Agentic development
Guild engineers build with AI agents under their direction. One senior person now delivers what used to take a team, which is why the price is fixed and the timeline is days, not quarters.
Invitation-only guild of senior engineers
Senior engineering, when your business needs it.
The Guild is an as-needed engineering resource for small businesses. A named senior engineer, working with Claude Code and backed by a community of peers, quotes each piece as a fixed price, builds it with human review at every step, and demos finished work to you every day until it is done. You own all of it.
- Fixed price in writing before anything starts
- A demo of finished work every single day
- Every line reviewed by a human before it ships
- You own everything built, from day one
Fixed price: $1,200Delivered in 10 days. Approved.
8 of 8of your business hours covered
Who we serve
Built for businesses that run on people, not software teams.
You will never hire a developer. You should still have one. These are the businesses the Guild was built for.
Home services
Plumbing, HVAC, electrical, roofing, cleaning, landscaping. Quotes out in minutes, invoices that send themselves, calls after five that become jobs.
Examples and pricesIndependent practices
Dental, veterinary, physical therapy, chiropractic. Fewer no-shows, intake that fills itself in, Friday numbers in your inbox.
Examples and pricesOnline shops
Stock that agrees between store and warehouse, supplier feeds that update themselves, a senior hand when the platform will not bend.
Examples and pricesFounders
A senior engineer in your working hours at a posted rate, booked by the week, with the Guild's fee shown on every invoice.
Examples and pricesWhy the Guild is different
We are aligning the disruption of our profession with the businesses it should have served all along.
A community behind every engineer
Your engineer is never alone. Members review each other's work, cover for each other, and share one toolbox. You hire a person and get the Guild's standards with them.
Quality, with guardrails
Agents are fast; judgement is human. Every piece goes through human-in-the-loop review, with guardrails on what the tools may touch, before anything reaches your business.
Why now
Our profession is being reshaped. Small businesses have waited long enough. The Guild lines the two up.
Agentic tools are changing what one senior engineer can do in a day, and the industry is shedding experienced people while it works out what that means. At the same time, most of the country's businesses have never had a senior engineer they could call, because the traditional route, an agency quote measured in months and six figures, was never built for them.
The Guild exists at that intersection. We take the disruption in our own profession and point it at the businesses that were priced out: senior people, working independently with the best tools available, delivering fixed-price pieces in days, demoed daily, at a fraction of the old cost.
The businesses
- 36.2Msmall businesses in the United States, 99.9 percent of all firms 1
- 6.4Mof them have employees; 5.7 million with fewer than twenty 1
- 62.3Mpeople work for a small business, 45.9 percent of the private workforce 1
- 9 in 10net new jobs from March 2023 to March 2024 came from small businesses 1
By trade 1
- Professional, scientific and technical services4.88M
- Construction3.66M
- Other services, including repair and personal care3.86M
- Real estate and rental3.51M
- Health care and social assistance2.95M
- Retail trade2.81M
- Accommodation and food services1.20M
- Finance and insurance1.03M
The engineers
- 48.4Mactive software developers worldwide; 36.5 million of them professionals 3
- 1.72Msoftware developers employed in the United States, median pay $135,980 2
- 43%of surveyed developers have more than ten years of professional experience 4
- 1 in 7already works as an independent contractor or freelancer; a third work fully remote 4
What is changing
- 150K+tech workers laid off in 2024, and more than 180,000 in the first nine months of 2025 5
- 84%of developers use or plan to use AI tools; half of professionals use them every day 4
- $132Kaverage cost of a software project reported in agency client reviews, over a typical 13 months 6
- 45%average budget overrun on large IT projects, delivering 56 percent less value than promised 7
Put the survey shares against the professional population and roughly fifteen million developers worldwide have more than a decade of experience, and about two million of those already work independently. That is the pool the Guild recruits from, one invitation at a time.
Sources
- SBA Office of Advocacy, 2025 Small Business Profile: United States (Census SUSB and Nonemployer Statistics, 2022)
- US Bureau of Labor Statistics, Occupational Outlook Handbook, Software Developers (2025 base year, May 2025 wages)
- SlashData, global developer population, Q3 2025 and beginning of 2025 model
- Stack Overflow Developer Survey 2025: Work, Developers and AI sections
- Layoffs.fyi tracker as reported by TechCrunch (2024 list) and RationalFX (2025 composite to 1 October 2025)
- Clutch, software development pricing guide and project data from client reviews
- McKinsey with University of Oxford, study of 5,400 large IT projects
How it works
Three steps. One call. Then a demo every day.
