Project Recovery
We finish what others start.
Take over what a bad agency left unfinished. Full technical audit, written recovery plan, and delivery on the original scope. For founders who burned budget on a failed vendor — or companies that lost their technical lead.
48h
technical audit turnaround
4–12 weeks
to stabilize and deliver
$5K–$30K
recovery + optional $3K–$6K/mo CTO
0
work starts before the plan is approved
Every recovery engagement includes
Audit through delivery.
Immediate technical audit
Codebase quality, architecture, test coverage, security posture, and deployment process — all documented in writing within 48–72 hours.
Written recovery plan
What we found, what we recommend, what we can salvage, what needs to be rebuilt, and what it costs. No work starts before you review this.
Transparent assessment
We tell you the truth, even if it is not what you want to hear. If the project is not recoverable, we say so — and explain why.
FORGE team execution
The same seven specialized agents that build new projects take over recovery projects. No single freelancer, no junior developers.
Clear delivery milestones
No more "almost done" for weeks. Written milestones with defined outputs and a realistic timeline from day one of recovery.
Security and quality gates
Every codebase we inherit gets the same ten quality gate pass that our builds receive. Nothing is left in a worse security posture than we found it.
Full documentation on delivery
README, deployment runbook, architecture notes, and operational documentation. You leave with a codebase someone else can maintain.
Optional fractional CTO
After recovery, we can provide ongoing technical leadership at $3K–$6K/month — architecture oversight, code review, and strategic planning.
What we work with
We have seen everything.
Nothing surprises us.
Recovery projects arrive in every possible state. We do not make it worse by pretending it is better than it is — we document what we find and give you a plan based on reality.
Codebases with no tests and no documentation
Projects built by three different agencies across five different frameworks
Backends with hardcoded credentials and no error handling
Frontend apps where every page is a single 2,000-line file
Deployment processes that require a specific developer's laptop
Databases with no migrations, no backups, and no schema documentation
Half-built features hidden behind feature flags nobody knows how to toggle
Vendor lock-in that was never disclosed during the engagement
How we engage
Six stages. No guesswork.
Assess (48–72 hours)
Technical audit of the codebase, infrastructure, and deployment process. Code quality, test coverage, security vulnerabilities, architectural debt — all documented in writing.
Report
Written recovery plan delivered: what we found, what is salvageable, what needs to be rebuilt, what it will cost, and how long it will take. You decide with full information.
Decide
You review the plan and approve the path forward. Some recoveries are patch-and-ship. Some require a targeted rebuild. The plan is clear on which and why before work begins.
Execute
FORGE team takes over. Backend, frontend, QA, security, and DevOps agents run in parallel. Ten quality gates on every deliverable. Written milestones at every stage.
Stabilize
Handoff with full documentation, CI/CD pipeline, and post-recovery support window. The project is delivered in a state your team or a future developer can operate.
Grow (optional)
After recovery, many clients continue with a fractional CTO engagement — technical leadership, architecture oversight, and feature development on an ongoing retainer.
Who this is for
Two situations. One team.
Founders who burned budget on a vendor
Spent $30K–$100K on an agency or freelancer that delivered something unusable, unfinished, or not what was agreed. You need a straight assessment and a path to actually shipping.
- Vendor stopped responding or delivered something broken
- The product technically exists but cannot be used
- You have the code but no idea what shape it is in
- You need to show something working before your next funding conversation
Companies that lost their technical lead
The technical co-founder departed. The lead developer quit. The contractor finished the contract. Nobody else in the organization fully understands the codebase.
- One person was the single point of knowledge for the entire system
- No documentation exists for what was built or how to deploy it
- New developers can not get productive on the codebase
- Small changes are breaking unrelated parts of the application
After recovery
Fractional CTO. $3K–$6K/month.
After the project is stable, many clients continue with an ongoing fractional CTO engagement. Technical leadership without the full-time executive overhead.
Architecture oversight
Review every significant technical decision before it is implemented. Prevent the architectural debt that makes future work 3x harder.
Code review
Senior review of pull requests, architecture changes, and major additions. Quality gate that does not require a full-time hire.
Developer management
If you have contractors or an internal team, we provide technical leadership — standards, code review, unblocking, and direction.
Technical strategy
Where is the system going? What should be built next? When should you scale infrastructure? Answers based on engineering reality, not guesses.
Vendor evaluation
Evaluating a new vendor, a new tool, or a major integration? We assess the technical proposal before you commit budget.
Crisis response
System down, security incident, data issue, performance collapse — you have a technical partner who can respond immediately.
Common questions
Straight answers.
Is there anything too broken to recover?
Sometimes. If the right answer is a rebuild rather than a patch job, we say so in the initial audit — with a clear rationale and a realistic comparison of recovery cost versus rebuild cost. We never recover something just to bill more hours. Our goal is to give you accurate information, not to maximize the engagement.
How do you handle a codebase you did not build?
The same way we build new ones — systematic audit, architecture mapping, test coverage analysis, security scan. We document everything we find before writing a line of code. No assumptions, no guesses about intent. We read what is there and report what we see.
What if the original vendor is still involved?
We handle vendor transitions professionally. We get access to the codebase and infrastructure, do the audit independently, and give you an unbiased picture. What you do with that — including any conversations with the original vendor — is your call. We do not need the original team involved to do our work.
What is the fractional CTO engagement, specifically?
Ongoing technical leadership at $3K–$6K per month. This includes architecture oversight, code review on significant changes, developer management if you have a team, strategic planning, and immediate availability for technical crises. The same work a full-time CTO would do, without the full-time salary, equity, and benefits overhead.
Ready to recover?
Send us the project. We will tell you what it needs.
Describe what was supposed to be built, what was delivered, and where things stand. We will schedule an audit and give you a written assessment. No commitment required to see the plan.