A studio for vision-driven web products.
Ikena (ee-KEH-nah) is Hawaiian for vision. A design-led software studio building AI-native web apps for commercial operators, industrial teams, the trades, and real estate — the people who keep everything moving. Affiliated with BlueWave Projects.
A web product is not a deliverable. It is a slow accumulation of intention — of features that know what they are for, of code that ages with grace, of interfaces that land the way they should.
Ikena begins every engagement the way it ends: with care, restraint, and an insistence that the work be worthy of the people who use it. Laulima — many hands, one build. We are a small studio by choice. Two engagements at a time. One standard.
Three deliberate phases. Nothing hurried.
A paid engagement.
Discovery is not a courtesy consultation. It is a billable professional service, earned from the first sketch. $5,000 — $15,000 depending on scope, credited toward the build.
Read more →Native code. AI-fluent. Owned.
Next.js, FastAPI, PostgreSQL, Claude. Built in-house by hand, not stitched from no-code tools. Deployed to infrastructure you can keep, audit, or migrate. One point of accountability.
Six to twelve weeks. Done well.
Most engagements ship to production in six to twelve weeks. We commit to two active builds at a time — so yours gets the attention it was quoted.
Software, native — not stitched.
A few of the products we’ve shipped.
SaaS for general contractors.
Multi-tenant project management, AI scope generation, client portal, e-sign, invoicing — one platform replaces eight. Built for Hawaii GCs first, opening nationally.
Private betaAI for the messy middle.
Decision-support tooling for founders and operators navigating early-stage uncertainty. Live demo available for design partners.
binnacleai.com →Every parcel + building + address.
384,262 statewide TMK parcels, 239,458 Honolulu building footprints with real heights, 204,775 address points — encoded as TypeScript, served as a 3D map.
maps.ikenagroup.com →Weekly briefs for Hawaii homeowners.
A subscription that keeps an eye on your parcel and your neighborhood: permits, sales, listings, market shifts. Curated weekly. $15/mo.
LiveOff-market signals for Hawaii real estate.
Founding-member tiers for investors and brokers who want the early read: distressed parcels, off-market opportunities, permit anomalies, ownership changes.
Waitlist openLiDAR scans, native.
iOS measuring app using Apple’s RoomPlan + Object Capture. Scan a room or an object on-site, instant AI ballpark, one-tap to project portal. No Polycam wrapper. No subscription tax.
Private TestFlightAI pre-check for Hawaii architects.
Upload a plan set, get every probable ROH §21, IBC, and Honolulu LUO violation back in 30 minutes — citation-anchored, with verbatim quoted code sections. Variance narrative drafts and DPP comment-response drafts included. $299 per pre-check · $599/mo firm seat.
permit.ikenagroup.com →Hawai‘i STR compliance, all 4 counties.
TVR / STRH / NUC / STVR permits, GE Tax, TAT, county TAT, smoke-detector + insurance renewals — one calendar per property. AI document classifier reads your permit PDF. Free 2026 tax calendar download and county-by-county permit checker.
permitpaddler.ikenagroup.com →Field notes, in long form.
Building Hawaii Insurability Brief: A Free Property Hazard Lookup for Hawaii Homeowners
A builder's account of why we built a free 10-field hazard lookup for Hawaii properties — lava zone, FEMA flood, tsunami, coastline distance, hurricane wind, wildfire risk, BFE, shoreline management area, roof age, and carrier availability — and how the freemium model works.
Building AI-native products on Claude: a Honolulu studio's playbook
Six products live, all built against the Anthropic Claude API. Here's how we structure AI calls in production, what we cache and what we don't, how we keep latency under 2 seconds for user-facing flows, and the patterns that have actually shipped — not the hype.
Hawaii GET tax on SaaS subscriptions: a practical guide
Hawaii taxes SaaS revenue differently than most US states — and very few founders know the rules until their first G-45 return is overdue. Here's how Hawaii's General Excise Tax actually works for subscription software businesses, with the rates, the forms, and the traps.
Currently accepting design engagements for Q3 – Q4 2026 builds.
If you are building a web product of consequence, we invite you to introduce yourself.
Begin a design engagement →