Five practices, scoped as one system.
A support agent is only as good as the data layer beneath it. A storefront is only as good as the inbox its emails land in. We organize by practice so the right specialists are on each part, and we scope by outcome so you never have to coordinate five vendors.
AI Systems & Automation
Agents that do the work, with a person one step away.
Custom agents built on your data and wired into the tools you already run. Designed for production from the start: evaluation suites, monitoring, cost controls and a structured handoff when confidence drops.
- Customer support agentsOrder lookups, refunds, exchanges and routing through Stripe and Shopify tool calls, with every action logged and reversible.
- Knowledge and retrieval systemsRetrieval over your documents, policies and history, so teams and customers get answers grounded in your sources, with citations.
- Lead qualification and sales operationsEnrichment, scoring, deduplication and outreach preparation across your CRM and inbox.
- Workflow and back-office automationDocument processing, catalog operations, reporting, and the recurring tasks that quietly consume a team's week.
- Evaluation, monitoring and handoffTest sets before launch, dashboards after, and confidence thresholds that route to a person instead of guessing.
Product & Web Engineering
Sites and applications, designed and built by the same team.
Marketing sites, web applications, intake and onboarding flows, and telehealth experiences. Fast, accessible, instrumented from launch, and built on a stack your next engineer will recognize.
- Marketing and lead-generation sitesEditorial design, motion where it earns its place, and a contact pipeline that blocks spam and reaches the inbox.
- Web applications and portalsAuthentication, roles, data models and admin tooling on Supabase and Postgres.
- Telehealth and intake experiencesMulti-step flows for prescription and wellness products, with disclosures and data handling designed in.
- Performance and accessibilityLighthouse in the high 90s as the baseline. Keyboard, screen reader and reduced-motion support by default.
- Analytics and lead captureEvents, forms and attribution wired on day one so the site reports on itself.
Commerce Platforms
Storefronts with the operating layer included.
Shopify and headless commerce for brands in regulated and high-touch verticals. We build the store and the machinery around it: catalog, retention, support, compliance and the pipelines that keep product content moving.
- Shopify and headless storefrontsCustom product detail pages, filtering, mobile-first checkout, and brand systems that hold up as the catalog grows.
- Retention and lifecycle flowsKlaviyo abandoned-cart, post-purchase and win-back sequences, with the deliverability work that makes them land.
- Catalog and SKU operationsProduct data architecture, pricing structure, and automated image-variant pipelines that replace hours of manual production per SKU.
- Compliance-aware buildsVertical-specific privacy, terms and disclosure pages generated per project and reviewed by counsel before launch.
- Support automationAn AI agent on the store's own data, handling the tickets that do not need a person and escalating the ones that do.
Growth Engineering
Search, conversion and analytics, treated as engineering.
Technical SEO, structured data, local search for Southern California businesses, and conversion audits that end in a written action plan. Then the implementation, measured.
- Technical SEO audits and fixesCrawlability, indexing, page speed, structured data and internal linking, fixed in the codebase rather than listed in a PDF.
- Local searchBusiness profiles, location schema and content structure for Orange County and Los Angeles operators.
- Conversion auditsA live teardown of the funnel with prioritized fixes, then the build. Heatmaps and session data where they help.
- Content systemsBlog and resource architecture, page templates and editorial tooling that keep publishing sustainable.
- Attribution and reportingAnalytics that answer which channel is paying, reported monthly on a growth retainer.
Infrastructure & Security
The layer everything else depends on.
Domains, DNS, SSL, email deliverability, security headers, backups and monitoring, for one property or a portfolio. Migrations planned to the record and executed with zero downtime.
- Email deliverabilitySPF, DKIM and DMARC configured and audited across every sending domain, so transactional and marketing mail reaches the inbox.
- Domain and DNS operationsRegistration, records, subdomain routing and provider migrations with a rollback plan for every change.
- Security hardeningHTTPS, security headers, content security policy, rate limiting, environment isolation and least-privilege access.
- Workspace and email setupGoogle Workspace, routing, groups, and migrations from legacy providers without losing a message.
- Backups and monitoringUptime, error and deliverability monitoring with alerts that reach a person, and backups that have been restored, not just taken.
Three ways to work with us.
Every model starts with a scoping session and a written proposal within 48 hours. None of them bill hourly.
Fixed-scope build
For a defined system with a clear finish line: an agent, a storefront, a site, a migration.
- Fixed price, fixed scope, committed ship date
- Discovery, prototype, delivery, transfer
- 14 to 30 days of post-launch support included
- Full ownership transfer with runbooks
Growth retainer
For teams that want the system to keep improving after launch: search, conversion, automations and iteration, month to month.
- Monthly roadmap tied to the metrics that matter
- SEO, CRO, content and automation work
- Monitoring, maintenance and priority support
- Monthly reporting. Cancel any month.
Embedded team
For companies that need engineering capacity inside their organization for a quarter or longer: a DarkForge pod working in your tools, on your roadmap.
- Dedicated capacity with a named lead
- Works in your repo, Slack and rituals
- AI, product, commerce and infrastructure skills as needed
- Quarterly planning, weekly delivery
Included in every engagement
The parts other shops charge extra for.
- Discovery and a written briefScope, exclusions, success metric, and a fixed-price proposal within 48 hours.
- A private Slack channel and one accountable leadDaily visibility and a weekly review.
- Security, monitoring and backups at launchPart of the build, never a phase two.
- Documentation and a recorded handoverRunbooks your team can operate from without us.
- OwnershipYour repo, your accounts, your data. Always.
Next step
Get a fixed-price proposal in 48 hours.
Send a brief or book a scoping session. We will tell you what is worth building first, what it costs and when it ships.