Field notes

Notes from people who build the tools

We build custom go-to-market tooling for sales, account management, and customer success teams. These are the things we get asked on every call: what to build, what to buy, and how to tell a real Lovable partner from a badge on a website. Posts marked with a green dot contain a working tool, not a screenshot of one. That's rather the point.

GTM tooling

Custom GTM tools: a buyer's guide for sales, AM, and CS teams

What custom GTM tooling is, what sales, AM, and CS teams actually ask for, when custom beats a platform, and what it costs to build.

Pricing

How much does custom software cost in 2026? Real numbers

Real price bands, why quotes vary 10× for the same project, and how not to overpay.

Playbook

Outgrown Excel? How to move your business off spreadsheets

Five signs a sheet became load-bearing infrastructure, what replaces it (one small app, not a platform), and how to migrate without a big bang.

Playbook

How to build a custom client portal: options, cost, timeline

The three routes to a portal, the four features clients actually use, and the security lines you can't cross with other people's documents.

Lovable

AI app builders vs hiring a developer: which should you use?

Where builders genuinely win, where the 90% wall is, and the validate-then-harden sequence that beats both extremes.

Lovable

Is your AI-built app production-ready? A 10-point checklist

Ten checks that separate a demo from a production app — several you can run yourself in ten minutes, today.

Playbook

Forward deployed engineer: what it is, and when to hire one vs an agency

What a forward deployed engineer actually does, the three ways to buy forward-deployed engineering, and how to tell whether you need a hire or a team.

Build log

How long does a custom internal tool take? A real build log

Two days to production, one week to daily use, one quarter of iteration. The commit-by-commit timeline of a real 150-store build.

Playbook

How to run a QBR in the age of AI

A 45-minute agenda, the five things worth showing, and an interactive demo of why the static deck is the problem.

Playbook

The business case for internal AI tooling, in numbers

Stop pitching the tool and cost the status quo. Includes a calculator for annual cost, payback, and what a quarter's delay is worth.

Playbook

How to run an internal AI hackathon that ships something

Invite the operators, not the engineers. A run-sheet generator, the rules that make things ship, and what to do the week after.

Lovable

How to hire a Lovable agency: 7 questions to ask first

What to check before hiring a Lovable agency: partner status, code ownership, and the seven questions that separate builders who ship from ones who demo.

Lovable

Lovable vs Claude Code: which should build your internal tool?

When to build in Lovable, when to reach for Claude Code, and how teams use both on one project. A practical breakdown for internal tools.

Playbook

Build vs buy: when custom sales tools beat another platform

A decision framework for revenue leaders: five tests that tell you whether to buy a platform, build something custom, or leave the spreadsheet alone.

GTM tooling

What belongs in a customer success dashboard (and what doesn't)

The five metrics that earn a place on a CS dashboard, the ones wasting space, and how to build a health score your CSMs actually trust.

Have a workflow that's costing you hours?

That's usually the whole brief. Thirty minutes, no pitch deck.

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