Technology doesn’t decide what’s possible. Ideas do — and Hard Candy exists to turn the most ambitious ones into systems that work at enterprise scale.
Every product starts from what the problem actually demands — not from what an existing stack makes convenient. Old constraints don’t carry forward.
Reliability, security, and enterprise readiness belong in the first sketch. Scale is a property of how something is built, not a sprint that comes later.
Frontier ideas don’t get diluted on the way to production. The version that ships is the version that was worth building.
AI product development, on retainer or embedded in your team.
AI product development
From first sketch to the App Store. We design, build and ship AI-native products: iOS and Android apps, web platforms, voice agents, and the secure infrastructure underneath. Boat Partner, Therapy Ally and Tennis Ally were all built this way.
AI engineering on retainer
Senior AI engineering on a monthly retainer, for companies that need a product team without hiring a department. Roadmap, releases, fixes and the next feature, from the people who built it. Most of our client work runs this way.
Forward-deployed engineering (FDE)
A forward-deployed engineer works inside your business, not across a ticket queue. We sit with the people doing the work, learn how it really gets done, and build the agents, integrations and internal tools that take it off their plate.
Hard Candy is an AI agency based in Irvine, California. We work in person with companies across Orange County and Los Angeles, from Newport Beach and Costa Mesa to Long Beach, Santa Monica and downtown LA, and remotely everywhere else. Tell us what you’re building →
Things that ship.
5 projects select one to see the story
A native iOS and Android app for boat owners, powered by YachtBot, an AI first mate that learns your boat and helps you get more out of it, easier. Scheduling, cruise logs, engine hours, maintenance, expenses and messaging with everyone who shares the boat, in one place. Backed by a world-class web-based management portal, with bank connectivity, and a full suite of management capabilities.
“We use this to run our four member partnership on a 40ft Sea Ray. Helps keep all the communication, calendar, and fuel info in one place.”
NataNik2026, App Store
- iOS / Android
- YachtBot AI
- Cruise logs + engine hours
- Maintenance
- Shared expenses
- Web management portal
- Bank connectivity
- Shipped
A voice-first AI companion patients actually talk to, and a console clinicians actually use. Real-time voice sessions are captured into a structured, reviewable record, and AI-assisted case review shows the clinician what mattered before the next appointment. Practice management, clinician invites and billing around it. Protected health information end to end, on HIPAA infrastructure we built for it.
“It feels like having a personal therapy assistant in your pocket. It doesn’t replace my therapist, but it absolutely enhances the work we do together.”
Amy Singh, App Store
- HIPAA
- Real-time voice AI
- Structured session capture
- Clinician console
- AI-assisted case review
- Practice management
- Clinical release
- Consumer release
Conversation is the product. Tennis Ally listens to how you play, keeps a working model of your game between sessions, and coaches you by voice, on court or off. The first sport on the Sports Ally platform, built white-label so the next sport is a configuration, not a rebuild.
- Real-time voice coaching
- Persistent model of your game
- iOS / Android
- White-label platform
- In beta
One iOS and Android app for the Taste of travel guides to Isla Mujeres and Mahahual. Hundreds of restaurants, tours and services, with favorites, a native cart and checkout, ferry and taxi info, live weather and the day’s peso rate. Behind it, an AI service desk reads every customer request across the destination sites and drafts the reply and the vendor message; a manager approves before anything is sent.
- iOS / Android
- Travel + local commerce
- Native cart + checkout
- AI service desk
- Human-approved replies
- Client
- In build
One agent, a different relationship with every person in your life. Your spouse, your kids, your assistant and your accountant each get their own voice, their own permissions and their own isolated memory, enforced in code rather than in a prompt. Lives in your family group chat without intruding; only speaks when addressed. Manages Google and Outlook calendars, works from your full contact graph, and schedules actions that actually execute at a future time. Reads photos and voice notes, drafts and sends email across multiple identities, and learns standing policies once that run on every message forever. Ask him for a web page and he builds it and hands you the link. iMessage, SMS, Telegram, email, and voice. One principal per instance. 48-hour deployment.
- Relationship matrix
- Per-person memory
- Group chat aware
- Calendar + contacts
- Builds + publishes pages
- 48-hour install
- On the job