What we took off our own website, and why the prices are written down
On Nov 12 we removed the numbers we could not source, put our prices on the page and set the rule this blog now follows.
Bolted to
On November 12, 2026 we merged four pull requests into the code behind ninelives.dev. Together they took things off the site, put our prices on the page and wrote down the rule this blog follows from now on. This post says what changed and where you can check each piece.
Our repository is private, so the pull requests are named by number rather than linked. Everything a visitor can see is linked: the live pages and screenshots of them, dated.
What came off
- Numbers we couldn't source. The homepage badge showed a count of systems we had built and an average-improvement percentage. We couldn't point to where either came from. They came off, along with similar figures on the about, contact and service pages, and nothing replaced them (PR #1657).
- Token and trading projects. The showcase included meme-coin sites, trading tools and an on-chain game. That isn't the work we do for service businesses, so it's off the commercial site. The old portfolio grid is gone and its address now redirects to Work (PRs #1657 and #1658).
- Public sign-up buttons. The site no longer asks visitors to make an account or sign in. Our own team still signs in from a footer link.
- A rating we gave ourselves. The homepage carried hidden review markup with a five-star score we had written ourselves. It came off.
A test in the repository now scans every public page's source and fails our checks if any removed figure, showcased token project or sign-up button comes back. It runs in our CI whenever the site changes, so keeping them off doesn't depend on someone remembering.
Why the prices are written down
If you own a restoration company, you shouldn't have to book a call to find out whether we're in your range. Pricing lists each kind of work we sell, with its range in dollars, before you ever talk to us (PR #1658).
A fixed price stays fixed. You can pay it up front, or split it into a set number of equal monthly payments agreed in the proposal. The total doesn't change and the payments stop. We don't describe a fixed price as a monthly rate, because that makes a project with an end look like a subscription without one.
Ongoing SEO and automations is different: it really is a monthly service, not a payment plan. It has a cap agreed up front and goes month-to-month after the first 90 days. The page also makes two promises: "If approved work runs long, that's on us." and "You own the code and the accounts."
Hunter is a story, not a promise
Nine Lives is named for Hunter, the cat who sat beside the late-night builds that became the studio. We lost him to kidney failure in 2023.
The old page tied the studio to giving promises about funding research. Those came off (PR #1657). Hunter now tells his story and links to Cornell's guidance on feline kidney disease instead of quoting figures. An older blog post about the brand now redirects there too (PR #1660).
The bar this post is written to
From now on, every post here lists the page, data, screenshot or price it rests on, under "Bolted to" at the top. Every table carries a source and a date. A correction after publishing gets a dated note at the bottom instead of a quiet edit.
Two older posts don't meet that bar. They stay up, marked "Written before our editorial bar (Nov 2026)." Three others were retired, with redirects so old links still land somewhere useful (PR #1660).
What we aren't claiming yet
The redesign and the retired posts both changed which pages Google sees. We'll take a Search Console baseline in early December and publish it on our search log, with the export it came from and the date. Until then we have no before-and-after numbers, so this post has none.