people
the founders, the director, the bench, the residents, and the collaborators — who they are and what they wrote.
the founders
- adam wiggins · founderco-founder of heroku, ink & switch, and muse — and co-founder of local-first conf per his public bios. 'the original members of the lab wanted to do a startup — that was adam, james and orion,' per van hardenberg; wiggins dates the reconvening to 'somewhere around — i think it was 2015.' co-authored the local-first essay (2019), spun muse out of the lab and ran it 2019–2023, and returned to the lab in 2026 for a research residency — firehose, a personal triage algorithm for the message stream. '10 years of support' as an individual patron.
- james lindenbaum · founderco-founder of heroku and heavybit, the developer-tools accelerator. '10 years of support' as an individual patron; the supporters page credits him as the guide for the programmable ink research track, and he is a named playbook collaborator.
- orion henry · founderco-founder of heroku; co-creator of automerge (2017) and a core maintainer. wrote automerge 3.0's in-memory columnar rewrite — 'memory savings of 100x in some cases.' patchwork collaborator; '10 years of support' as an individual patron.
- peter van hardenberg · directorlab director (ceo in the interview record) — joined when the lab was 'four or five people' and has '8 years of support' on the patrons list. previously founded heroku's data products and team; before that: arctic oceanography, game boy advance and nintendo ds children's games, shakespearean scholarship via xslt, and a stint 'competing with itunes using open source.' co-author of the local-first, cambria, patchwork, and malleable-software essays. described the lab's arc as 'professionalization' — from a pre-startup detour to an institution meant 'to sustain for 10 years, for 50 years.' the lofi community bills him as 'the father of local-first' — a community epithet, not a title.
the writing
the lab's output is mostly prose — essays, lab notebooks, and interview transcripts are the artifacts, with the prototypes riding alongside. the manifestos carry the thesis; the interviews carry the model.
- 2017-04a conflict-free replicated json datatype · document, ieee tpds / martin.kleppmann.com · martin kleppmannkleppmann and beresford's ieee tpds paper — 'a conflict-free replicated json datatype' — the cambridge research automerge implements.
- 2018-02-01pixelpusher: real-time peer-to-peer collaboration with react · essay, inkandswitch.com · peter van hardenbergthe lab's first published prototype essay — real-time peer-to-peer collaboration in react on an early automerge — establishing the essay-plus-prototype form.
- 2018-11-01slow software · essay, inkandswitch.com · adam wigginsmcgranaghan and wiggins on software latency and what it does to a user's train of thought — the founding-era manifesto behind the lab's speed ethos.438 points, 260 comments on hn
- 2018-12-11capstone: a tablet for thinking · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchthe tablet-for-thinking essay — mixed-media cards, freeform inking, an infinite canvas — and the open-sourced prototype that followed.254 points on hn
- 2019-03-01end-user programming · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchthe lab's oldest question stated as a survey: forty years of trying to let users shape their own software, and why it stays hard.105 points on hn
- 2019-04-01local-first software: you own your data, in spite of the cloud · essay, inkandswitch.com / onward! '19 · martin kleppmannthe essay that coined 'local-first' — kleppmann, wiggins, van hardenberg, mcgranaghan — seven ideals and the crdt bet, presented at onward! '19. the artifacts with the largest hn footprints in this dossier are essays, and this is the largest.
we call this type of software local-first software, since it prioritizes the use of local storage (the disk built into your computer) and local networks (such as your home wifi) over servers in remote datacenters.
566 pts, 190 comments at launch; 748 pts via the morning paper; 883 pts on its 2025 re-post — its biggest thread six years on; 137 semantic scholar citations - 2019-04-04muse: designing a studio for ideas · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchmcgranaghan, keskin, wiggins, roggatz — 'a studio for ideas': an ipad workspace modeled on the physical studio, the prototype that became the muse spinout.137 points on hn
- 2020-04-14pushpin · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research bench'towards production-quality peer-to-peer collaboration' — the most developed early prototype, with documented real internal use, later archived 'for posterity' as the dat/hypermerge stack died under it.
