Your project has stalled. It is not necessarily lost.
10 questions, 2 minutes, a verdict: what is salvageable in what already exists, and what is not.
Start the diagnosis- Your vendor has not answered in weeks.
- The delivered version does not do what was agreed, and nobody can say why.
- The code is somewhere. On a repository you have no access to, or on a machine you have never seen.
- The deadline has not moved.
This case has a technical name: a takeover. It gets diagnosed before it gets priced.
What the diagnosis produces
Thirty minutes, over video, with the CTO. You leave with four written answers.
- 01
A salvageability verdict
Can what exists serve as a foundation, yes or no. It is the one question that governs every other.
- 02
An inventory of what is reusable
What we keep as is, what we rewrite, what we throw away. Component by component, not in one block.
- 03
The access and rights blockers
Repository, hosting, domain, database, assignment of the code's IP. What is missing, and how to get it.
- 04
An order of magnitude
Budget and timeline for the takeover, as a range. An order of magnitude, not a quote: nobody can price code they have not read.
You leave with those four answers, whether we work together afterwards or not.
Ten questions about the real state of your project
No fields to fill in, no email asked before the verdict. You answer, you see the result.
Access and ownership
The question that governs every other.
Do you have access to the source code today?
Two takeovers, already done
A website taken over and modernised from another vendor's code. A customisation tool debugged and put back into service.
Code Takeover
Debug
Loïc Guillebeau
Founder & CTO — Beyond The Brackets
Paris / New York
He takes the call himself. Not a salesperson, not a qualification rep.
A developer since he was 14, he has run Beyond The Brackets since 2019 and has partnered with 30+ startups on building their product.
A takeover is judged by reading the code and looking at who holds the access. That is CTO work, and it is the only reason these thirty minutes are worth anything.
What we do not take on
Three cases where we turn the file down. Better said before the call.
An ongoing dispute with your vendor
As long as ownership of the code is contested, touching it exposes you. The contractual side gets settled first, with a lawyer.
No access to the code, and no way to obtain it
Without the code there is no takeover: there is a rewrite. Different job, different budget, and we will say so.
A remaining budget below €5,000
Below that, a serious takeover is not fundable. Starting anyway would only burn what little is left.
What we get asked
What if I have no access to the code?
Most of the time the code exists and access can be recovered: the repository is in the vendor's name but the contract provides for assignment, or the host can restore a backup to the account holder. The diagnosis exists precisely to establish what is recoverable and by which route. If nothing is, we say so.
What if I am in a dispute with my vendor?
We do not work on a project whose ownership is contested. We also do not give legal advice: that is a lawyer's job. Once the dispute is closed, the technical diagnosis is still available.
What does a takeover cost?
It depends entirely on what is reusable, which is what the diagnosis establishes. Between a few days of mapping and restarting, and a multi-week job when the technical debt is heavy. You get the order of magnitude by the end of the call, before any commitment.
How fast can we restart?
A takeover always starts with mapping: recovering access, getting the project to run, reading the code, identifying what breaks. Expect one to two weeks before anyone can announce a reliable delivery date. An agency that gives you a timeline before reading the code is inventing it.