About Us
We build the boring software that runs your city.
Tillampa is operated by Tillampa LLC — a small Texas team shipping practical software for cities.
Based in Texas — building with cities across the state.
Our approach
A different way to build local-government software.
Most local-government software is built far away from the people who actually use it. Long contracts. Features nobody asked for. We're trying a different way.
Pick a problem we've seen up close — permits stuck in email or a team drowning in spreadsheets — ship a small tool that fixes it, then sit with the people using it.
Today that means MuniStack for permit departments, plus custom-built software when the off-the-shelf market doesn't fit. More when the next problem is real.
Who builds Tillampa
Built by people who have sat on the other side of the counter.
Tillampa is built by Texans — born and raised — with hands-on experience, not distant software vendors. Some of us have run the permit process as applicants. Some of us have held the seats that decide it.
We've held the seats
Team members have served in city government — from committees, to planning and zoning, to town council, and even mayor.
We've pulled the permits
Real experience pulling permits and dealing with city government from the applicant's side, not just reading about it.
The trades on the team
Texas residential homeowners, realtors, contractors, and developers. The people who live with the paperwork helped build the software.
Disabled-veteran-owned. Our leadership includes disabled veterans and firefighters.
What we run on
The stack, called out honestly.
No proprietary frameworks. Tools you can hire for. Code you could read.
Next.js + React
Server-rendered React, Tailwind 4, deployed on Render.
Postgres + pgvector
Per-product Postgres. Embeddings live next to the data they're describing.
Claude + OpenAI
Mixed-provider AI. Honest about what's a real model and what isn't.
Node + Express
Boring backends. JWT auth. Role-based access. Audit-logged risky actions.
Render + Docker
Hosting on Render. Local dev on Docker. Backups, monitoring, the usual.
Built in the open
Build logs, changelogs, and steady progress shared with the teams we build with. No black-box pilots.
What we won't build
Some things you can't pay us to ship.
Plenty of shortcuts exist in this market. We don't take them, even when the contract is tempting.
- Bots that pose as humans to citizens or staff
- Spam tooling, fake polls, or astroturfing
- Hidden behavioral profiles or scraped voter dossiers
- 12-month contracts with mystery scope and back-loaded fees
- Vendor lock-in via formats only we can read
- Marketing claims our product can't currently back up