— Practice / Custom software
Off-the-shelf software solves yesterday's problems. Custom software is built for how your business actually works — the data you have, the workflows you run, the integrations your team depends on.
— What we build
Dashboards, admin panels, data pipelines, and workflow tools that sit inside your organisation — purpose-built for your team, not the average user. If your staff are working around the limits of a SaaS tool, that is the brief.
Customer-facing products — portals, booking systems, member platforms, and anything with accounts, data, and business logic. Full stack: front-end, back-end, database, infrastructure, and the engineering that keeps it running.
Connecting systems that should talk to each other: CRM to billing, e-commerce to fulfilment, internal database to external API. Reliable pipes with proper error handling and alerting — not a Zapier workflow that breaks silently.
First-class HTTP APIs designed for the consuming team — documented, versioned, and with the authentication model your use case needs. Internal APIs, partner APIs, and public developer APIs.
AI engineering integrated into a product you already run or a new one: retrieval-augmented generation, document processing, classification, structured extraction, and agent pipelines. Not a chatbot demo — AI as a feature that earns its place.
Taking a legacy system off whatever it is currently running on and rebuilding it properly — with a migration path, rollback, and verified data integrity. We inherit codebases, stabilise them, and move them forward.
— Who it's for
Your team is doing data entry in three systems to keep a fourth one accurate. The SaaS vendor's roadmap won't solve your specific problem. The configuration options have run out. Custom software pays for itself when the alternative is a growing pile of workarounds.
A new web application, a member portal, a customer-facing tool. You need a team that will scope it, build it, ship it, and stay accountable after launch — not a studio that disappears when the contract ends.
A codebase that hasn't been touched in years. A vendor who is no longer around. An application running on software that hit end-of-life. We take these on — stabilise first, then move forward.
— How we work
SetKernel Digital Inc. is a small senior team. The engineers who scope the work are the engineers who build it — no handoff to a separate delivery team, no offshore outsourcing. Every project starts with a written brief and ends with a fixed price. What we scope is what you pay; if scope changes, we tell you in writing before touching the work.
— The process
01 — Brief
You write two paragraphs: what you need built, what is in the way, what done looks like. We respond within one business day with a fit / no-fit answer and questions.
02 — Engagement memo
A one-to-two page document that defines scope, deliverables, timeline, and a fixed price. No ambiguity about what you are getting. Signed before anything starts.
03 — Build
We build, you see progress. Pull requests are readable; architecture decisions are documented. If the scope changes, we surface it in writing before proceeding.
04 — Ship
Deployed with proper infrastructure, monitoring, and documentation. You own everything — the code, the credentials, the access. Handover is documented.
05 — Operate
We maintain what we ship — on a retainer for ongoing work or as fixed-price updates as needed. No abandonment after go-live.
— Why custom over off-the-shelf
The code lives in your repository. You can hire any engineer to work on it, move it to any host, change any part of it. No vendor lock-in, no per-seat pricing that grows without you.
Built for your data model, your workflows, and your team — not for the median user of a horizontal SaaS. The interface does what your people need it to do, without the features nobody uses.
Dependencies age, APIs change, the business evolves. Software that is not maintained rots. We stay on after launch — because software that ships and gets abandoned is not complete work.
Still weighing it up? Read the honest custom software vs off-the-shelf comparison — it names when buying a ready-made tool is the smarter call.
— Stack
Front-end
Astro · TypeScript · React (where client state demands it)
Back-end / runtime
Cloudflare Workers · Node.js · Python (for data pipelines)
Databases
D1 (SQLite at edge) · Postgres · SQLite · Redis
AI / ML
Anthropic Claude · OpenAI · Cloudflare Workers AI · Vectorize
Auth
Cloudflare Access · custom JWT · OAuth 2.0
Infrastructure
Cloudflare Workers · Proxmox VMs · Hetzner · Docker
Observability
Workers Logs · Sentry · Prometheus · Grafana
Deploy
Wrangler · GitHub Actions · Docker Compose
— Common questions
SetKernel Digital Inc. builds internal tools, web applications, automations, integrations, APIs, and AI features. We inherit and modernise legacy systems as well. The common thread is software built properly — senior engineers, clean architecture, full ownership transferred to you.
Every project is scoped and priced individually, with a fixed price agreed before anything starts. There is no hourly billing and no surprise invoices. The scope defines exactly what you get; if scope changes, we surface it in writing before proceeding. We do not publish a rate card.
It depends entirely on scope. A focused internal tool or automation — well-scoped, limited integrations — can ship in 3–6 weeks. A full web application with accounts, database, and custom business logic typically takes 8–16 weeks. Timeline is defined in the engagement memo before you commit.
SetKernel Digital Inc. is headquartered in Halifax, Nova Scotia. Custom software is done entirely remotely and we work with clients worldwide. The intake process is the same everywhere: a written brief, a written response.
We stay accountable after go-live. For ongoing maintenance and iterations, we work on a retainer. For discrete changes, we scope and price them individually. The code is yours — you can also bring any other engineer in at any point. We hand over everything: code, credentials, documentation.
— Engage
Two paragraphs: what you need built, what is blocking you, what done looks like. We respond within one business day.