Commit-Calibrated Estimates: How We Quote in Hours, Not Vibes

Why up-front quotes used to be impossible

The reason software estimates were a running joke is that they were vibes wearing a suit. Someone eyeballed a feature list, multiplied by a gut factor, doubled it for safety, and called it a bid. When the guess was wrong — and it usually was — the client absorbed the overrun or the shop ate the loss. Neither is a good business to be in, which is why most shops quote time-and-materials and let you find out the total at the end.

We quote a number up front. That is only responsible if the number is grounded, so here is how it is grounded.

Velocity is measurable

Every build leaves a trail: commits. A commit is a small, reviewed unit of finished work, and across a real project the count is a surprisingly stable proxy for effort. We keep a library of velocity analogs — real repositories, labeled by the kind of work they represent, with their measured commit counts and the hours they actually took.

When we scope your build, we do not ask "how long does this feel?" We ask "what have we built that this resembles, and how many commits did that take?" The conversion — roughly ten minutes of directed agent work per commit — lives in the estimate, not in the model's imagination. Phase hours trace to a cited analog, or we say we do not have one and ask.

Client repo first, house repo as fallback

The best analog is your own prior work, if you have any with us. Absent that, we cite the nearest labeled analog from our own repositories as a greenfield anchor. What we never do is fabricate a commit count to make a phase look sized. If nothing covers a feature, that is a conversation, not a number pulled from the air.

What this buys you

Two things. First, a fixed price that we can actually stand behind, because it is built on measured work rather than optimism. Second, a build spec you can read: each phase lists its estimated hours, the commit count behind them, and the existing foundations we plan to reuse. You are not trusting a black box — you are reading the arithmetic.

That is the whole trick. Not a better crystal ball. Just measuring instead of guessing.

Want a quote grounded this way? Start here.