Human judgment at machine speed
We're AI experts who ship software 3× faster — inside a controlled framework where AI accelerates the work and humans make every key decision. The result: your problem solved months sooner, at lower cost and with momentum your competitors can't match.
Terminal illustration: AI explores architectures and builds under guardrails; a human signs the key decisions and the release. Result: TrustedCalcs live in production.
Four gates between an idea and production. A person signs off at every one.
Explore
Options, prototypes and architectures generated in hours, not weeks.
Decide
Architecture, scope, security and spend — decided by a person, on the record.
Build
Implementation at machine speed under guardrails the AI cannot skip.
Verify
Reviewed, tested, signed off. Nothing reaches production unseen.
"AI proposes. Humans decide. We use AI to move faster — never to think less."
We use the framework on ourselves. Here's the proof.
Our own products go through the same four gates as client work — explored by AI, decided and signed off by a human. Three of them so far:
TrustedCalcs
Free finance calculators, developer tools and unit converters that show their working. Every result includes the formula behind it, and everything runs in your browser — your numbers never leave your device.
- Tax data for AU · NZ · US · UK, sourced from the ATO, IRD, IRS and HMRC
- No account, no paywall, no data sent to any server
- Guides that explain each method, with regulatory citations
MyLocationTracker
Family location tracking with intelligent route monitoring — not just a dot on a map. Route-deviation alerts, unexpected-stop and late-arrival notifications, and one-tap SOS, built privacy-first from day one.
- Free plan: 1 device, live location, 24-hour history — no card needed
- Family plans from $6.99/mo: up to unlimited devices and 2-year history
- No ad networks, no data resale — self-hosted, with one-click export and delete
Imagination Studio
Original digital artworks in print-ready resolution. Buy once, download instantly, print at any framer — from a postcard to a full feature wall.
- 300 DPI print-ready files in four size tiers: Web, HD, A2 and A0
- Buy once, download instantly — any print shop or framer can print it
- Personal licence included · prices in USD
The whole stack, idea to production.
Web apps & APIs
Modern, fast, accessible — built to be maintained, not just launched.
Cloud & Kubernetes
Containerised, GitOps-deployed. Our own products run the same way.
AI integration
LLM features with guardrails, evals and human sign-off — the framework, applied to your product.
FinTech & regulated domains
20+ years in finance systems: salary packaging, mortgages, tax and compliance-heavy builds.
Mobile apps
Android-first product engineering, with iOS where it counts.
Legacy modernisation
Ageing .NET and beyond, moved to modern platforms without stopping the business.
One conversation to working software.
We talk
You describe the problem in plain language. No discovery-workshop theatre — one conversation, straight with the engineer.
We scope
You get an honest fixed scope with the four gates written in: what AI does, what a human signs off, and when you'll see working software.
We ship
Working software in weeks, demonstrated at every gate. You see progress, not status reports.
Small by design. Senior by default.
Mental Monkey Software is an independent Australian software practice — one Solution Architect / Senior Software Engineer with 30+ years building software, more than 20 of them in finance: salary packaging, mortgages, FinTech and other systems where a wrong number is not an option. There are no account managers and no hand-offs. The person you talk to is the person who designs, builds and ships your system — with AI doing the heavy lifting under supervision.