Independent AI Lab · California
We build instruments that make you more capable.
A small, independent lab. Music is where we started — it's still where our sharpest tools get made and tested. But the values that guide that work extend further: local-first, open source, always in service of the person using it.
How we think about tools
The best music technology has always come from people who actually play.
Les Paul didn't fill out a product requirements doc. Moog didn't run a focus group. They were musicians with soldering irons, and the instruments they built changed what music could sound like.
Somewhere along the way, music tools got swallowed by the same forces that swallowed everything else. Subscriptions. Telemetry. Walled gardens. Software that treats your creative work like engagement metrics.
We think there's a better pattern — the one Stewart Brand was writing about in the Whole Earth Catalog. Access to tools. Community-scale technology. Things you can take apart, understand, and make your own.
So that's what we're building. Not a platform. Not a startup. A lab where the research happens in the same room as the sessions — and where we ask the same question about every tool we make: does this leave the person using it more capable, or less?
Your machine, your music
We lean toward tools that run locally. Your sessions shouldn't depend on someone else's server staying online.
Your process is yours
We have zero interest in how you create. No telemetry, no training data, no analytics dashboards about your workflow.
Open by default
We share our research. We build things people can read, fork, and learn from. Knowledge wants to be free and all that.
The human is the point
We build instruments that make you more capable, not less necessary. If it replaces the person, we're not interested.
The work
Everything here started because someone needed it at a gig or in a session.
That's still the test. If it doesn't make the music better, it doesn't ship.
Close-up of a woman's hands turning unmarked wooden knobs on an unfamiliar EQ device, warm amber glow from a small display casting light across her fingers, the body of a guitar just visible in soft bokeh behind her, intimate and absorbed. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
Toneword
What if your EQ just said Warmth, Bite, Air, Body, Glass, Velvet instead of making you stare at frequency curves? Six perceptual dimensions mapped to an 11-band parametric EQ underneath. Turns out ears are smarter than eyes.
View on GitHubA band rehearsal room in warm lamplight, a woman on a stool with an acoustic guitar glancing at a tablet on a music stand, other stands with devices showing chord charts in soft focus beyond her, cables on the floor, jackets draped over amps, the room lived-in and mid-session. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
Glorybook
Real-time setlist sync for bands. Bandleader picks the song, everyone's chart updates. Browse ahead if you want, snap back to live with one tap. Bring a travel router to the gig and it runs without WiFi.
View on GitHubAn unfamiliar modular instrument seen from above at a slight angle, patch cables in earth tones — terracotta, sage, rust, cream — connecting panels of oiled walnut and brushed copper, softly glowing amber connection points, a woman's hand mid-patch reaching for a cable, a potted fern at the edge of frame. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
Audiotree
React primitives for building audio apps in the browser. Your component tree becomes your signal flow — mixers, tracks, buses, sends, meters. The part between the Web Audio API and having an actual DAW.
View on GitHubA darkened studio with floating spheres of warm colored light — terracotta, sage, ochre, dried lavender — suspended at different heights and depths like a three-dimensional mix, a woman standing among them with her eyes closed and one hand raised as if adjusting something invisible, soft shadows on the walls. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
Grove
What if you could see your mix? Tracks float as colored spheres in 3D space — horizontal is pan, vertical is frequency, depth is reverb. Drag to mix. Heavily inspired by David Gibson's Art of Mixing. Early days, but the idea is right.
View on GitHubA wide shot of a California hillside at golden hour, manzanita and ceanothus and sage covering the slope, thin bioluminescent threads barely visible between the root systems, connecting everything like a living circuit board, the ocean just visible on the far horizon, warm haze. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
Chaparral
How we keep all of this in sync. One brand repo is the source of truth — chaparral symlinks it into every sibling project. Shared AI skills, org-wide voice, multi-repo without the pain. Named after the biome that connects everything on a California hillside.
View on GitHubRedwood forest understory in soft morning mist, ferns and redwood sorrel glowing in diffused light filtering through the canopy far above, a barely-visible thread of warm amber light tracing along the forest floor like a data stream, everything quiet and ancient and alive. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
Understory
Open-source tools for working with AI agents. The gap between a good conversation and an actual running project is bigger than it should be — understory helps close it. Take it, fork it, make it yours.
View on GitHubThe shape of the thing
A lab in the canyon.
The manzanita is a California native — a scrubby, twisting tree that grows wild on coastal hillsides. Thrives in hard soil and rocky margins. Produces something unmistakable: dark red bark smooth as skin, sculptural branches that are never the same twice.
We liked that as a name for a lab. Not a venture-backed entity with a runway and an exit strategy. A place where things get made — more canyon than campus, more workshop than office.
The people here play in bands and write DSP code and argue about gain staging and read old issues of CoEvolution Quarterly.
Books & records on the shelf
A single manzanita tree with dark red bark twisting against a soft coastal California hillside, overcast morning light with the sun just starting to break through, the bark smooth and sculptural, branches reaching in every direction, wild grasses and sage at the base, the Pacific barely visible through fog below. Eco-futurist, feminine, 1980s-meets-2180s California. Kodak Eastman 100T 5247 35mm film, grain, halation, faded warm colors, natural lens flares, shallow depth of field
"We are as gods and might as well get good at it. So far, remotely done power and glory — as via government, big business, formal education, church — has succeeded to the point where gross defects obscure actual gains. In response to this dilemma and to these gains a realm of intimate, personal power is developing — power of the individual to conduct his own education, find his own inspiration, shape his own environment, and share his adventure with whoever is interested." — Stewart Brand, Whole Earth Catalog, 1968
With love from California.
We're building in the open. Everything is early. If you make music and you care about your tools, come hang out — the work is better with more people in the room.
manzanita.computer