Ownership
You own GitHub, cloud and Stripe from day one.
The usual fear is hostage code: a freelancer who disappears, an agency that holds the repo until the last invoice. We do not work that way. Accounts are opened in your name before we write production code, and you can lock us out at any time.
The transfer list
What sits in your name before launch week
This is the list we walk on the scoping call. If an item does not apply, we strike it. We do not invent extras.
- Source repository (GitHub or GitLab organisation) created under your account
- Cloud and hosting (Vercel, AWS, or the host the scope names) billed to you
- Domain and DNS, or access to the registrar you already hold
- Payment provider (Stripe or the gateway the product needs)
- Database, backups and object storage
- Auth and email provider used by the product
- CI, error monitoring and uptime alerts
- Every secret rotated at handover — nothing left in our password manager
How it works
Four rules that do not change per engagement
Day one, not final payment
You hold the repository, the infrastructure and every account throughout the build. An unstarted sprint is refundable in full. A finished milestone is already yours.
IP in writing
NDA before anything sensitive. IP assignment in the engagement terms, not implied in an email. If we stopped tomorrow you would still hold the code.
No junior bait-switch
The senior who writes the scope also ships the work. There is no account-manager layer and no leased bench learning on your budget.
A record you can hand to the next engineer
Documented handover, two weeks of fixes, and a 90-day roadmap another developer can pick up without calling us.
What this is not
We will not dress this up as a certificate
This page is an operating list, not a SOC 2 report. We hold no formal compliance certifications and we will not imply otherwise. If a badge is a hard procurement requirement, hire a firm that has one — we will say that on the call.
The practices behind this list live on Security: least-privilege credentials, secrets out of source control, review before merge, and payment webhooks verified against the provider. Read both pages before you send a repo.
Questions, answered
When do I actually own the code?
From day one, not on final payment. You hold the repository, the infrastructure and every account the product runs on throughout the engagement. At close we revoke our access and transfer anything still in our name.
What if HyperBrain Labs stopped tomorrow?
You would still hold the repository, the infrastructure and every account, documented. An unstarted sprint is refundable in full. A delivered milestone is already yours.
Will you sign our NDA?
Yes, before we discuss anything sensitive. We also assign IP explicitly in the engagement terms rather than leaving it implied.