Discovery is the paid preparation step before a Fixed Price build. It's $719, takes ~1 week with 2-3 calls, and the fee is credited toward your first milestone if you proceed. Beyond defining what we'll build, it gives you two concrete advantages:
- A sharper fixed price. Without Discovery, any quote needs a 30-50% buffer for unknowns. With it, I design the database schema and architecture upfront, so the price is accurate, not padded. On a $20k build, that's typically $4-8k saved — more than the Discovery fee itself.
- The right tools for your specific product. The same features can be built on very different stacks (Supabase vs custom Postgres, server actions vs REST API, edge vs node functions, and so on). Without Discovery I'd default to a one-size-fits-all setup; with it, I pick the stack that fits your data model, scale, integrations and budget.
You walk away with a PRD and a Build Proposal that are yours to keep, even if you decide to build elsewhere. If you already have a solid PRD, you can bring your own and skip this step.