The Standard
We take work on two things: the merit of the craft, and the character of what it serves. We decline work that fails this Standard regardless of the fee. The Standard judges what a project does in the world — not a client's private beliefs, party, or faith.
The product works without deceiving the people it reaches. No deceptive practices, no bait-and-switch, no manufactured confusion, no fine print written to be missed.
The thing doesn't make its money from addiction, predation, surveillance-for-sale, or extraction from the vulnerable — predatory lending, engineered compulsion, scams dressed as opportunity.
What we publish for you is true. We won't build a site to launder a lie, inflate a claim you can't stand behind, or give a fraud a respectable face.
The work treats customers, workers, and users as ends, not marks. Nothing that dehumanizes a group or trades in contempt.
We honor privacy and consent. We won't help sell people's data behind their backs, or wall off and meter what was given to the commons freely.
Nothing that incites harm or breaks the law; no marketing of instruments whose purpose is to injure.
We're transparent with you — what we're building, what it costs, what we won't do — and we ask the same honesty back. A client who deals in bad faith forfeits the work.
Beyond the Articles, some work we decline on its face — no weighing, no conversation, whatever the fee. We do not create:
These are categorical, not red-line Articles to be scored. The bar is content that markets, promotes, or is built around these — an incidental mention inside otherwise honest work isn't the target.
A person judges, not a rubric. John Fromel makes the call. The screener and the Articles keep the judgment consistent and shown — they don't replace it.
At any stage. We can decline at the first email or partway in. If we find mid-build that a project fails the Standard, we stop, and we say why.
Red lines vs. grey. A "no" on a red-line Article (I, II, III, VI) is disqualifying. The rest are weighed; two or more soft failures mean we talk it through before we commit.
When we decline, we say so plainly and privately — no public shaming, no lecture. Where we honestly can, we point you toward someone who can help. A "no" here is about the fit between your work and this Standard, not a verdict on you.
The Standard doesn't end at launch. If a project we built or host drops below it afterward — starts deceiving, starts harming — we can withdraw the work: take down hosting, pull any mark of ours it carries, on reasonable notice. What we put our hands to, we stay answerable for.