The studio is one architect, working out of a shared file cabinet and a long memory. We don't put names on the work; the systems carry them. The one name on the lease is in the footer.
Every engagement begins the same way: a long conversation, a short paragraph, then a blueprint. We refuse to write a line of agent code until the system has rooms, doors, and a corridor between them. Architecture first; prompts last.
We build in our clients' stacks, with their data, in their voice. The output is a system that an in-house engineer can carry forward without a vendor contract. We design the handoff before we design the agent.
no. 1
A good agent system is a small building. Rooms with purpose, doors in the right places, a corridor between the council and the scribe. The walls keep judgment in. The doors let context out.
no. 2
The hard part is not the model. The hard part is the senior person whose judgment you are trying to absorb. Most of our work is interviewing them, slowly and well, until the system can answer the way they would.
no. 3
Memory is architecture, not storage. A six-layer model that forgets the wrong things on purpose beats an infinite context that remembers everything badly.
no. 4
A council deliberates; an oracle declares. Most systems should declare. Deliberate where judgment lives, and fight for those rooms.
no. 5
If the handoff scares us, we have built the wrong system. We design the day we leave first, then walk back to day one.
We don't take on systems whose senior person hasn't been interviewed. We don't ship to users without reviewing the system's decisions by hand for its first month. We don't take equity for build work. Client names will only ever appear here with explicit permission. Essays are written in the studio voice, one idea at a time.
We're a small practice on purpose: a few engagements a year, taken slowly, scheduled around the architect's other commitments.
next door
If you have a paragraph, send it. If you don't yet, read the patterns first; the systems explain the studio better than we do.
Send a brief