, codified into a delivery system that scales without losing accountability.
Fixed-shot builds
One project. Fixed price. Delivered.
Not every build needs a retainer. For a single, scoped project the fixed-shot model gives you certainty on price, timeline and deliverable. Two-phase shape with a risk-reversal scoping fee up front.
Scoping & Specification
£2,950fixed fee · 1–2 weeks
Discovery interviews, requirements capture, solution architecture, security review, fixed-price build quote. Risk-reversal: walk away with the spec for £2,950 if you decide not to proceed.
Discuss this buildCompact Build
From £9,950fixed fee · 3–4 weeks
A single-purpose internal tool, dashboard or LLM-powered application. Five to ten screens, one to two integrations, role-based access. Production-ready, documented, hosted in your cloud.
Discuss this buildStandard Build
From £18,950fixed fee · 5–6 weeks
A multi-purpose application. Fifteen to twenty-five screens, two to three integrations, workflows, audit trails. Production-ready, documented, handed over with runbook and training.
Discuss this buildMany Compact and Standard clients move onto a retainer after the first delivery, where ongoing product work follows the same shape. The Scoping & Specification fee is credited in full against any Phase 02 build contracted within 60 days.
What Wingenious does not do
Honest about the shape.
Twelve-week-plus one-shot builds
These break the productised promise and burn capacity. For genuinely large bespoke work, the retainer model flows month by month against a roadmap. Six-figure one-shot quotes are taken privately, never sold off the page.
Off-the-shelf SaaS
Wingenious does not sell software products. If your need is met by an existing SaaS tool, the audit will tell you so and route you there. Custom Build is for the genuinely unique, not the generic-with-a-logo-change.
Off-shore code-factory work
No subcontracting, no hidden teams, no time-zone handoffs. One senior practitioner accountable for every line written. Claude Code is the multiplier, not a remote workforce.
Custom Build FAQs
The questions SME leaders ask.
Why not just hire a junior with Claude Code for less?
They can run Claude Code, yes. They cannot scope correctly, judge architectural trade-offs, spot the work that will not pay back, push back on a bad requirement, or design for the way your business actually operates. A junior with Claude Code implements the wrong thing faster than ever. Wingenious is the rare pair: senior judgement plus AI velocity in one operator. The £150 effective hourly rate on retainer hours buys the judgement, not the keystrokes.
Who owns the code, the data, and the build at handover?
You do, in full. The repository is yours. The infrastructure runs in your cloud accounts (AWS, Azure or GCP) under your billing. The documentation, ADRs and runbooks are committed to your repo. Wingenious holds no proprietary middleware or runtime that traps you. If you cancel a retainer or move to another supplier, the build keeps running and another competent team can pick it up. That is contractual, not just promised.
What if Claude Code or Anthropic changes pricing or shuts down?
Claude Code is the build-time tool, not the build-time runtime. Once a project goes live, it runs on your stack: your database, your framework, your hosting. Anthropic Claude or OpenAI APIs only matter at runtime for projects that genuinely use LLM inference (chat features, summarisation, classification). Those projects are designed model-agnostic from day one, so a model swap is a configuration change, not a rebuild. The scoping phase documents the runtime dependencies explicitly.
How does the retainer differ from a Fractional CAIO?
The Fractional CAIO is strategic leadership: vendor decisions, governance, board-level AI direction, team upskilling. The Custom Build Retainer is hands-on-keyboard build capacity: a senior practitioner implementing working software week after week. Several SMEs run both alongside each other, with the CAIO setting direction and the Build Retainer executing on it. Most start with one or the other depending on whether the pain is strategic or operational.
Why no larger build tier published? What if our project is bigger?
Honest answer: a 12-week-plus build burns capacity and creates the kind of commitment that breaks the productised promise. For genuinely larger work, the recommendation is the retainer model, where the work flows month by month against a roadmap rather than as one giant fixed-scope project. If a six-figure one-shot build is genuinely the right shape, that is scoped bespoke at quote-time. The published tiers are sized to fit reliably alongside other commitments.
What is actually included in the £2,950 Scoping & Specification phase?
One to two weeks of structured discovery. Stakeholder interviews, requirements capture, solution architecture, data and security review, technology decisions, build estimate. Output is a written specification (typically 20 to 40 pages) plus a fixed-price quote for the Phase 02 build. The £2,950 fee is credited in full against any Phase 02 build contracted within 60 days. If you walk away after Phase 01, you keep the specification and use it however you wish.
2026 capacity · 1 to 2 retainer slots remaining
Bespoke software, built right and built fast.
Thirty minutes with Gary. We work out whether the right shape is a retainer or a fixed-shot, scope one real candidate from your roadmap, and confirm fit before any paperwork moves. No deck.