Eight non-negotiable rules. They're short on purpose, so the team can hold themselves to them when the easy answer and the right answer disagree. We publish the principles, the numbers, and what we cut when they conflict.
These are the choices that distinguish us from a typical consumer-app studio. None of them are easy; all of them are why the work holds up.
No junior contractors, no offshore QA, no "design partner." Every line of code is written by an engineer with at least seven years of production experience shipping to public storefronts.
We design data flow first, features second. Every byte that touches a server is documented and opt-in. If data must leave the device, we say so, we say why, and we give you the off-switch.
Static libraries feel dead. We build engines that generate variation on-device — audio, visuals, layouts — so each session feels custom and each export has personality.
We choose boring formats, write exporters first, and design update channels that won't strand anyone's work. Our files should outlive our frameworks.
Optimised across all six dimensions, not just one. The left column is what agencies optimise for. The middle is what indie teams can do alone. The right is what you get with us.
A short history of the studio. We have worked in studios of one and studios of fifty. hffenglan is the smallest unit that still feels like a team.
Three senior engineers, one shared studio above a coffee roaster in Exeter Science Park. The first product ships six weeks later — a procedural drum-loop engine for iOS.
We publish our first internal "data flow audit" methodology. Local-first storage, encrypted backups, and a strict no-tracker policy across the studio's apps.
ClauseKit and Halation ship. We formalise the "single-purpose tool" doctrine: every app does one thing extremely well, never asks for an account, and never phones home.
We re-write our audio and image cores in Rust and C++, with Metal on iOS and Vulkan on Android. Frame variance drops to a measurable 0.4 ms across our portfolio.
We stay senior-only. Apple Watch and iPadOS get their own dedicated tracks. Atelier tops the Utilities chart in eight countries.
Ad mediation stacks are standardised across apps. Privacy manifest files, ATT prompts, GDPR and CCPA flows are unified into a single internal SDK.
We ship a CoreML-based personalisation layer that adapts UI density and procedural parameters — all inference is local, no telemetry ever leaves the device.
Twelve engineers. Six headline apps. Twenty-plus in the matrix. Nine million devices. Still located in Exeter, still senior-only, still local-first.
Twelve senior engineers and two designers, all full-time. No subcontractors. We will not add a third-party dev shop to backfill capacity. If we don't have bandwidth, we say so.
Occasionally, for studio-owned products where we contribute the core engine. Never on client work — fee-for-service engagements stay cash and fixed-scope to keep incentives aligned.
A two-week discovery sprint (paid), then a fixed-scope build phase of 8–14 weeks, followed by an optional support retainer. We name a single engineer who owns the relationship end-to-end.
Yes. Our standard DPA covers GDPR, UK GDPR, CCPA / CPRA, LGPD and PIPL. SOC 2 Type II documentation is available under NDA; we currently operate with a documented ISMS aligned to ISO 27001 controls.
Every shipped app is covered by a named-engineer SLA of either 24×5 (Standard) or 24×7 (Critical). Response targets: P1 in 1 hour, P2 in 4 hours, P3 in 1 business day. We do not run a ticketing-roulette queue.
You own everything we build for you. Repo, assets, design files, build pipelines — transferred on final invoice. Escrow source-code options available. Our proprietary cores stay with us, but we expose them via clean module boundaries.
Yes — Android (Kotlin / Compose), Apple (iOS, iPadOS, macOS, watchOS), and adjacent platforms (Wear OS, CarPlay read-only, Android TV). We don't do cross-platform web stacks; engineering conviction runs the other way.
At least seven years of production experience shipping to public storefronts, hands-on ownership of at least one production codebase end-to-end, and a portfolio the candidate is proud of. We don't hire by years alone — we hire by what they have shipped.
We take on roughly four new engagements a year. If your project is hard, your team respects craft, and your timeline allows for senior engineering — the next step is a 30-minute call.
