The questions worth asking

Stratum ICS, a software company in Guyana, run by the person named on the About page. When you buy something at a fixed price, the payment runs through Polar, which acts as the Merchant of Record. That means Polar is the company that formally takes the payment: your card statement shows Polar, not a personal name, and you get a real receipt from a registered payment company. For quoted work, we agree the scope and price in writing first, then bill you directly.

The scope and the price are written down before any money moves, so what you are owed is never a matter of interpretation. For larger builds you pay 50% up front and 50% on delivery, so you are never paying ahead for work that has not been done. Card payments through Polar carry your card issuer's normal protections, the same recourse you have on any online purchase, so there is a registered payment company standing between you and the work.

The honest backstop is track record: Rent Receipts and Reminders is live and still supported today, long after the interesting part was over. That is what finishing work looks like here.

You do. Every build is handed over with its full source code, and any hosting, database and third-party accounts are set up in your name or transferred to you. There is no retainer that holds your software hostage and no lock-in. If you ever want to take the code to another developer, it is yours to take, whatever happens between us.

Yes. That is the normal case, not the exception. Payments run through Polar, which takes card payments globally except in the five US-sanctioned countries, and pays out to us here in Guyana. None of it depends on us being in the same country: the whole project runs over email and screen share, so where you are does not change how it works.

Yes. It is priced and dated in writing like any other build, and it goes in the queue like any other build. The Excel and PDF automation tier is US$450 for a job done in about a week. If what you need is smaller than that, a US$99 scoping session tells you exactly what it will cost before you commit to anything.

One person built Rent Receipts and Reminders, a production system with accounts, billing, bilingual documents and offline sync, and still runs and supports it today. Larger builds here are scoped in writing, run 50% up front and 50% on delivery, and tracked weekly, so you always know where they stand.

Everything is quoted by the person who will have to build it, which is the main reason the numbers hold.

You need a Claude account, and any plan works, including Free. No Anthropic API key is needed either way. Your existing Claude subscription does the thinking, so there is no second bill from the API.

The US$950 starter tier delivers a local MCP server: a one-file install that sits on your own computers alongside Claude, and it works in Claude Desktop, Claude Code and Cursor. Because it runs on hardware you already own, there is no server to rent and no hosting bill for this shape at all.

Reaching that same tool from the Claude web and mobile apps takes a remote custom connector instead. A remote connector has to answer requests from the public internet, which means it needs a server, and a server is a bill every month. We quote that separately and it is not part of the US$950 starter tier. Remote connectors work on Free, Pro, Max, Team and Enterprise, and this is where the plan starts to matter: Free allows one, and paid plans allow several.

On pricing, as of July 2026 Anthropic lists Claude Pro at US$20 per month billed monthly, or US$17 per month on an annual subscription, and Claude Team at US$20 per standard seat per month on an annual plan. Those are Anthropic's terms and they change, so check with Anthropic before you decide. One wrinkle on the bigger plans: on Team or Enterprise it is the organization's Owner who adds the connector, and each member then signs in with their own account.

You do, and that is on purpose. For anything that runs on OpenAI or Anthropic, you bring your own API key and pay your own usage directly to them. That keeps you in control of the account, means no markup passes through us, and means the tool keeps working whether or not you are still working with us. For an MCP server there is usually no separate usage bill at all, because the work happens inside the Claude plan you are already on.

The Telegram bot and MCP server tiers include 14 days of bug fixes after handover, so anything in scope that does not work gets fixed at no extra charge. After that, you own the code and the accounts: run it yourself, come back to us for changes, or take it to anyone else. There is no retainer and no monthly fee unless you specifically ask for ongoing support.

Often, yes, and a scoping session is the right first step. For US$99 we look at what exists, tell you honestly whether it is worth continuing or worth rebuilding, and give you a written scope and a fixed quote either way. That US$99 is credited in full against any build over US$500, so if we go ahead, the review effectively costs nothing. You get a straight assessment even when the answer is that the first person oversold you.