About Tinkr Labs
A small studio doing careful software work.
Tinkr Labs is a software studio with two sides. We build products of our own, and we partner with founders and teams who want their software designed, engineered, and shipped with care.
Story
We started Tinkr Labs to do the kind of software work we always wanted to be hired for.
That meant taking on fewer projects at a time, working closely with the people who own the outcome, and treating engineering quality as a feature rather than a tax. The studio exists because we were tired of seeing software get built the other way.
The team scales through a trusted network of engineers and designers we have worked with for years, rather than a fixed headcount. When a project needs a senior iOS engineer, a motion-focused designer, or a data infrastructure specialist, they join the team for the duration of that work. You get the right person on the right thing, and you do not pay for a bench between engagements.
Alongside client work, we build and run two products of our own. Caspy is a subscription canvas tool for Etsy sellers. Buildtree is a mobile build distribution service for engineering teams. Both are live in production, and running them shapes how we build software for everyone else.
Side A
Products of our own
Side B
Custom client work
Principles
How we think about the work.
Six rules of thumb that show up in our proposals, our PRs, and our retros. Not aspirational, the way we actually work.
- 01
Ship the smallest useful thing
A working v1 in the hands of real users teaches you more than a perfect v2 on a slide. We bias toward shipping early, then iterating in the open.
- 02
Design the product, not the artefact
Mocks, prototypes, and architecture diagrams are means to an end. We treat them as scaffolding for the working software, never as the deliverable.
- 03
Type-safe by default
Strong types, strict compilers, and predictable runtimes. Catching mistakes at build time is cheaper than catching them in production, every time.
- 04
Plain language over jargon
We write code, copy, and proposals that read clearly. If a sentence needs a second read, we rewrite it. The same applies to our codebases.
- 05
Take craft seriously
Performance, accessibility, polish. None of these are optional or saved for the end. They get attention every week, not the week before launch.
- 06
Hand it over cleanly
When an engagement ends, the next team should be able to pick up the work without us. Documentation, deploys, and reasoning are part of what we deliver.
Get in touch
Want to start a conversation?
The fastest way to reach us is by email. We read everything, usually reply the same day, and only take on work we are genuinely the right team for.