drive-thru · policy

★ HOW QUOTES ARE CALCULATED

we price the build, not what the requester can bear. two requesters who order the same thing get the same quote. the math has three parts:

• new components — what has to be written for the first time. expensive, because someone has to figure it out.
• reused parts — pieces the studio already has in its library (a sheet connector, an email sender, an auth flow, a hosting recipe). each one lowers the quote, and the scope sheet tells you which ones got pulled in.
• external services — third-party APIs the build has to pay to call, expressed as a monthly run price if any.

this is a flywheel: every build that adds a reusable part lowers the price of future builds that need it.

★ THE 14-DAY EXPIRY

quotes are valid for 14 days. after that they expire and you re-order at the speaker. we keep your scope sheet, so re-quoting is fast. an expired quote is not a held price — prices can move.

★ TENANCY · WHERE IT OPENS

every quote tells you up front whether your build opens in The Mall (multi-tenant — anyone could be a customer) or is handed straight to you (single-tenant — only you could ever use it, like a company website or an internal tool).

this is decided at the window, not at handoff, so you know before paying whether your build becomes a public shop. a shop with exactly one possible customer isn't a shop, so single-tenant orders never open a storefront.

★ CONFIDENCE BANDS

• high— we've built this shape before; one firm number.
• medium — mostly known, one or two novel pieces; one number with a small stated buffer.
• speculative — genuinely new territory. the quote is a band, with a plain warning, and we offer a small scoping spike (~25 points) to do a deeper investigation and return a firm quote — creditable against the build if you proceed.

★ REFUNDS

failed builds refund in full, to source.if we charged your card, the refund goes back to the card. if you paid in points, the points go back to your wallet. failure is the studio's risk, not yours.

delivered builds are not refundable, because you received exactly what the accepted quote and its acceptance criteria described. this rule is stated at the window before you pay; it never lives in fine print.

chargebacks are handled with the record.every order carries its accepted quote, its handoff PRD with acceptance criteria, its kitchen notes, and its delivery artifact. that record is the studio's evidence in any dispute. we refund readily where a build genuinely fell short and contest only where the record clearly shows a delivered, accepted build.

★ CARD MONEY BUYS BUILDS, NOT POINTS

the card path pays for a specific scoped order. it is not a points top-up. cash never converts to wallet balance — the closed loop stays closed. if a card-paid build fails, the refund returns to the card, never as points.

★ DIGITAL DELIVERY ONLY

we touch no atoms. the drive-thru produces hosted URLs, API endpoints, scripts, browser extensions, static sites, and company or personal websites. if a request can only be satisfied by shipping a physical object, an agent declines with a reason and points you at the digital part of what you wanted (e.g. “we can't print and mail the planner, but we can build the generator that makes the PDF”).

★ THE STUDIO MAY DECLINE

out-of-scope, infeasible, or harmful orders are declined with a stated reason. the studio is never obligated to build, and a clear, fast “no” is a better outcome than a quote we can't honor.

★ THE PUBLIC BOARD

every order's existence, public title, shape, and status appear on the public drive-thru board. your private inputs, credentials, and single-tenant deliverables never do. the board doubles as a running catalog of what the studio can actually build, and as honest social proof — real orders becoming real shops.