Vibe-Code Rescue & AI Codebase Hardening
The practice we built the firm around: security audits, test coverage, refactoring, and production hardening for vibe-coded and AI-generated codebases, starting with a one-week, fixed-price Rescue Audit.
Your AI-Built App Found Users. Now It Has to Survive Them.
Vibe-code rescue and AI codebase hardening by a senior nearshore engineer in Brazil, starting with a one-week, fixed-price audit and continuing only where the findings warrant it. 1–2 hours ahead of US Eastern, with your choice of a US or Brazilian contracting entity.
Engineering software since 2009
6 years scaling a hyper-growth startup
5+ years embedded with a US product company
1–2h ahead of US Eastern
US & Brazilian legal entities
Already Vibe-Coded It? Great — Now Ship It.
AI-assisted building got you further, faster, than any founder generation before you. We're the last mile that turns it into a business.
Vibe coding is real leverage: we use AI in every engagement ourselves. But AI multiplies whatever direction it's given, and production is where direction gets expensive: security, authentication, payments, data migrations, performance under real traffic. That's judgment work, and judgment is what you hire.
- AI with senior supervision. Every line reviewed and owned by a senior engineer: AI speed without AI roulette.
- Production is unforgiving. Demos reward speed; products punish shortcuts. We harden auth, data, and payments before your customers find the gaps.
- Accountability with a name on it. A model won't own a mistake, explain a trade-off, or tell you "no" when it matters. We do all three.
The first step is a one-week, fixed-price Rescue Audit: ranked findings across security, correctness, and maintainability, plus a hardening roadmap you could hand to any team, including not ours.
Nearshore Software Services Built for US Teams
Nearshore Staff Augmentation & Dedicated Developers
Add a senior software engineer in Brazil to your team: someone who joins your standups, your Slack, and your GitHub. Nearshore staff augmentation with real-time collaboration, not overnight ticket ping-pong.
Software Consulting & Fractional CTO
Ruby on Rails consulting, architecture reviews, legacy-app rescue, and fractional CTO retainers: a standing weekly slot with a senior engineer who carries your context between calls, without the full-time executive price tag.
Business Process Automation & AI Workflows
Business process automation consulting that turns manual back-office work into AI-powered workflows. Scoped to measurable ROI: hours saved and errors eliminated, not vanity dashboards.
Why Nearshore to Brazil?
- Your working day is our working day. Brazil runs on UTC−3 year-round, 1–2 hours ahead of US Eastern. Standups, pairing sessions, and incident response happen live, inside your business hours.
- Deep senior talent pool. Brazil has one of the largest software engineering communities in the world, with strong Ruby, Rails, and full-stack roots.
- Fluent English at the senior level. You talk directly to the engineer doing the work. No account-manager telephone game.
- Senior engineers at roughly half of US agency rates. Nearshore pricing without the offshore quality lottery.
- Cultural affinity with US work style. Direct communication, ownership, and bias for shipping — not silent sprints that end in surprises.
- Real-time collaboration beats offshore hand-offs. Same-day feedback loops instead of 24-hour round trips to the other side of the planet.
Contract in the US or in Brazil — Your Choice
Most nearshore vendors give your legal team a headache. We give them a choice.
Contract with our US entity
Our Delaware-registered LLC: familiar paperwork, US jurisdiction, and straightforward vendor onboarding for teams that need a domestic counterparty.
Contract with our Brazilian entity
Contract directly with our Brazilian company as a service export: a lean, well-established route used by US companies working with Brazilian consultancies every day. USD invoicing either way.
How We Work
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Intro call & scoping
A working session about your roadmap, your stack, and where senior hands or process automation move the needle fastest.
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Proposal — you pick the entity
Clear scope, clear rates (often starting with a fixed-price audit or discovery), and your choice of US or Brazilian contracting entity. No procurement maze.
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Audit or embedded delivery
For rescues: one week from agreed start to ranked findings and a roadmap. For embedded work: your repo, your CI, your standups, shipping from week one.
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Measure, iterate, scale
Monthly check-ins on outcomes. Scale the engagement up or down as your roadmap demands.
The Engineer Behind the Fortress
Hornburg Consulting is led by João Hornburg, a senior software engineer building and scaling web applications since 2009 across US, German, and Brazilian companies. That includes six years engineering through the scale-up curve of a hyper-growth startup and, since 2021, an embedded role with a US e-commerce automation company, shipping production software alongside its product team every working day.
Home base is Pomerode, Santa Catarina, famously the most German town in Brazil. And the name? The Hornburg is the fortress at Helm's Deep that never fell while defended. That is the standard we hold for your production systems.
Frequently Asked Questions
Our AI-built app is struggling in production. Can you fix it?
Yes. Vibe-code rescue is our core service, and it starts with a one-week, fixed-price audit: ranked findings across security, correctness, and maintainability, plus a hardening roadmap you could hand to any team. From there we add the test coverage that lets you keep shipping fast and harden the parts that meet real users and real money. You keep the speed; you lose the 2 a.m. surprises.
Can't we just vibe-code it ourselves with AI?
You can, and it's the fastest way to validate an idea ever invented. The trap is mistaking a working demo for a shippable product. AI-generated code is plausible by design, so its failures hide where demos never look: security, edge cases, concurrency, data integrity. We're AI-native too; the difference is a senior engineer accountable for every line that reaches production.
How does nearshore staff augmentation from Brazil work?
You get a senior Brazilian engineer embedded in your existing workflow (your repo, your project tracker, your meetings), billed monthly through the contracting entity of your choice. It behaves like a remote hire, without the hiring overhead.
What time zone overlap do Brazilian developers have with US teams?
Brazil is on UTC−3 with no daylight saving, which puts us 1–2 hours ahead of US Eastern and 2–3 ahead of Central. Your entire working day overlaps with ours.
Can we sign the contract with a US company?
Yes. Teams that need a US counterparty contract with our Delaware-registered LLC. Teams comfortable with an international vendor can contract directly with our Brazilian entity as a service export.
How much does a senior nearshore developer in Brazil cost compared to a US hire?
Roughly half of typical US agency and senior-contractor rates, before you count the recruiting fees, benefits, and months of hiring cycle a US senior search takes.
Can we book a one-off architecture review or second opinion?
Yes. Prepaid consulting hours cover exactly that: a pre-build architecture review, a second opinion on a rewrite-or-refactor decision, or a critical-path code review before something touches money. Every session ends in a written artifact (a memo, review notes, or a decision record) that stays with your team.
Do you use AI-assisted development?
Heavily and deliberately. AI-assisted workflows compress delivery cycles, with a senior engineer reviewing and accountable for every line that ships.
Start the Conversation
Tell us about your roadmap and we'll tell you, candidly, whether and how we can help. You'll get a reply from the engineer, not a sales rep, within one business day.