Internal tools
The job currently held together by three spreadsheet tabs, a group chat and one person's memory. Rebuilt as a single application that enforces its own rules, so the process survives someone being on holiday.
Custom software development
Software built to your specification.
Applications for businesses that have outgrown the spreadsheet, the shared inbox, and the process that only one person understands.
Start a project
Replies within one working day
- Discipline
- Bespoke application development
- Engagement
- Fixed scope, fixed quote, agreed before work starts
- Typical build
- Four to twelve weeks
- Handover
- Source code, documentation and deployment, yours to keep
- Own products
- BareMind and KHOLMSK, for Android and iPhone. See the work
What gets built
Every project is written for one business and one set of rules. Nothing here is a template with your logo dropped into it.
Line-of-business applications
Quoting, scheduling, stock, job tracking, compliance records. Software shaped around how the work actually runs, rather than a product you have to reorganise the business to fit.
Integration and automation
Two systems that do not talk to each other, made to talk. Manual re-typing between them removed, along with the transcription errors that come with it.
Built here, start to finish.
The business builds and publishes software of its own as well. Both products below went through the same stages a client project does, and they are public, so the finish can be judged rather than described.
REF. P—01 · Mental-wellness app
Launching October 2026
BareMind
Screens from the Android release build, English.
A daily mental-wellness app: mood check-ins, sleep, a journal, guided exercises and meditations, a safety plan and cycle tracking. It has no account and no server. Nothing a person writes in it ever leaves their phone.
That is a design decision, not a line in a policy. The app was built so that it cannot collect data even if it tried: entries are encrypted on the device, kept out of phone backups, and a release is rejected automatically if the code gains a way to reach the internet. The same discipline applies to any client system that holds customer or staff records.
- Platforms
- Android and iPhone from one codebase. English, French and Dutch.
- Carried through
- Design, build, testing on real devices, Google Play and App Store submission, privacy and export declarations, the product site and support mail. One person, end to end.
- Hard part
- A voice journal (Android) that turns speech into text on the phone itself, so a recording never goes to a server. Few apps attempt it: a large speech model has to fit inside a phone's memory without crashing the app.
- Built with
- React · TypeScript · Capacitor · IndexedDB · whisper.cpp · AES-256-GCM, hardware-backed keys
REF. P—02 · Survival game
In development
KHOLMSK
Frames rendered from the game itself at store resolution. Staged in the real engine, nothing mocked up.
The pit under Kholmsk ruptured and the zone was sealed with everyone still inside. You play a scavenger working out of a buried bunker: take the jobs nobody else will, walk out into nineteen maps of pine forest, farmland, a drowned fen, a dead mall, an ironworks and the snowbound city itself, and get back to a bed before dark. Bleeding, cold, hunger and radiation all count. Death costs you what you carry.
Enemies take cover, advance together and run when a fight turns. Factions run the roads and remember which side you took. Rain, fog, snow and a season clock change what is safe. Every item can be scavenged, traded, crafted or repaired, every lock picked pin by pin. All of it runs on the phone, offline, with no ads and no in-app purchases.
For a client, what this proves: one person carried a large, long-running system from first prototype to store-ready, designed for touch from day one, kept fast on ordinary phones, and covered by its own automated tests and tooling throughout.
- Platforms
- iPhone and Android, landscape, twin-stick touch controls.
- Carried through
- World, systems and story; art and audio; automated test batteries; store listing, artwork and privacy policy; the game's own support site.
- Hard part
- Enemies that fight as a group, survivors with their own routines, weather and seasons that change the odds, nineteen maps and hundreds of items: a living world that fits on a phone with no server behind it.
- Built with
- Godot 4 · GDScript · GL Compatibility renderer · headless render and capture tooling
What you can ask for
Everything here is in use in the products above or in the running of this business. Nothing is listed on the strength of having read about it.
- Phone apps
- Android and iPhone from one codebase, so staff use the phones they already have. Store submission, privacy declarations and export paperwork handled here, not handed back to you.
- Web and internal tools
- Browser-based applications and the hosting to run them. This site, its email and the product sites run on servers the business manages, so a client system arrives with its running environment, not just its code.
- Offline first
- Software that works with no signal and keeps its data on the device: field work, poor coverage, records that should not sit on someone else's server.
- Private by construction
- Encryption on the device with hardware-backed keys, data kept out of phone backups, and a release check that fails if an app gains an unexpected way to reach the internet. Relevant wherever customer or health records are involved.
- Languages
- Interfaces in English, French and Dutch, with store listings to match.
- Games and simulation
- Large real-time worlds on ordinary phones, with automated test batteries and tools that render the store artwork from the game itself.
For whoever checks these things: JavaScript and TypeScript, React, Python, Capacitor, Godot and GDScript, C++ where speed demands it, nginx, Docker and Linux.
How a project runs
Three stages, in order. You know the price before the work starts and you own everything at the end of it.
Scope
We agree exactly what the software does before a line of it is written. You get that in writing, with a fixed quote against it. If the scope changes later, the quote changes with it, in writing again.
Build
You get working software to try early and regularly, not a status report about work you cannot see. Anything that is wrong is cheaper to find in week two than in week ten.
Handover
Source code, documentation and a running deployment, all yours. Any competent developer can pick the project up from there. Hiring one person should not mean depending on them permanently.
Enquiries
Tell me what the job is.
Describe the work and roughly when you need it. You get a straight answer on whether it is a fit, what it would cost, and how long it would take. No charge, no sales call.
info@macleodapps.com