# system5.dev

> One month of engineering for a product that already ships. Fixed price, agreed
> exit date, nothing rebuilt from zero. The tests, the gates and the agents we ran the
> month with stay with the client afterwards.

The offer, the people and every FAQ answer below are also published as
JSON-LD on https://system5.dev/ (Organization, VideoObject, two Service nodes, two Offers, FAQPage).
Where a fact appears in both, the JSON-LD is authoritative. The cases, the comparison
table and Record 07 are on the page and in this file only — the graph does not carry
them, and it does not carry any review or testimonial markup.

## Who this is for

A solo founder or a team of up to five people that has a live product and at least one
paying customer. The product was built fast, it works, and then the speed stopped
arriving: the same tools that got them there multiply whatever is already in the code,
so every new thing costs more than the last. Handing every developer an AI subscription
does not change that — most teams use a fraction of what the tool can do, while the
competitors who use it fully pull ahead. That is the point this is for.

## Offer

- Teardown — $0 USD. A written engineering assessment of the running product and its
  code: what breaks first, at what load, what that costs, and what one month would
  change. It is delivered as a document, it is complete on its own, and it is yours to
  keep and to hand to anyone — including the engineers you hire instead of us. It is not
  a sales call.
- One month with us — one month, fixed price. The price is named in the teardown
  document, once we know a month is enough; the exit date is agreed before the
  first invoice. No retainer, nothing renews by itself, nothing gets rebuilt from zero.

## What the month contains

1. Teardown ($0) — running code read, written assessment delivered as a document.
2. Week one — the ending is written down first: what will be true on the last day, and
   what that day is. Then everything nothing depends on comes out.
3. Weeks two and three — tests around everything that stays, and a review gate on every
   change that ships. The client keeps releasing the whole time.
4. Week four — run under real traffic, fix what bends, hand over. We leave on the agreed
   date and what we built stays: the tests, the gates, the delivery setup, the written
   notes, and the agents
   we ran the month with, configured for the client's codebase and in their repository,
   theirs to keep running. Their team keeps releasing with them after we are gone.

## One case, not a market rate

These are one client's numbers. n = 1. This is not an industry average.

| Field | What he was quoted | What he did instead |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Price | $150,000+ | Fixed, named after the teardown |
| Time | 4–6 months | One month |
| The plan | Start again from zero | Keep the code, add what it was missing |
| His product meanwhile | Nothing new to ship until the rebuild landed | He kept shipping through the month |
| Where the number comes from | Two written quotes, which he showed us | Fixed exit date, agreed before the first invoice |

$150,000+ is not our estimate of what a rewrite costs. It is what two engineering shops
put in front of one founder, in writing, for his product. Another founder might be
quoted half of that, and a rewrite is sometimes the right call. The point is not the
size of the number — it is that starting again was presented to him as the only option,
and it was not.

## Cases

Case 1 — identity withheld at the founder's request. We name neither him nor his
customer, and we give the field, the country and the size of neither. A founder built his
product in about a week, with AI doing most of the typing. It worked, and he signed a
large customer with it. Two engineering shops read the code and both said
start again from zero. He did not. In one month we removed what the product did not
need, put tests around what was left, and made it carry the new customer's load. His
customer never saw an interruption. Nothing was rewritten.

Case 2 — measured by its effect on people, tools not disclosed. One team runs two agents
that do a large share of the daily work. Requests that used to sit for days are answered
the same hour. When the founder asked what it would take to switch the agents off for a
week, nobody on the team was willing.

## Who does the work

- Ivan Padabed — founder, architecture and method. Software Architecture
  Professional (SEI, Carnegie Mellon), CISSP, TOGAF 9, Kanban Coaching Professional,
  Claude Certified Architect. Microsoft MVP five years running. Co-author of "Building
  an Application Development Framework" (Packt, 2025). https://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanpadabed/
- Roman Voronin — co-founder, cloud and delivery infrastructure, 20 years. Owns the
  month end to end and is the person the client talks to every day. AWS Certified
  Solutions Architect – Professional, plus Security Specialty, Machine Learning Engineer
  and Data Engineer. Claude Certified Architect. Co-author of "Building an Application
  Development Framework" (Packt, 2025). Founded the Minsk AWS community.
  https://www.linkedin.com/in/random1st/

Two people, both named, both with a face on the page. Roman Voronin is on the client's
product full time for the month — he owns the month end to end and talks to the client
every day; Ivan Padabed works the month beside him and owns the architecture. That is
the whole team. The repetitive volume is carried by AI agents, configured for the
client's codebase, and they stay in the client's repository afterwards.

