Approach
Rigour you can inspect.
We are a small studio, so the method has to do the work a large firm does with headcount. Four rules shape every product; one release gate stands between every change and the people who depend on it.
How we build
Four rules, applied to every system we ship.
- 01
Fail closed
Missing data, a stale quote, an unreadable document or an unreachable counterparty means no new risk. The default state of every system is to stop and say why.
SUTP's pre-trade gate · TaxReturnStudio's completeness contract
- 02
Reconcile to the source of truth
The broker's record, the document's figure, the statute's number. Our ledgers are reconciled to them, never the other way round, and every correction is audited and reversible.
Broker-truth reconciliation · field provenance down to the cell
- 03
Measure before you claim
A strategy earns size with evidence that survives overfitting tests. A tax figure carries its assumption. A number nobody can defend does not ship.
Deflated Sharpe and walk-forward · full-return recomputation
- 04
Keep a human in control
Breakers latch until a person clears them. Nothing reaches a tax return unseen. Live capital waits on an authorisation chain the operator holds.
HALT.ALL · approval manifests · operator-owned activation
The release gate
Six steps between an idea and a user.
- 01
Specify
Every change starts as a written spec with a named reviewer. Ambiguity is resolved on paper, where it is cheap.
- 02
Red first
A failing test exists before the code that makes it pass. If we did not watch it fail, we do not know what it proves.
- 03
Independent review
A second system reviews every change before it ships. No change is small enough to skip.
- 04
Gate receipt
The full test suite runs on the exact tree that ships, and the receipt travels with the release. Change the tree, earn a new receipt.
- 05
Immutable release
Versions are tagged, bundled and deployed as units. Rollback is a documented step, not an improvisation.
- 06
Operate and record
We run what we build and keep a dated performance and incident log. The log is self-critical by design.
Why it matters to a partner
A partner is not buying a strategy. A partner is buying the process that decides whether a strategy may exist, how big it may be, and when it must stop. That process is what we show first, because it is what survives a bad quarter.
Why it matters to a practice
A tax professional signs their name to every figure. Our tools are built so that every figure carries its source, its assumption and the professional's own decision about it. The software never gets to be the one who was wrong quietly.
Operating board
Facts we can show. Numbers we will not.
Under the SEC Marketing Rule, paper and model results are hypothetical performance and do not belong on a public page. What belongs here is what the systems do every day. Regenerated from the repositories at each release.