- 2020-10-06cambria · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchbidirectional lenses for schema change — data that translates between shapes so documents can outlive their schemas. a hard problem named in the 2019 paper, still open.101 points on hn
- 2021-09-01backchannel · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchrelationship-based digital identity — trust introduced person-to-person rather than issued by platforms. the identity thread that resurfaces in keyhive.
- 2021-11-23peritext · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research bencha crdt for rich-text collaboration — later identified on the supporters page as the output of the notion research partnership.76 points on hn
- 2022-03-29crosscut · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchdrawing dynamic models — pen-and-paper directness with software dynamics underneath; the first programmable-ink essay.
- 2022-10-31potluck · essay, inkandswitch.com / splash 2022 · the research bench'dynamic documents as personal software' — litt, schoening, shen, sonnentag. notes become apps through live searches, computations, and annotations; presented at splash 2022.201 points on hn
- 2022-11-20inkbase: programmable ink · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research bench'what would be possible if hand-drawn sketches were programmable like spreadsheets?' — the programmable ink manifesto and the lab's second-biggest hn artifact ever.675 points, 83 comments on hn
- 2023-01introducing automerge 2.0 · post, automerge.org · orion henrythe automerge 2.0 announcement — rust core, alex good hired full-time, support options for production users; sponsorship from fly.io, prisma, bowtie, and kleppmann's patreon supporters.
it's our first supported release resulting from a ground-up rewrite
717 points, 89 comments on hn - 2023-01untangle · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchpen-based fuzzy-constraint problem solving — a sketch interface backed by an smt solver; the programmable ink track pushing into computation.
- 2023-03-08upwelling · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchreal-time collaboration plus version control for writers — 'creative privacy' while every change is accounted for. the patchwork track's precursor.37 points on hn
- 2023-03-25malleable software in the age of llms · essay, geoffreylitt.com · the research benchlitt's 'malleable software in the age of llms' — chat output should become tweakable personal software; the bridge essay between the malleable track and the agent era.
- 2023-11-20embark · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchdynamic documents for travel planning — maps, dates, and formulas living inside text — published alongside the first dispatch.
- 2024the muse retrospective · essay, adamwiggins.com · adam wigginswiggins' muse retrospective — the spinout's numbers in his own words (self-reported), and the honest ledger of an unsustainable business.
between 2019 and 2023 i worked on muse… we raised $2m in funding, grew the team to seven, had tens of thousands of active users, and thousands of customers
- 2025-06-05malleable software: restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchthe second flagship essay — litt, horowitz, van hardenberg, matthews. 'restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps': gradual transitions from use to change, interoperable tools over shared data, communities exchanging improvements.
a software ecosystem where anyone can adapt their tools to their needs with minimal friction
294 points, 114 comments on hn - 2025-07automerge 3.0 · post, automerge.org · orion henrythe automerge 3.0 release post — orion henry's columnar rewrite: 'pasting moby dick into an automerge 2 document consumes 700mb of memory, in automerge 3 it only consumes 1.3mb' (vendor-reported).353 points on hn
- 2026-04-23tenfold: ten years of ink & switch · essay, inkandswitch.com · the research benchtodd matthews' tenth-anniversary origin story — tenfold built inside patchwork, letters-as-tools contributed by staff, alums, and friends, the playground engineered by ivy reese.
the lab
- martin kleppmanncollaborator, not lab staff — the distinction matters and the record supports only the collaborator reading: cambridge professor, co-creator of automerge (2017) from his and beresford's json crdt research, co-author of the 2019 local-first essay, and a recurring face at lab events. automerge sponsorships note 'so many others who have contributed either directly to automerge or through supporting martin kleppmann on patreon' — a parallel, independent funding channel. no source documents employment by the lab.
- the research benchthe named researchers and engineers in the public corpus: mark mcgranaghan (principal investigator 2018–2019, local-first and muse co-author); geoffrey litt (senior researcher 2023-01→2025-09, led the malleable track, then notion); marcel goethals (programmable ink, 2021→); paul sonnentag (potluck through backstitch); paul shen (potluck, then openai); max schöning (potluck, patchwork; then magic, then notion); ivy reese (inkling, playbook, the tenfold playground); todd matthews (resident designer; tenfold story; malleable co-author); john mumm (keyhive, automerge; rejoined 2025); brooklyn zelenka (senior researcher, keyhive lead, bijou64; ex-fission cto); grjte, chee rabbits, maciek sakrejda, orion reed (the 2025 gaios wave); lilith duncan and nikita zatkovich (backstitch); leo stewen (coln); mimi reyburn (residency → staff, 2026); alex good (automerge lead, full-time since the 2.0 push); plus credit-level names — roshan choxi, julia roggatz, gökçen keskin, rae mckelvey, szymon kaliski, matt tognetti, jeff peterson, blaine cook — whose public records are thin.
