Ideas
Thinking on tools,
process, and craft.
Notes from building internal tools for teams who know what they need and want it done properly.
The per-seat tax: what three years of SaaS really costs, and when bespoke pays back
£35 a seat looks cheap until you add up three years of growth and price rises. Here's where the break-even point sits for 5, 13, 25 and 100 users.
The tipping point: when to ditch your SaaS stack for custom software
A growing marketing agency had stitched together 8 SaaS tools to run sales, CRM and projects. Here's what happened when they replaced them with one bespoke app.
£5 a month replaced a job that took hours
A broker was spending hours every month turning unstructured supplier PDFs into client invoices by hand. Now it costs around 10p a bill.
Simple, straightforward, shipped: a veeone case study in proposal management
An agency producing hundreds of proposals a year swapped Google Docs, PDFs and email attachments for one app that creates, shares and manages them.
Why internal tools fail (and what to do instead)
Most homegrown tools start strong and quietly fall apart. The culprits are almost always the same — here's what to watch for before you commit to a build.
How to scope an internal tool without losing the plot
The biggest risk in any tool project isn't the technology — it's the spec. Getting scoping right upfront is what separates a project that ships from one that drifts.
AI-assisted development: what it actually means in practice
AI can generate code fast. That's not the point. The point is what you do with that speed — and the discipline required to make it produce something worth shipping.
Why "vibe coding" will break your critical internal tools (and when it's actually brilliant)
Vibe coding works just well enough to be dangerous. Here's where it shines, where it becomes a liability, and how to match each tool to the right way of building it.
The customisation ceiling: when SaaS features become shackles
Every SaaS platform promises customisation — until you hit the point where what you need simply isn't possible. How to spot the ceiling early, and what to do about it.
AI-assisted software development and the Jevons Paradox
When steam engines got more efficient, Britain burned more coal, not less. AI is doing the same thing to software — and it will increase demand for experienced developers.