Conversational helper
An assistant scoped to your product, your FAQs, and your tone — built into the app so customers get answers without leaving the experience.
Custom iOS app · $10,000 · 8 weeks
Your business, in their pocket. With intelligence built in.
A branded iOS app for your business — designed, built, and submitted in eight weeks. $10,000 fixed price. AI features wired in for the moments where intelligence actually earns its place. Principal-led, App Store ready, shipped under your developer account.
After the build, the optional monthly retainer is $300 or $500 — for changes, copy edits, image swaps, and ongoing feature development. No lock-in; the app is yours from day one.
Why an app
A direct line to your customers, with AI doing the work in the background.
A branded app is the most permanent piece of digital real estate a small business can own. It sits on the home screen. It pings without permission from a feed algorithm. It earns visibility every time the customer looks at their phone — which is most of the day.
AI in the app is what makes it useful enough to keep. A search bar that answers in plain English. A camera that captures and files. An assistant that drafts the next message. Capabilities that were impossible to ship at this price two years ago.
Productized, not bespoke
Fixed price. Fixed scope. Eight weeks.
The app does one thing well — your business’s thing. The productized fee is honest because the boundary is honest: native iOS, one to three AI features, your stack, your brand, your developer account. No moving target, no rolling re-quote.
After ship, the retainer covers the work most apps actually need — copy edits, screen tweaks, the new feature you discover after watching customers use it. The lights stay on, and your roadmap moves.
The AI inside
Six categories. One to three earn a place in your app.
The build picks the AI features that map onto how your customers actually use the app. The rest are dropped on purpose. Restraint is the point — every feature shipped is a feature we’ll be supporting forever.
Smart capture
Photograph a document, receipt, business card, or whiteboard. The app extracts the text, classifies it, and files it where it belongs.
Drafting & summaries
First-pass drafts of messages, post-session notes, item descriptions, daily summaries. The user edits; the model handles the blank page.
Personalized recommendations
What to do next, what to read next, what to practice next — tuned to the user's history inside your app, not a generic suggestion engine.
Smart search
Natural-language search across the user's content — notes, photos, recordings, history — so they find what they remember instead of where they filed it.
Voice & audio
Voice input, dictation, on-device transcription. Useful in every context where typing on a phone is the bottleneck — driving, walking, hands full.
Showcase
Two apps already in the wild. Both built on this model.
These apps are live in the App Store today. Each was built around a single, useful job — and AI features were chosen to make that job faster, not to fill the screen.
- Music education
Sonata
sonatapiano.app →A focused practice tool for piano students — built around the moment of practice itself, not a content marketplace and not a social feed. AI features support the work the student is already doing instead of distracting from it.
- Notebook digitization
Ink Capture
inkcaptureapp.com →An app for the moment a notebook page is worth keeping. Photograph the page, the app extracts the writing, organizes it, and makes it searchable later — including pages of mixed handwriting and sketch.
What’s included
Six things ship in the box. No add-ons, no surprise line items.
Brand-fit design
The app looks like your business, not a template. Native iOS patterns where they help, custom moments where the brand earns visibility.
Native iOS build
Built on current Apple frameworks (Swift, SwiftUI). No web-wrapper compromises that show their seams the moment a user notices.
AI features wired in
One to three AI capabilities chosen during the spec — capture, drafting, search, voice, recommendations — designed for your specific use, not bolted on.
Backend & hosting
The cloud services the app needs — auth, data, model gateway — set up in your account, sized to the app's actual load. No surprise infrastructure.
App Store submission
We handle privacy disclosures, screenshots, metadata, review responses. Your app ships under your developer account — clean ownership, no lock-in.
30 days of post-launch support
Bugs we caused, we fix. Crashes that surface in the first month are on us. After that, the retainer is your call.
The eight-week timeline
Four phases. Each one ends with something on your phone.
- Week 1
Spec
What the app does, who it serves, which AI features earn their place. By end of week one, the spec is signed and the build begins.
- Weeks 2–4
Design & core build
Brand-fit visual design plus the core flows. By end of week three you're using a working build on your device with real data.
- Weeks 5–7
AI integration & polish
AI features integrated and tuned. UX polish on the moments that matter. Internal TestFlight — you and a small cohort use it daily and feed back.
- Week 8
Submit & ship
App Store submission, review responses, launch. After approval, the app is live under your developer account. Optional retainer begins next month.
The fee
Honest line items. One to build it, one to keep it alive.
Build · one-time
$10,000
Fixed · 8 weeks · principal-led
Spec, design, native iOS build, AI integration, backend setup, App Store submission, and 30 days of post-launch support. Your developer account, your code, your brand.
Retainer · maintenance
$300/mo
Up to 4 changes per month
Copy edits, image and asset swaps, minor UI tweaks, hosting and dependency updates, App Store metadata changes. The lights stay on, the small things move.
Retainer · active development
$500/mo
Continuing dev work · ~10 changes/mo
Everything in the maintenance tier plus minor feature work, new screen additions, AI prompt and model tuning, bug fixes, and roadmap input. The tier most apps move to once they’re in market and learning from real users.
Retainers are month-to-month. Cancel anytime. The code is yours; the handoff is documented.
What this is NOT
The boundaries that make the price honest.
Productized fees only work when both sides agree on the boundary. These are the cases where the productized iOS path is the wrong tool — and we say so before accepting the engagement.
Not Android-too.
iOS-only at this fee. Most consumer-facing premium businesses get the visibility return on iOS first. An Android engagement can follow once the iOS app is in market and the demand is proven.
Not a marketplace or social network.
Two-sided platforms with discovery, matching, ratings, payments, and trust-and-safety surface live outside this scope. Productized fees work when the app does one thing well.
Not a heavy custom backend.
If the app's value depends on a backend the size of the app itself — bespoke ML pipelines, complex multi-tenant architecture, real-time sync across many users — that's a custom engagement.
Not games.
Game economies, level design, multiplayer, monetization tuning — different craft. Out of scope.
Where this fits
A second path into the practice, parallel to the workflow build.
Most engagements at Sovereign Action begin with a workflow audit and a productized first build. The iOS app vertical is a parallel entry — a way for businesses whose first need is a customer-facing surface to start with that, then add internal workflow work over time.
- 01
Fit Call
Free · 20 min
- 02
Spec & Estimate
Week 1 · scoped
- 03
Build & Ship
$10,000 · 8 weeks
- 04
Retainer
$300 or $500/mo
Eight weeks to live
$10,000. Your app, in their pocket.
Start with a free 20-minute fit call. We’ll talk through what the app does, who uses it, and which AI features earn their place — and you’ll leave the call knowing whether the productized path fits your situation.