Is your build in
trouble?
Ten questions, two minutes. An honest read on whether your codebase is stable, drifting, or heading for a rescue — and the three things we’d fix first. Built from what we find every time we take over someone else’s build. No call, no pitch; your score’s on screen the moment you finish.
Who wrote the code you’re running today?
The people who can actually change it safely.
What the check looks at
None of these ten questions is about how clever the code is. Every one is about whether the code can be changed safely — which is what actually decides whether a product survives its third year. They are the same things we look for in the first week of any takeover.
Unclear code ownership
Who wrote the code you’re running today? The people who can actually change it safely.
Key-person risk
If your lead developer vanished tomorrow, could someone else pick it up? Be honest about how much lives in one person’s head.
Little or no test coverage
Automated tests? The thing that decides whether a change is safe.
Slow, high-anxiety releases
How often do you ship to production? And how it feels when you do.
Blind in production
When something breaks in production, how do you find out? Before or after your users do.
Time-zone & communication lag
What’s the gap between you and whoever builds it? Time zone, and how long a question takes to answer.
Struggles under real load
Your product has met real users. How did the code hold up? Demo-grade and production-grade are different animals.
No handover documentation
Is there a handover doc or architecture overview? Something the next engineer could actually start from.
v1 already feels disposable
Be honest: does v1 already feel like it needs a rewrite? That feeling is usually a signal, not a verdict.
Pressure on the timeline
Where are you right now? This sets how urgent the rest of it is.
How to read your score
Answers are weighted by how much trouble each one tends to cause, then totalled out of 38. A low score is the good end.
Your build is in good shape.
The fundamentals are holding. The job now is keeping them that way as you grow.
A few signals worth keeping an eye on.
Nothing’s on fire — but a couple of these will bite if they’re left to drift.
There are real structural problems here.
These are the cracks that widen under real users. Worth acting before they decide the timeline for you.
This build needs senior hands, soon.
The signals point to a codebase that’s hard to change safely. The earlier it’s looked at, the cheaper it is to put right.
Common questions
Is this really free?
Yes. The score and the signals you flagged appear on screen the moment you finish, with no email required. You only hand over an address if you want the written report and the three fixes we would prioritise, and that sends one email — no sequence, no SDR.
How accurate can ten questions be?
It is a mirror, not a diagnosis. Ten questions cannot audit a codebase; what they can do is surface the patterns we find in almost every build that gets into trouble. If the result worries you, the honest next step is someone senior actually reading the code.
What do you do with my answers?
If you ask for the report, we email it to you and a real person here sees the result — that is how we can reply usefully rather than automatically. We do not sell data, and there is no tracking pixel in the email.
I scored badly. Does that mean a rewrite?
Almost never. A low score usually means the code is hard to change safely, which is a different and far cheaper problem than the code being wrong. Most codebases are more salvageable than they feel — a rewrite is the most expensive way to find that out.
We have no developers left. Is this still useful?
Especially then. Several of the questions are about exactly that situation — key-person risk, missing handover documentation, nobody able to read the code. If that is where you are, see how a project rescue runs.
Want someone to
actually read it?
Ten questions can only tell you so much. The Memo is the real thing — senior engineers in the codebase for two weeks, and a written keep, fix, or cut with the reasoning. £4,500, credited in full against your first month, and yours to keep whoever you build with.
See The Memo→How a takeover works → · Brief template → · Keep, fix, or cut →