About TactStack
A development shop run by an operator
TactStack builds custom software, automation, and AI for businesses that outgrew the software they were sold. We are a small senior team, not an agency that subcontracts the hard parts, and we work on a short list of builds at a time so the people who scoped your system are the people writing it.
The company exists because of a pattern we kept running into while operating businesses of our own: the software everyone recommends covers the average operation, and nobody runs an average operation. The gap gets filled with spreadsheets, inbox rules, and one person who remembers how it all fits.
That person is expensive, and eventually they leave. We build the system that replaces the memory.
Who runs it
Ben McGary, founder
Ben founded TactStack after years of building and operating businesses where the tech stack was the constraint. That background sets how the work runs here: scoping conversations start with margin, throughput, and who is doing the work, then move to architecture.
It also sets what we will not do. A build that looks impressive and does not change how the operation runs is a failure, whatever the demo looks like.
How we work
4 things that hold on every build
We build around your operation, not a template
The starting question is how the work actually moves through your business. The software is shaped to that, which is the entire reason to build custom instead of buying another seat license.
The people who wrote it support it
There is no handoff to a support tier that has never seen the code. The same team that built the system answers when something breaks.
We tell you when not to build
Plenty of problems are solved by configuration, a single integration, or removing a step. When that is the answer, we say so, and it costs you a conversation instead of a project.
Nothing gets ripped out that works
The tools your team already knows stay. We build the layer in the middle: the rules, the routing, and the record everything else reads from.
Engineering standards
Security, scope, and scale, in practice
01_SECURITY
Access is essential in every step of the build
Every build starts with who can see what. Row-level rules, scoped keys, and audited admin paths are part of the first version, not a hardening pass we schedule later.
02_SCOPE
We write down what we are not building
Scope is a document with an inside and an outside. You approve both. When something new comes up mid-build, it gets priced and sequenced instead of quietly absorbed until the timeline slips.
03_SCALE
Built for the volume you will have in 3 years
Data models, queues, and integrations are sized past today's numbers so a busy season stays a busy season instead of turning into an outage.
The short list
What we will not do
- Lock you out of your own data or code.
- Quote a build before we understand the operation behind it.
- Sell a platform seat when the real problem is a broken process.
- Ship AI that answers your customers without you knowing what it said.
The work is public. Go look at it.
We keep 11 builds of software you can open in a browser, with why we built it and what we built written up beside each one.