The one you decided not to solve because the quote was six figures and over 8 months.
You don't need a specification to start. Describe what the business is doing today, where it goes wrong and what it costs. We will come back with what the first version would contain and what it would take to build.
We work out the first version together. What it's for, who uses it, what it keeps track of, and what's deliberately not in it yet. That written specification is what gets built, so it's worth the hour.
You see it on a development site, early. Not a demo at the end. The first working version goes somewhere you can use it, and what's wrong with it gets recorded against the feature it belongs to.
Versions are small and frequent. It's easier to say "not like that" about something you're looking at than about a document, and small versions make that cheap.
Hosted or inside NetSuite, decided up front. It changes how the application is built, so it isn't a decision to leave until later.
You get the audit trail either way. Who approved what, which version shipped it, what changed afterwards. That's a by-product of how the work runs, not an extra deliverable.
Is the code written by AI? Is that safe? AI writes most of it. What makes that safe isn't trust in the output, it's what happens around it: a written specification it's built from, a test suite that has to pass, a private development site it lands on first, version control with every change recorded, and a person releasing it to production. Good DevOps is good devOps, no matter if AI writes the code or a human developer does it.
Who owns the code? That's agreed before anything is built. On the migration service, the repository transfers to the customer at completion, and a custom application can be arranged the same way.
What happens if you get hit by a bus? A fair question about a small operation like ours, and the answer is the same: the code is in a repository with its tests, its deploy script and its history. Applications that run inside NetSuite as SuiteApps run on your own account. Hosting can move. We don't paint you into a corner.
Could our own developers maintain it? Yes, for anything delivered as code in your repository. Be aware that an application built on this platform relies on the platform for sign-in and the other shared pieces, so if that matters to you, say so early and we'll design around it.
How long does it take? Less than you're used to, and we'd rather say that than a number we'd have to defend before understanding your problem. Describe it and you'll get a real answer.
What does it cost? The same. There's no published price for custom applications, because the question "what would that cost?" has no honest answer before the problem is clear.
What happens today, where it breaks, and who it costs. No specification required.