7+9 helps teams ship AI-assisted software and custom tools the same way you’d want any serious system built: with clear requirements, defensible architecture, and a plan for the next five years—not just the next sprint.
We sit with operations, IT, and line-of-business owners. That means we care about who answers the phone when something breaks, which spreadsheet dies when we automate it, and what “done” looks like in numbers—not slide decks. We work on-site in Southern California and remotely across the U.S. when the fit and timezone line up. Mailing address and hours are in Contact when you need them.
What you can expect from us
- Written scope — user stories, constraints, and explicit out-of-scope items so nobody is surprised at invoice time.
- Your experts stay in the loop — we interview the people who actually do the work, not only exec summaries.
- Security & data handling up front — who can see what, where it lives, retention, and audit expectations before we write production code.
- Observable systems — logging, health checks, and a story for upgrades and dependency drift.
- Handoff you can keep — repo access, runbooks, and knowledge transfer; we’re not interested in inescapable retainers for basics.
Outcomes we optimize for
- Less re-keying and swivel-chairing between systems; one-thread answers where it makes sense.
- Fewer black-box spreadsheets that only one person understands.
- Software your team actually adopts because the UX matches the job, not a vendor demo.
- Room to grow—APIs, events, and environments that can take the next integration without a rewrite.
For us, AI means assistants and automation that are grounded in your org—your policies, product names, ticket categories, and approved sources—not a public chatbot with your logo on it.
We combine retrieval over the documents and data you authorize, tool / function use against stable internal APIs, role- and team-aware prompts, and evaluation on real work samples from day one. When confidence is low or stakes are high, the design always includes a clear path to a human with enough context to pick up the thread.
Use cases we often build or extend
- Internal Q&A and SOP copilots (HR, IT, field ops) with source citations to policy docs.
- Case and ticket triage assist: suggest categories, checklists, and next best actions—with guardrails for PII and customer tone.
- Data capture and validation helpers: extract structured fields from free text, with human confirm before write-back.
- Handoff and escalation flows: summarize threads, open follow-ups, and hand context to a person without losing the audit trail.
Trust, safety, and controls
- Boundary rules on what data the model is allowed to see and cite; per-tenant and per-group policies where needed.
- Logging of who asked, what was retrieved, and which tools ran for support and compliance—not for surveillance theater.
- PII/PCI boundaries, redaction or masking strategies, and rate limits to protect your service desk and your customers.
- Pilots and phased rollout with agreed metrics—deflection, time-to-resolution, or task completion—before a big internal launch.
We build the application layer your people touch every day: the screens, the jobs, the integrations—and the operational discipline around deploys, backups, and recovery so a launch isn’t a coin flip.
Stack choices are driven by long-term maintainability and your in-house skills, not our favorite one-liner on Hacker News. We default to clear service boundaries, versioned APIs, and infrastructure you can see—whether that lives in your VPC, a managed cloud, or on-prem you control.
What we build
- Customer, partner, and internal web applications (dashboards, workflows, and self-service portals).
- Background workers and schedulers for ETL-style syncs, notifications, and recurring jobs—with dead-lettering and idempotency where it matters.
- Admin and operator tools: user management, feature flags, content ops, and one-click rebuilds of derived data where safe.
- Read models and search layers that sit in front of legacy systems so new UX doesn’t require a mainframe rewrite on day one.
Integrations, identity, and data
- REST, GraphQL, webhooks, message queues—we pick the simplest option that can evolve with your bus factor.
- SSO / IdP (Okta, Entra, Google Workspace…), role and group mapping, and least-privilege service accounts.
- Honest talk about source of truth and conflict resolution when two systems disagree.
- Migration and cutover playbooks that include rollback—because rehearsing failure is part of going live.
Ship, run, and hand off
- CI that builds, tests, and promotes through dev / staging / prod with a paper trail.
- Health endpoints, alerts you can act on, and a shared on-call or escalation story that matches your org.
- Backups, restore drills, and versioned infrastructure-as-code or templates when it earns its keep.
We run engagements so you get evidence, not hope: a short discovery, a slice you can use, and then phased delivery—so budget and risk stay aligned with what we’re learning on the ground.
We’re willing to say no when a project is a bad match or the timing will waste everyone’s money. When we say yes, you get direct communication, a single accountable thread for decisions, and no black-box “big reveal” at the end of a quarter.
- 1
Discovery & fit (1–2 weeks, typical) — pain, volume, and constraints; stakeholders; rough architecture; a shared definition of success in measurable terms; honest feasibility and ballpark. Outcome: go / no-go / try a slice.
- 2
Prototype or vertical slice (fast, bounded) — one end-to-end path through the app or one workflow, backed by the riskiest integration first. You can click it in staging and we can user-test with 3–5 real people who do the job.
- 3
Build & harden in milestones — security review for auth and data, automated tests for core paths, runbooks, and a deployment checklist. Cutover is a planned event with a rollback—not a “we’ll watch the logs and hope” weekend.
- 4
Launch, train, and iterate — short sessions for the teams who run it day to day, office hours, and a feedback loop for the first 30–60 days. We care about adoption metrics, not vanity graphs.
After go-live
- Planned hypercare and a path to steady-state support (reactive) or a light retainer (proactive) — discussed before launch, not as a surprise.
- Change windows and release notes you can hand to your own IT and compliance reviewers.
- Options for knowledge transfer if you want to bring parts of the work in-house later.
We work best with
- A named product or ops owner who can say “ship it” and own priorities week to week.
- Access to the systems, sandboxes, and people we need—without a six-week security theater for every question.
- Time for a few user validation sessions—the alternative is software built only for the loudest voice in the room.