How we work — AI in delivery
How we use AI internally, and where we deliberately don’t.
AI-assisted development is real and it changes some of our costs. It also introduces failure modes that are easy to hide. Here is exactly what we do, so you can hold us to it.
Softrear uses AI assistance for scaffolding, test generation, migration and documentation, with every AI-assisted change reviewed by a named engineer and the same CI gates as any other change. Client code and data are never used to train third-party models.
Where it genuinely helps
- Scaffolding and boilerplate — adapters, DTOs, repetitive mapping code
- Test generation against an existing specification, then reviewed and pruned by hand
- Large mechanical migrations — framework upgrades, API renames across hundreds of files
- Documentation drafts and runbook first passes
- Reading unfamiliar legacy code quickly, as a guide rather than an authority
Where we do not use it
- Security-sensitive logic — authentication, authorisation, cryptography, payment flows
- Anything that is the actual novel difficulty of the project
- Architecture decisions, which need someone accountable in a year’s time
- Any context where client data would leave your tenancy
The rules that make it safe
- Every change is reviewed by a named engineer who takes ownership of it. "The tool wrote it" is not a defence at review.
- The same CI gates apply: tests, coverage thresholds, security scan, performance budget.
- No client code or data is submitted to any service that trains on inputs. Enterprise tenancy with training disabled, in writing.
- Dependency suggestions are checked against our approved list — AI-suggested packages are a known supply-chain vector.
What it means for you
It shows up as scope delivered per increment, not as a line item. We are happy to show you the difference in throughput on comparable work, and equally happy to say that on the genuinely hard parts of a project it changes very little.
Tell us what’s stuck.
A senior engineer reads every one of these. If we’re not the right fit we’ll say so, and point you at someone who is.
No spam, no drip sequence. A senior engineer replies within one business day.