How this works
Every number on this page is the worst I will do, not the average. I would rather be early than explain.What the invoice will say
| Item | Value |
|---|---|
| Contracting currency | EUR |
| Price | EUR 10,000, ex-VAT, the price the customer pays |
| VAT | Not registered for VAT |
| Never added | No expenses, no disbursements, no FX adjustment, no expedite premium, no out-of-hours surcharge, no rounding |
| PO description | Written technical brief — fixed fee — Deal Baker Ltd |
| Invoice line | Written Technical Brief (fixed fee, five working days). |
| Bank charges | FX and receiving-bank charges are the buyer's side |
| Payment terms | Thirty days after delivery |
| Your judgement closes | Ten working days after delivery |
| If anything is cancelled | Credit note, full value, same day |
| Governing law and forum | England and Wales |
If an invoice from me ever differs from this by a single character, do not pay it — it is not mine.
Nothing is paid before delivery. The invoice ships with the document, which is what makes you pay nothing literally true and is why there is no payment control anywhere on the page you came from.
Bank details appear on the invoice only, never on a page. If your finance function cannot onboard a foreign supplier for a single purchase, say so and I will send a card link instead.
Submitting this is a request, not an order. Work starts when I confirm in writing. Every Brief is taken on or declined in writing, before there is an invoice — Term 6 — Acceptance.
Business supply only. Not offered to consumers.
Your judgement
Term 8 — Your Judgement. If you think I did not understand your business, tell me in one line inside ten working days after delivery and the invoice is cancelled. You do not have to justify it and I will not argue. You keep the document and the code either way, paid or not.
If you invoke this, you keep the document and you are on your own with it. That is what you pay nothing costs. If you intend to act on it, pay for it.
One named engineer accountable. Term 1 — Provenance.
What the document contains — Brief Structure v1.0
The numbering is frozen and versioned. Any change bumps the version; old documents keep their numbers.
| Ref | Section |
|---|---|
| 0 | Front Sheet — the mirror, the inference, first build, refusal, dated verdict |
| 1 | What you are actually asking for |
| 2 | What it would take |
| 3 | The decisions nobody has made yet |
| 4 | What I would build first |
| 5 | What I would refuse to build |
| 6 | What would make me wrong |
| 7 | What I did not ask you |
| 8 | If you take this to someone else |
| A | For the engineer this was forwarded to |
| B | Sources |
Sections 1 to 5 are contractual and carry those titles verbatim. Everything beyond them is labelled as beyond the promise.
Section 4 is copied word for word into any later proposal, so a sentence that is not something I would sign up to deliver does not go in section 4.
CHECK THESE
Six checks you can run before you decide anything, written as commands, and they are in every document I deliver:
- Check the DNS and MX records against the named host and mail provider.
- Check the company number at Companies House — 14906367.
- Open any source in the back and confirm section 2 says what it says.
- Confirm at least one refusal in section 5 is something you asked for and would have paid for.
- Confirm every item in section 6 is checkable by someone who is not me.
- Confirm the reference on the invoice matches the reference on the document.
What this document will not do
It does not contain a proposal, a price for building the thing, or an availability statement. I take no commission, referral fee, reseller margin or introduction fee from anyone named in it, at any time.
What you send me
I read it. Nobody else does. Nothing you send goes into any AI tool — not to summarise, sort or draft from — Term 7 — What You Send Me. The models used on public source material run on hardware I own, named on request. Two parties sit on the inbound path: the mail provider, which applies automated filtering like every mail provider, and the bot check on the form, which sees the submitter’s IP address and browser signals and never sees the text of what was sent.
The step-down is disclosed rather than discovered: at intake nothing you send goes near a third-party model, by default. During an engagement the default is different — frontier models for code, never your proprietary material — and you can switch it to local-only on request, at no extra cost, written into the DPA.
What happens after day five
Corrections are free, unbounded, and there is no window. A corrected version follows within three working days with a visible amendment table. The invoice never waits for them.
You get one message after delivery, and one only. It says in its first line that it needs no reply. There is no follow-up after that, no announced cadence, and no calendar link anywhere.
If you want half an hour to attack the document, ask and you get it. I do not do discovery calls. I do document reviews, after I have written the document.