Free checklist
Own the software,
not just the code.
Seven things you should have in your hands when a software project ends, and how to check each one before the last invoice. Download it, add it to your contract, and tick it off as the build goes.
Download the checklistMarkdown file, free, no email needed.
What the checklist covers
The source code, with its history
The repository with its commits, not a final zip. History is how the next developer learns what changed and why, without you paying for that lesson twice.
Setup instructions someone else has followed
Written steps that take a developer from a clean machine to a running copy. If nobody outside the original team has followed them, assume they don't work yet.
The accounts, in your name
Hosting, domain, database, payment processor, error tracking and app store listings, created by you with your builder invited. If they sit in the builder's account, you rent your product rather than own it.
A runbook for how it runs
What runs where, what talks to what, what happens when it breaks and who to call. One page that answers those is worth more than fifty that describe features.
Tests on the journeys that matter
Not total coverage: the few paths where a silent failure costs money or a customer, such as signing up, paying and the core thing the product does.
The decision record
Why this database, why that integration, what was tried and dropped. Without it the next team's first instinct is to rewrite, because undocumented choices look arbitrary.
What happens next, in writing
Either a support arrangement with an agreed scope and response expectation, or a clean exit with everything above in your hands. Plus one recorded handover session on deploying, monitoring and the likely failures.
Agree it at the start, check it in the middle.
Put this list in the scope before work begins, and halfway through ask someone on your side to follow the setup steps on a clean machine. Whatever is missing is cheap to fix then and expensive at the end.
Read the full guideTwo ways in.
Both reach a person.
Both reach the studio directly.