01 - Discover
We map the terrain: goals, constraints, and the real problem underneath the brief.
Software that earns its place on the screen.
Develi is a small studio in New York building marketing sites, products, and the interactions that make them feel alive. We work with founders who care about the last five percent — the part most teams call "polish" and quietly skip.
What we build
Sites that load before you finish the thought.
Editorial, fast, and built to make a first impression do real work. We design and build in Astro, ship static where we can, and treat performance as a design constraint rather than an afterthought. The result is a site that ranks, reads well, and doesn't fall apart on a mid-range phone in a taxi.
You get: design direction, responsive build, CMS your team can actually run, Core Web Vitals in the green, and a codebase that's yours to keep.
Products that survive their own success.
The unglamorous work that decides whether a product still ships in year three: data models that hold, boundaries that stay where you drew them, and tests that fail for the right reasons. We join at whatever stage hurts — greenfield, rescue, or the migration nobody wants to own.
You get: architecture you can explain to a new hire, types end to end, deploys that are boring, and a test suite that earns its runtime.
AI that does a job, not a demo.
Retrieval, agents, and assistive interfaces built against real evaluation rather than vibes. We start from the task a person is actually trying to finish, keep a human in the loop wherever the stakes need one, and measure the thing before it ships.
You get: an evaluated pipeline, cost and latency you can see, graceful failure when the model is wrong, and no vendor you can't swap out.
Boring security, applied early.
Threat modelling while the architecture is still cheap to change, then the fundamentals done properly: authentication and session handling, least-privilege access, secrets that never reach a repository, and a dependency tree you can account for.
You get: a reviewed auth flow, hardened headers and a real CSP, an audited dependency tree, and a written incident path for the day you need one.
Motion that means something.
Interface motion that carries information — where a thing came from, what just changed, what is still loading — plus the occasional set piece when the brief earns it. Built on the platform first: scroll-driven animation and view transitions, and only then a shader.
You get: a motion language rather than a pile of effects, reduced motion honoured everywhere, and a frame budget nobody has to apologise for.
A system your team will actually use.
Tokens, primitives, and the documentation that makes them findable — sized to the team that has to maintain it rather than to a conference talk. We would rather ship thirty components people reach for than a hundred nobody trusts.
You get: a themed token layer, accessible primitives with real states, usage docs beside the code, and a contribution path that survives us leaving.
From first call to orbit.
Four steps, no black boxes. You see working software early, know exactly where things stand at every stage, and end up with something you can run without us — or with us, for as long as you want us in orbit.
02 - Design
Architecture and interface decided together, so nothing gets lost in handoff.
03 - Build
Tight iterations, working software early, no black boxes.
04 - Launch
We ship with the monitoring, docs, and handover to run it without us.
Three ways to work with us
Retainer
A set number of hours each month for teams who need us reliably, not just once. Best for ongoing product work and evolving sites.
Project
Fixed scope, fixed price, defined finish line. Best when you know what you want built and want it done.
Staff augmentation
We embed with your team and work as one of your own for a stretch. Best when you have the direction and need the hands.
Frequently asked questions
Where are you based, and does it matter?
New York, and mostly no. We work with teams across Europe, Asia and both American coasts, and we hold a real overlap window with yours rather than promising round-the-clock coverage nobody actually staffs. If you need people in a room, we travel.
How do you price work?
Retainers are billed monthly against an agreed number of hours; projects are a fixed price against a scope we write together before anyone signs. We do not bill hourly against an open-ended estimate — it puts our interests and yours on opposite sides.
How long does a project take?
A marketing site is usually four to eight weeks; a product build is measured in quarters. You will see working software in the first two weeks either way — that is the point of the process, not a milestone we save for the end.
Do we own the code?
Yes, outright, from the first commit. It lives in your repository under your account, with no runtime dependency on us and no licence to renew. The handover includes the documentation and monitoring needed to run it without us.
What do you need from us to start?
One person who can make decisions, access to whatever exists today, and an honest account of what is not working. We can write the brief with you if you do not have one — most of the useful ones get written in the first week anyway.
What it's like to work with us.
Develi didn't just build what we asked for — they told us what we actually needed, then shipped it faster than our internal team thought possible.
Marcus B.
CTO, Halcyon Labs
They came in mid-project, read the whole codebase in a week, and had the migration mapped out before we'd finished onboarding them.
Priya N.
VP Engineering, Northwind
The handover was the part that sold us. Docs, monitoring, and a team that could run it without them — exactly what was promised at the first call.
Tomas L.
Founder, Ridgeline
Boring in the best way. No heroics, no surprises, and the thing has been in production for two years without an incident.
Ada O.
Head of Product, Fieldnote
Ready to get off the ground?
Tell us what you're building. We'll tell you how we'd approach it — no pitch deck required.
Book a call