Why teams trust
the studio.
We don't ask you to take our word for it. Here's the evidence.
Trust in a software engagement comes from verifiable evidence, not assertions. Every claim on this page is backed by something you can check: a public GitHub repo, a certification verification link, a methodology document, a test suite count.
certifications
9
testing layers
13
public repos
130+
shipping since
2020
Trust is an operating system.
Living architecture
Claim ⇄ Receipt
The trust page turns claims into artifacts: certifications, process, data handling, guarantees, open-source record, and clear wrong-fit boundaries.
See the work- 01CredentialsCertifications and training explain the technical operating baseline.
- 02ProcessTesting, CI/CD, security, infrastructure, and data handling show the work discipline.
- 03BoundariesWrong-fit notes and guarantees remove ambiguity before a buyer reaches out.
- 04ReceiptsPublic repositories, references, and verifiable stats carry the credibility.
What we promise, in numbers.
Operational facts that should be true before you send a deposit. Each one is something you can verify today.
Reply window
< 48h
Well-matched inquiries get a response within two business days. No "I'll get back to you" ghosting.
NDA on request
Same day
Mutual NDA available before scope discussion. Template at /legal/nda — sign electronically, no lawyer required.
Production posture
Stripe + Supabase + AWS
Same stack we ship for clients. Daily encrypted backups, IAM-scoped access, OIDC-only deploys.
Code transparency
Public repo
This site’s source is open. Every commit is auditable history of how the studio actually operates.
9 active certifications.
All certifications are active. Verification links available on request — just ask during a discovery call.
Certified Tester Foundation Level (CTFL)
Active
Test Automation Engineer (TAE)
Active
Certified Tester AI Testing (CT-AI)
Active
Certified Cloud Practitioner
Active
Certified Solutions Architect — Associate
Active
Certified Developer — Associate
Active
Certified SysOps Administrator — Associate
Active
Certified DevOps Engineer — Professional
Active
CCNA (Routing & Switching)
Active
Every project ships with these standards enforced.
13 testing frameworks. Every layer covered.
Unit
Jest, Vitest
Component
Testing Library
API
Supertest
Contract
Pact
E2E
Playwright, Cypress
Performance
k6, Lighthouse CI
Security
OWASP ZAP
Accessibility
Axe
Visual regression
Percy / Chromatic
BDD
Cucumber
No code ships without passing CI gates.
Terraform-managed. Security-scanned. Auditable.
All infrastructure provisioned via Terraform.
106 public repositories.
All open-source projects are publicly available and maintained. The commit history is not curated for appearances — it's the actual development record.
- 130+
- Public repositories
- 30
- GitHub followers
- 6
- Live products
- 2020
- Shipping since
Where your data lives, who can read it, and how long.
The facts. No SOC-2 certificate yet — the studio is too young to have one. Here's the operational equivalent: a plain-English description of how the studio handles client data, sub-processors, and incidents.
Where data lives
Customer data lives in Supabase (Postgres, US-East-2) and Stripe. No analytics platform stores PII beyond hashed identifiers — Vercel Analytics is privacy-first by design.
Retention
Inquiry records: kept for two years from last contact, then auto-purged. Engagement artifacts: kept for the duration of the engagement plus 12 months unless an MSA specifies longer.
Access
Service-role keys are server-side only. Row-level security on every customer-facing table. No third-party support seat has read access to customer data — the studio is one operator.
Sub-processors
Vercel (hosting/CDN), Supabase (database & auth), Stripe (payments), Resend (transactional email), AWS (infrastructure for client work). Full list maintained on /legal/privacy.
Incident response
Security incidents are disclosed to affected clients within 72 hours. Post-incident report includes root cause, blast radius, and remediation steps — no PR-spin.
Right to delete
Email sage@sageideas.dev with a deletion request and your records are purged within five business days, including downstream caches and backups in the next rotation.
What we put in writing.
Every engagement signs an MSA + SOW. These five guarantees show up in every one of them — not as marketing copy, as contractual terms.
Fixed price means fixed price
Quoted scope is what you pay. Scope changes require a written amendment and explicit approval before any additional work begins. No surprise invoices, ever.
Refund before work begins
If we haven't started, we issue a full refund. No questions, no friction. Once work begins, one-time engagements are non-refundable but always negotiable on outcome.
Cancel monthly anytime
Site Care, Brand Care, Content Care, Scale, Operate, Content Engine — all cancel through Stripe in two clicks. Billed through end-of-cycle. No 12-month lock-ins.
Handoff that survives
Every engagement ships with documentation, runbooks, and a knowledge-transfer call. The system survives without me on the next call — that's the bar.
No bait-and-switch staffing
The person who scopes the work is the person who builds it. There's no "we'll assign a team" — it's one operator on every line of code.
Here's when we are the wrong fit.
The fastest way to lose your time and ours is pretending we're right for every situation. We aren't. These are the most common mismatches.
You need a 10-person delivery team this quarter
Sage Ideas is one operator. We can do extraordinary depth on one or two parallel workstreams — not breadth across ten. If you need a staffing agency, we are the wrong fit and we will say so on the first call.
You want a full-time, on-call, replace-your-CTO arrangement
Studio Engagement is up to 30 hours per week with defined response windows. It is not 24/7 on-call. If you need a fulltime engineering lead embedded in your team, hire one — we'll help you scope the role.
You're shopping on price alone
Productized engagements start at $1,500 because that's the floor at which the work is actually high-quality. There is no $500 audit. Cheap consulting is expensive when it's wrong.
You expect equity-only or revenue-share
For pre-revenue startups in specific circumstances, we'll consider partial equity (cash + equity, not equity-only). Pure speculation arrangements are declined politely.
You need someone to ship code fast and ask questions later
We scope before we build. Discovery and architecture come first — always. If you want a contractor who builds whatever you ask without pushback, we are the wrong choice.
Talk to past collaborators directly.
Sage Ideas is a young studio. Rather than ship cherry-picked testimonials, every prospective client gets the option to talk directly to people I've built things with — fintech engineers, founders, ops leads. Real phone numbers, real conversations, no scripts.
Engineering lead
Fintech · 5 years
Worked alongside on production trading systems for 5+ years. Available for technical reference calls — code quality, on-call discipline, incident behavior.
Founder
Studio engagement
Engaged Sage Ideas for a Ship + Operate combination. Willing to talk about scope discipline, timeline accuracy, and what handoff actually looked like.
Open-source collaborator
Developer tooling
Co-shipped a developer-tooling project. Available to discuss code review depth, communication cadence, and how disagreements got resolved.
Operations lead
B2B SaaS
Worked with Sage Ideas on internal tooling and integration plumbing. Reference call covers: scope creep, change requests, billing transparency.
Platform architect
Infrastructure
Reviewed several Sage Ideas architecture artifacts before client handoff. Available for a third-party perspective on technical depth and trade-off reasoning.
Most engagements run under NDA. Names withheld until written permission lands — no fake logos, no implied endorsements.
Reference contact details are shared with prospective clients during discovery, with both parties' consent. As the client roster grows, quoted testimonials will replace this honest stub — not before.