Software that ships. Then keeps shipping.

Forward Slash is an engineering consultancy for startups, growing businesses and enterprise teams. Product builds, AI and automation, platform and cloud: scoped tight, built properly, handed over clean.

Start a projectWhat we take on
A beige early-80s PC in soft studio light, its screen reading “> ship faster” and “> move forward”, with a yellow floppy disk leaning on the keyboard.

Keys we hit every day.

The stack bends to the job. The standards don’t. These are the keys we hit most: some worn smooth, some, like the AI row, still being learned as the field moves. The board is bigger than this, too. We also work in data, from pipelines and analytics to data science and MLOps.

  • TypeScript
  • React
  • Next.js
  • Node.js
  • .NET
  • Go
  • Python
  • PostgreSQL
  • Terraform
  • Docker
  • Azure
  • Kubernetes
  • Claude
  • OpenAI
  • LangGraph
  • pgvector

Three functions. Call the one you need.

Most engagements start with one function and end up calling another.

  1. F1 product-builds

    Product builds

    Web and mobile apps, from first sketch to production.

    Covers
    Web and mobile apps, MVPs and v1 launches, rebuilds of products that have outgrown themselves.
    Good for
    Founders who need to launch, and teams with a roadmap bigger than their headcount.
    First step
    A scoping session to agree what “done” means before anyone writes code.

  2. F2 ai-automation

    AI & automation

    LLM features, agents and workflow automation that do real work.

    Covers
    LLM features inside your product, agents and internal copilots, automated workflows.
    Good for
    Processes that cost hours every week, and products that should be smarter than they are.
    First step
    Find the one workflow where automation pays for itself, and prove it there first.

  3. F3 platform-cloud

    Platform & cloud

    Infrastructure, CI/CD, migrations and rewrites that keep you shipping.

    Covers
    Cloud infrastructure, CI/CD and release tooling, migrations and rewrites.
    Good for
    Deploys that are slow, scary, or both, and systems that can’t be switched off to fix.
    First step
    An honest look at what you run today and where the time actually goes.

One protocol. Four keys, pressed in order.

Every engagement runs the same sequence. No step gets skipped to hit a date.

  1. Scope

    Agree the problem, the outcome and what's out of bounds. In writing.

  2. Build

    Short cycles, working software every week, and you see all of it.

  3. Ship

    To real users, on real infrastructure, with monitoring switched on.

  4. Hand over

    Docs, tests and a team that can run it without us. Or with us, if you'd like.

First release.

We’re a new firm, so there are no case studies here yet. We’d rather show you an empty shelf than a borrowed one.

You’d be one of our first clients, and we know exactly what that means: the work we do for you becomes the track record we’re judged on. Ping us with a line about your project and we’ll tell you, plainly, how we’d approach it.