who owns the code?
you do, from the first commit. it lives in your git account and you can take it to anyone. we don't use licence terms, private frameworks, or hosting tricks that make leaving expensive.
ownership is set up on day one. there's nothing to negotiate at the end. the repository is created in your git account, under your name, and every commit lands there with a history you can read. the same goes for the accounts around it: hosting, domain, database, analytics. we create them in your name, you're the owner, and we work inside them as collaborators you can remove.
what "no lock-in" means in practice
plenty of vendors say the code is yours and then make leaving expensive anyway. the usual tricks:
- a licence that lets you use the code but not take it elsewhere
- a private framework or platform that only their team knows
- hosting under their account, so the site goes with the relationship
- a stack so unusual that nobody else will quote on it
we don't do any of those. we pick tools you can hire for, hosting you can move to another provider, and a stack another developer can take over. add the handover doc and the next person, or the next agency, isn't starting from zero.
if you leave
you revoke our access and carry on. there's nothing to export and no buyout, because we're not holding anything. retainers run month to month. what happens if we want to leave covers the rest, and the software page lists what comes with every build.