## Why the price is what it is

You are buying one engineer's month, not a team on payroll. One engineer is on the
product full time for the month and is named before the first invoice. AI agents carry
the repetitive volume — test scaffolding, mechanical refactors, sweeps across a whole
codebase — which used to be what ate the weeks. The other founder comes in on the parts
he owns, for hours rather than weeks. That is the entire sum.

Hiring either of these people for a year costs many times what the whole month costs.
At a five-person size that used to end the conversation: this level of person was
something only large companies could keep on staff.

system5.dev is not a body shop and not an outsourcing vendor.

## Questions

Q: What if you break something?
A: Every change goes in behind tests, and the gates run before anything reaches your
users. We work in small pieces, on the release rhythm you already have, so if something
does go wrong it is small and it goes back quickly. In the one engagement where that
was tested against a live paying customer, the customer never saw an interruption.

Q: What happens when the month ends?
A: We leave on the date that was agreed before the first invoice. The tests, the gates,
the delivery setup, the written notes and the agents we ran the month with stay in your
repository,
configured for your codebase, and your team runs them without us. That is the point of
the month: you should be able to grow from there under your own power, and hire when you
choose to rather than because something is on fire. Another month later is a separate
month, priced the same way. No retainer, nothing auto-renews.

Q: Why is there no price on this page?
A: Because the price is named in the teardown document, once we have read the code and
know that one month is enough — and it is agreed before the first invoice. What we can
state here is its shape: you are buying one engineer's month, not a team on payroll. AI
agents carry the repetitive volume that used to eat the weeks, and the other founder
comes in on the parts he owns for hours rather than weeks. That is the entire sum.

Q: Who actually does the work?
A: One engineer is accountable for the month, and that is the person the client talks
to every day. Beside that engineer is the other founder, on the parts he owns, and a set
of AI agents doing the volume. There are two of them, both named on the page, and
nothing is handed off to a third-party firm.

Q: How can the price be fixed before you have seen our code?
A: We see it first. The teardown is a read of the running code that ends in a written
assessment. If a month is not enough for what we find, the assessment says so instead of
us taking the money. The price is named only once we know it fits.

Q: Will our customers notice anything while you work?
A: They should not. You keep shipping through the whole month, releases go out on your
schedule, and the work lands in small pieces behind tests. In the one engagement where
that was tested against a live paying customer, the customer went through the whole month
without an interruption.

## Record 07 — what founders told us

No client testimonial is published. What follows is our own account, in the third
person, of what two founders described on working calls. It is not quoted and not
written by them; both asked to stay unnamed.

- Case one. He came to us after two engineering shops had read his code and both told
  him to start again from zero. Long before that — a different clock from the rewrite
  quotes — he had asked engineers what building it at all would take and been told six
  months. He decided that was too long and wrote it himself
  in about a week — and it was good enough that a large customer signed. By the time he
  called us there was a paying customer live on that code, which is precisely why
  starting again was the one option he did not have.
- Case two. He told us that two agents now carry a large share of what his team does day
  to day. He had already asked the team what it would take to switch them off for a week.
  Nobody was willing to find out.

Two CEOs have agreed to write statements in their own names. Those will be published as
statements when they arrive.

## Contact

Form: https://system5.dev/#ask — four fields, read by one of the two founders.
Email: rv@system5.dev — the same thing reaches us this way, if a form is inconvenient.
Ask for: the teardown — a written assessment, $0.
Useful in a first note: what the product does, that a paying customer exists, and what
you are most worried about breaking.

## The same thing, spoken

Video: https://system5.dev/deck.mp4 — 2 min 50 s, embedded on the landing page under
Record 00. Slides: https://system5.dev/deck.html (noindex, not in the sitemap).
It is a fourth surface after the page, the JSON-LD and this file, and it states nothing
the other three do not. A disagreement between them is a defect, not a nuance.

## Measurement on this page

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consent banner; nothing is fetched from either before that. The request form is excluded
from Clarity session recordings. Full detail: https://system5.dev/privacy.html