Your developer is gone. Your product doesn't have to be.

When a takeover makes sense

Most of the founders who come to Servify Labs with a takeover are not starting from zero. They have a repository, a staging link, a pile of tickets and a deadline that did not move when their developer did. The situations repeat:

• A freelancer stopped replying halfway through the build.
• An agency delivered something that works in a demo but breaks with real users.
• The app was put together with an AI coding tool and nobody is sure it is safe to launch.
• The original team is still around, but too slow or too expensive to finish the job.
• The product is live, and nobody is responsible for it anymore.

What we look at first

Before anyone promises a date, we read what is actually there. A takeover review answers four questions: does the code run, what is finished versus what only looks finished, where the risks are, and how much of it is worth keeping.

In practice that means getting the project running locally and on its hosting, reading the data model and the authentication flow, checking how secrets, payments and user files are handled, and comparing what was built against what you were promised. Projects built quickly, by a rushed contractor or with AI tools, tend to fail in the same places: access rules that trust the browser, files and records that anyone with a link can read, and paid features that can be unlocked without paying. We check those first because they are the ones that hurt after launch.

What can usually be kept, and what forces a rewrite

A takeover is not an excuse to rebuild everything on our favourite stack. The decision is made part by part, after the review, not before it.

• Usually kept: the data model and the data itself, working screens and flows, integrations that are already wired correctly, and the hosting setup once access is transferred.
• Usually repaired: access rules, error handling, payment and webhook handling, file storage permissions, missing logs and backups.
• Sometimes replaced: a part nobody can build or deploy from the repository, a component on an abandoned library with no upgrade path, or a piece whose security problems are cheaper to rewrite than to patch.
• If something has to be replaced, you will know why before any work on it starts.

Ownership, access and security

You own the code, the designs and the infrastructure from day one. Repositories, hosting and third-party accounts stay in your name, so the next handover, to your own team or anyone else, is never a hostage negotiation.

To review a project we need read access to the repository, access to the hosting and database, and a list of the external services the app depends on: payments, email, storage, AI providers. If the previous developer still controls some of those accounts, recovering them comes first, before any new code. Passwords and keys the previous team had should be rotated as part of the takeover.

How a takeover runs

1. Intro call

   You walk us through the product, the history and the deadline. Bring the repository or a link to what is live.

2. Quote and proposal

   Within about 20 minutes of the call you receive a written proposal with the scope of the first sprint and the price.

3. Second call

   The next day we go through the proposal together and answer the open questions.

4. Agreement and start

   You sign the agreement and pay for the first sprint. Work starts the following day.

5. Two-week sprints

   Each sprint has a defined scope and ends with something you can see and test. Ongoing development after the takeover runs from $3,500 per two-week sprint, paid upfront, and can be paused or cancelled.

Who does the work

Servify Labs is an AI-native product studio: senior engineers who use AI tools to move quickly without lowering the bar on quality. On a takeover that speed matters most at the start, when someone has to read a codebase they did not write and understand it in days, not weeks.

Not every inherited project is a good fit. If the review shows that finishing would cost more than starting again, we say so, and explain the numbers. If you are looking for a quick patch to get through a demo and do not plan to keep building, a takeover is probably the wrong tool.

What to prepare for the first call

• Access to the repository, or at least a list of where the code lives.
• The hosting, database and domain accounts the app uses.
• Whatever the previous team left: specs, tickets, designs, chat history.
• The date that actually matters to you and why: a launch, a client, an investor update.

Frequently asked questions