Butter Side Up Start a project

Independent web app studio

Taking on new projects

Web apps that land the right way.

Butter Side Up designs and builds custom web apps, AI features and working prototypes. You work directly with the person writing the code, from the first call to launch day and after.

Tell us about your project

Free 20-minute intro call.

01What we build

Software shaped around how your business actually works, not the other way round.

  • 01

    Custom web apps

    Booking systems, dashboards, customer portals and internal tools.

  • 02

    AI features

    Voice, chat, document reading and automation, with sensible limits so the bill never surprises you.

  • 03

    Prototypes

    A working version of your idea to put in front of customers or investors before you commit to the full build.

  • 04

    The parts nobody sees

    Accounts, databases, payments, notifications and security, done carefully so they stay boring.

02Selected work

Real projects, running for real.

Demo video coming soon

Language Tutor

2026

A voice-first Spanish tutor that actually teaches.

The problem
Most language apps drill flashcards. You can't just ask "How do you say hotel?" and get taught.
What we built
A tutor you talk to out loud. It answers in Spanish and English voices, breaks words down by sound, and brings each word back at the right time.
Built with
Speech in and out, Claude AI, spaced repetition, Supabase
Status
Live. A try-it-yourself demo is coming soon.
  • 02Project to be announcedIn progress
  • 03Project to be announcedIn progress

03The Test Kitchen

Gloriously useless things, seriously engineered.

Nobody needs a letter-stealing chef. But building one takes the same skills as the things you do need.

Alphabet Soup

Served

A chef moves into your text box and steals letters for his soup until he has every letter and digit. Now and then he eats one. Click his pot and he spills the lot back into your text.

Full demo →

What's really going on

  • One script tag, no dependencies, works on any website: the way chat widgets and booking buttons ship.
  • It measures exactly where every character sits in a text box, the hard part of autocomplete and @-mentions.
  • Edits fire normal input events, so React, Vue and friends stay in sync.
  • Screen readers hear every theft, "reduce motion" is respected, and nothing animates while he's idle.

Same skills, less theft: autocomplete, booking widgets, embeddable tools.

Is It Safe to Go Outside?

Served

One button. Twenty-three federal agencies. No guarantees. Press it and everyone from the National Weather Service to NASA's asteroid watch is asked whether anything is about to go wrong where you're standing.

Sample answer Is it safe to go outside? YES Dread 7 of 100. The federal government has nothing on you.

Full demo →

What's really going on

  • One request fans out to 23 public APIs at once, and the slowest one never holds up the rest.
  • A source that fails or times out is reported, not hidden, and never changes the score.
  • Answers are cached in Postgres and rate limited per visitor, and the API keys never reach the browser.

Same skills, fewer asteroids: dashboards, integrations, data pipelines.

Red String Conspiracy Board

In the oven

Pick any two things in existence, say a cheese and a pope, and watch the shortest chain of real connections get pinned to a corkboard with red string.

What's really going on

  • It searches outward from both ends of Wikidata's 100-million-item knowledge graph until the two paths meet.
  • It caches what it learns, stays inside Wikidata's rate limits, and filters out boring links so the route is interesting, not just short.

Same skills, fewer popes: recommendations, fraud detection, route finding.

04Process

No mystery, and no 80-page proposal.

  1. 01

    Intro call

    Twenty minutes, free. You tell us what you're trying to do, and we tell you honestly whether we're the right fit.

  2. 02

    Prototype

    A working demo of the core idea, quickly, so we're both reacting to something real instead of a document.

  3. 03

    Build

    The real thing, in small steps you can see and try as it comes together.

  4. 04

    Launch

    On your own domain and accounts, so you own everything from day one.

  5. 05

    Support

    Fixes, tweaks and new features after launch, as much or as little as you need.

05About

A small studio, on purpose.

Butter Side Up designs, builds and looks after every project personally. No account managers, no handoffs.

Toast, famously, lands butter side down. Our job is making sure your project doesn't.

06Contact

Tell us about your project.

Email what you're trying to build and who it's for. A few sentences is plenty. You'll get a personal reply, and if it sounds like a fit, we'll set up a free 20-minute call.