-
Tell us what you need
A two-minute form about the business and what you want built, fixed or automated. We read every one personally.
-
One call
Twenty minutes to understand the business and confirm we are a fit for each other. If we are, you get your credentials to the platform.
-
Approve the quote, see it daily
Each piece comes back as a fixed price with a date. You approve, and from the next day there is a standup where your engineer demos what got finished in the last twenty-four hours.
Our cadence
Every day, a demo.
Every engagement has a daily standup at a time you choose. Your engineer shows you the finished work from the last twenty-four hours, running, not slides. Every day, for as long as the work lasts.
Small and medium pieces are done in a day or two. Medium to large pieces take about a week. Anything bigger is broken into pieces of that size, so there is never a week without something real to show.
- Daily standup, same time every day
- Finished work demoed, not described
- Small pieces in a day or two, large in about a week
- Big things broken down so progress is visible daily
Pricing
Two ways to work with a Guild engineer.
Every engineer posts an hourly rate. What changes is how you buy their time: by the finished piece, or by the week.
Pay for outcomes
Quoted work
You describe what you want. Your engineer quotes each piece as a fixed price with a delivery date. You approve, it is delivered, and it is drawn from a monthly cap you set.
- Monthly cap of $2,000 or more, paid ahead. Your engineer never goes past it without asking.
- Fixed price means fixed: overruns are the engineer's cost, scope changes get a new quote.
- Unused balance rolls into next month, and is refunded if you stop.
- Best for a list of things you want gone: automations, integrations, reports, fixes.
Pay for time, every week
Dedicated engineer
You book a set number of hours each week with one engineer at their posted rate, and they are yours for those hours: in your tools, in your meetings, on your roadmap.
- Choose the hours per week, from 10 to 40. Month paid ahead at the posted rate.
- One engineer, same person every week, a daily standup where finished work is demoed.
- Change the hours at the end of any month. Stop at the end of any month.
- Best for building something new or for a business that always has a next thing.
The rate on each card is the same under both models. Quotes are built from it; dedicated hours are billed at it. A tool running overnight while your engineer supervises is not extra hours.
The Guild charter
What every Guild engineer has sworn to.
Invited personally. There is no application form, no bench, and no public listing. You meet engineers inside the platform after we have talked.
Assessed on a recorded working session on a real problem, not a coding puzzle.
Every piece quoted as a fixed price, in writing, before it starts. Overruns are theirs, not yours.
A daily standup, at a time the client chooses, where the engineer demos the finished work from the last twenty-four hours. Every day of the engagement. Progress is shown, not reported.
Built with agentic tools under guardrails, and reviewed by a human before it ships. Speed never skips judgement.
One named person from first call to last commit, with another member to cover if life happens.
Month paid ahead to the Guild's US company. One invoice, one W-9. Cancel at the end of any month. You own the code and the accounts from day one.
Sealed by every member on joining.
What the Guild is
A guild of builders. Independent, equipped, and not alone.
Thousands of senior software engineers are being squeezed out of traditional jobs as companies lean on AI. The irony is that the same tools make one senior engineer, properly equipped, the equivalent of an entire development shop.
The Guild exists so those engineers can run their own practice without doing it alone. Members set their own hours, their own rate and their own way of working. They quote fixed prices or book by the week. They teach each other, cover for each other and learn together.
There are no dues and no membership fees. A member contributes a small share of what they earn through the Guild, only when they earn it. The Guild is a membership organisation whose members happen to be individual practices, and it is built to outlast any one person in it.
Read about the Guild- No dues, no fees, no quotas
- Members set their hours, rates and terms
- Fixed-price or by the week, their choice
- Stronger together than alone
M
Who leads the Guild
Matthew SummersGuild President
Twenty-seven years building software and the teams that build it, in Fortune 500 companies and in small startups, as CTO through successful exits, and inside due diligence on both sides of the table.
The systems have spanned transportation, logistics and supply chain, education, finance, legal, marketing technology, scientific applications and security. The recent years have been AI: custom model development and training, and deploying AI solutions at scale.
The lesson underneath all of it is simple. Small teams of strong people outbuild large ones. The person doing the work should be the person you talk to. Price and scope belong in writing before anyone starts. The Guild is that lesson, organised.
- 27 yearsbuilding software and teams
- Fortune 500 to startupsand successful exits as CTO
- AI at scalecustom models, training, deployment
- Eight industrieslogistics to legal to science
Two minutes to start
Tell us what you need. Get a fixed price within a day.
No call is required to hear a number. Every piece of work is quoted in writing before it starts.