Scoping, budgeting, and hiring decisions for the people paying for the build.
A field guide for founders whose build has stalled: what to secure in the first 48 hours, how a takeover audit is run, when repair beats a rewrite, and where a rescue lands on price.
Agencies do not quote a vision, they quote decisions. Here are the nine sections that turn an idea into a fixed number, the four cut rules that shrink the feature list, and a fill-in template you can send to three firms the same day.
The contract model decides who pays when scope moves. Here is how each one fails, the nine clauses that matter, and the AI-era terms most templates still miss.
Most bad agency engagements were visible before the contract was signed. Here is what to check at each stage, including how to tell whether AI-written code is actually being reviewed.