Steve is on the call and on the build.
No account managers, no handoff to someone junior. The person you talk to is the person responsible for the answer.
About
You talk to Steve.
Our team builds it.
Steve runs Data Digital from Vancouver, Washington. For twenty years he has been the engineer founders hand a vision to and get working software back from.
You deal with him directly, start to finish. Behind him is a team that builds alongside your people.
How we work
Three things that do not change
Plain words in, developer terms out.
Describe what you want the way you would to a friend. We write down what the people building it need to know.
Scope and price agreed before anything starts.
A fixed price, in writing. If the scope changes, the price changes in writing too.
Twenty years of shipping
Turning other people’s ideas into working software.
- 2023 – now
AI media platforms for major broadcasters
Architect for the systems that create on-air content and deliver emergency alerts.
- 2022 – 2023
Enterprise platforms
Led engineering on a platform used across thousands of locations.
- 2016 – 2021
Marketing software used worldwide
Built the tools marketers use to run campaigns and brand their work.
- 2015 – 2016
Education software
Browser-based courses that teach computer science through game development.
- 2010 – 2015
Websites for nonprofits and schools
Design, development, and support, working directly with clients.
How we build
Boundary-First Development
Think of your product like a building. The foundation, your customer data and business rules and who is allowed to do what, gets built once to a written spec. Everything people see sits on top of it, and any of it can be replaced without the rest noticing.
What people see · change it anytime
Your websiteSwappable
Your mobile appSwappable
Your staff dashboardSwappable
An AI assistantSwappable
+ whatever you try nextWho cares
The boundary
The foundation · built once, to spec
- Your customer data
- Your business rules
- Payments and permissions
- One source of truth
In practice
What that means for you
Try new things without fear.
A redesign, a new app, an AI experiment. Each plugs into the same foundation, so trying costs days, not a rebuild.
Mistakes get caught before customers see them.
Every change is checked automatically against what was written down. Nobody has to remember to.
Security is not a later phase.
Logins, permissions, and backups are there from day one, not bolted on after something goes wrong.
The team gets faster, not replaced.
Senior engineers and people building with AI tools both ship safely, because the foundation holds either way.
No half-finished work.
Big projects are cut into pieces that each ship complete, instead of one big thing shipped half-done.
No lock-in.
Any piece can be replaced without the rest noticing. That includes vendors, tools, and us.
For your engineers
Read the rules on Codeberg →The rulebook
Boundary-First is open source: numbered rules, a pull request checklist, lint presets, and a tool that checks them in CI. Your developers can read it before we ever talk.
Typed input and output at every boundary. Every result is ok, data, or error, with enumerated error codes.
All business logic and validation live on the server. The frontend is a static display layer.
Every record carries a status and an updated time. Clients sync on the server clock. Deletes are soft.
Casing translated at the boundary, UTC everywhere, one argument per function, lint gates on hooks.
A public API that never breaks, and an app API free to move with the product.
List stores and detail stores, a stored copy and a working copy, components that never call the API.
Unit tests for pure functions. Integration tests at the boundary for everything else.
Every component can be deleted and rewritten from its contract alone. Nothing ships provisionally.
Release branches, whole merges, tagged production, and the gates in the pipeline.