~/sideeffects

Anyone can generate code.

Shipping it is still the hard part.

We ship it for you — or teach your team to.

We've built AI agents that run in production, and taught the same craft on stage at AI Engineer London and inside a $200M healthcare org. Two ways to work with us: we build it for you, or we train your team to ship it themselves.

Stack
TS · Node · React
Mode
Async-first
Rate
On request
zsh — sideeffects
~/sideeffects $ whoami
two engineers who ship AI-generated code to production
~/sideeffects $ ls services/
fractional-cto/ contracting/ training/
~/sideeffects $ cat next-step.md
reply with "let's talk" to book a call.
~/sideeffects $ _
§ — Receipts

The work, not the claim.

Talks, agents running in production, weekly streams, writeups. Real artifacts, not a pitch.

§ 01 MVP→global Shipped at every scale
§ 02 2 Senior engineers, no juniors
§ 03 100% Direct contact, no account managers
§ 04 0 Decks. Code or it didn’t happen.
§ 03 — Services

Two ways in.

You either need it built or need your team leveled up. We do both — and we tell you which one you actually need.

01

We build it for you

Small businesses · $200K–$2M revenue

$ scoped · fixed price

  • No engineering team? That's us. We build the internal tools, automations, and AI features that turn a spreadsheet-and-goodwill workflow into software that runs itself.
  • Fixed scope, fixed price. We write the proposal, you approve it, we ship the thing.
  • You own all of it when we're done — the code, the docs, the keys.
02

We train your team

Teams with engineers · mid-market to enterprise

$ workshops · custom

See the training
  • Live training built around your stack, your repos, and the way your team actually ships.
  • Your engineers learn to direct agents, review what they generate, and get it to production.
  • We've taught this on stage at AI Engineer London and inside a $200M healthcare org. Same rigor, your team.
§ 01 — About

A two-person consultancy that has shipped at every stage.

Stack

TypeScript-first, Node-deep.

JavaScript, TypeScript, React, Node, and the tooling around them. We write the code; we don’t hand a deck to someone else who will.

Scale

From a blank repo to global platforms.

We’ve operated global platforms and stood up MVPs from a blank repo. That range is the point: we can build the whole thing for a small shop, or train an enterprise team that already has one.

Craft

Open source. Speakers. Teachers.

Regular OSS contributors, conference speakers, and trainers. Sharing what we’ve learned is part of the practice, not a marketing channel.

Pragma

Boring tech, on purpose.

We pick the tools your team can run after we leave. The flashiest stack is the one that quietly ships for years.

§ 02 — Team

Two principals. No subcontractors. No bench.

You hire us, you get us. Every line of code, every meeting, every late-night Slack reply: it’s one of the names below.

John Christopher

John Christopher

Principal Consultant

25 years across product, platform, and team leadership. Has shipped at scale and rebuilt from the studs. Talks to engineers and execs in the same sentence.

Nick Nisi

Nick Nisi

Principal Consultant

15 years deep in the JavaScript and Vim ecosystems. Conference speaker, OSS maintainer, and the person you want pairing on the gnarly bug.

§ 04 — Process

How it actually goes.

  1. 01
    Intro call

    Tell us what you’re shipping.

    30 minutes. No NDA gymnastics. We listen, ask the questions you already suspect are the right ones, and tell you whether we’re a fit.

  2. 02
    Scoped engagement

    A short, fixed-price discovery.

    One to two weeks. We read the code, talk to the team, and produce a written assessment with a recommendation, even if that recommendation is "you don’t need us."

  3. 03
    Build / advise

    Embedded, not extracted.

    Weekly cadence with the people doing the work. Code reviews, architecture, hiring help, training, whatever moves the work forward. Async by default.

  4. 04
    Handoff

    You own everything.

    Documentation, decisions, the playbook for the next quarter. We leave the team stronger than we found it. That’s the whole job.

§ 05 — Engagement

How we work with clients.

Project-based or retained. Fixed scope, fixed price where it fits. We write the proposal; you approve it; we build the thing.

Most engagements open with a short, fixed-price discovery. We read the code, sit with your team, and write up what we'd do and what it costs. If it's not a fit, we say so and you keep the document.

Engagement
A workshop or a scoped build
Discovery
1–2 weeks, fixed price
Length
A workshop to a quarterly retainer
Cadence
Weekly, async between
Access
Both principals, no account managers
First call
30 minutes, no NDA gymnastics
§ 06 — Get in touch

Let's talk.

30 minutes, no pitch deck.

hello@sideeffects.dev →