A read of what you have · in writing · inside a week
You paid for software and it half works.
You paid somebody to build it, or you built it yourself with an AI tool, and now it half works. The person who made it has stopped replying, or never knew, or was you.
You have probably been told it just needs a bit more work. That may be true. It may also be the most expensive sentence anyone has said to you this year, and nobody who has said it so far was being paid to find out.
A read of software you already have is $500.
That is the whole price, answered inside 2 working days. Repair is quoted separately and only if it is worth doing — if it is not, the answer says so, and that answer is the thing you paid for.
If it is not worth repairing, the answer says so and names what you would lose by trying. If it is fine as it is, the answer says that too. Neither of those makes me any money, which is the point of charging for the read.
- — What this software actually does today, in plain terms — so you can check I understood it before you weigh anything below
- — What is wrong, ranked by what will bite first rather than by what looks worst
- — What repair would cost, as a range with the assumption it rests on stated
- — Whether repairing beats starting again, answered rather than implied
- — What happens if you do nothing, because sometimes that is the right call for another year
2 working days, and then it is written.
2 working days is the whole of it. At the end I write the answer from what I reached, and I name what I did not reach rather than quietly leaving it out.
That bound is what makes a fixed price honest on something neither of us can size in advance. Without it you would be buying an open meter, and I would be guessing.
Repair is a separate decision, and yours.
If the answer says repair is worth it, that gets scoped and quoted on its own — by me, or by anybody else you like. The document is written so another developer can work from it.
Nothing is signed for the read itself. There is no deliverable to warrant beyond the answer, and you are not committing to anything past it.
Why pay for this at all
Because the two most valuable answers cost me money to give. "This is fine, leave it alone for another year" ends the conversation. "This cannot be saved" ends it faster. Somebody reading your software for free has every reason to find work in it, and you would have no way of telling that apart from a real finding.
The fee is small on purpose. It is not the engagement — it is the thing that lets the answer be true.