- the researchers-in-residencethe formal rir program: alexander obenauer (active 'since [2023]' — ollos and workbench, the itemized-os essays); mary rose cook (~2023-07→2024-02, lude; now an ai engineer at notion); lu wilson (joined ~2024-02, later alum; works at tldraw); elliott evans (droste's lair with josh horowitz; tentpole collective); june gardner (nova, live 2025); mimi reyburn (residency converted to staff); derek yen (2026, nyu cryptography, beekem formalization); and adam wiggins himself, back for the 2026 firehose residency.
- the outside collaboratorsthe hollywood model's contract bench: alex warth (inkling, playbook, ambsheets, the patchwork task framework, livelymerge); josh horowitz (malleable-software co-author, droste's lair); dan ingalls (livelymerge — the smalltalk/lively kernel lineage made literal); avi bryant, who is both an individual patron ('2 years of support') and a research collaborator (ambsheets); christopher shank (live 2025, with orion reed); and the muse-alumni orbit — adam wulf, who carried muse on alone after 2023 and continues it as allume.
- the supportersthe lab 'only exists through the generosity of our supporters': individual patrons wiggins, lindenbaum, and henry ('10 years' each), van hardenberg ('8 years'), and avi bryant ('2 years'); research partners notion (the peritext collaboration, attested by ivan zhao) and the endless os foundation (funding backstitch); governmental sponsor nlnet/ngi zero core (automerge); corporate members ellipsus and common tools (alex komoroske: 'the xerox parc of today'); the aria safeguarded ai programme from 2025-09; and automerge's own enterprise sponsors fly.io, prisma, and bowtie. cb insights also lists blueyard capital as an investor — unverified by any lab source. no dollar figures are disclosed anywhere.
interviews and talks
- 2020-07-06crdts: the hard parts · hydra conferencekleppmann's hydra talk — the canonical self-critical account of crdt pitfalls, from the research community the lab collaborates with.
- 2021-12metamuse #46: industrial research · metamuse'industrial research' — van hardenberg on the metamuse podcast describing the lab 'inspired by bell labs and xerox parc,' funded on a spinout flywheel.
- 2022-11-11the changelog #514 · the changelogthe changelog interview — the canonical founding account: the heroku trio reconvening, the deep dive on industrial research labs, and the muse spinout in hindsight.
- 2022the torch of progress: adam wiggins · progress studiestorch of progress ep. 13 — wiggins on edison, bell labs, arpa, and parc as 'a big influence for our independent research lab.'
- 2023metamuse #83: end and beginning · metamuse'end and beginning' — the muse restructuring episode whose 'end of an era' line is routinely misattached to the lab itself.
- 2024-02-10idea machines #50: industrial research with peter van hardenberg · idea machinesthe idea machines #50 transcript — the lab's self-account: the startup that became a lab, the hollywood model, 'eight and 15 people,' and the fifty-year ambition.
- 2024localfirst.fm episode 1 · localfirst.fmthe localfirst.fm episode 1 interview — van hardenberg's local-first primer for the community podcast the ecosystem grew.
- 2025generally intelligent: geoffrey litt · generally intelligentlitt on imbue's 'generally intelligent' — the malleable-software case in his own words, on the way out the door to notion.
- 2026-04-08local first: how to build software which still works after the acquihire · qcon london / infoqalex good at qcon london — 'local first: how to build software which still works after the acquihire,' the maintainer's case carried into practitioner media.
- 2026-06-29moving beyond cloud-native to local-first · infoqthe infoq podcast — wiggins on moving beyond cloud-native to local-first, floating hybrid ai where local models handle core productivity tasks.
- 2026nobody is here to do version control · endless accessthe endless access blog on the backstitch partnership — van hardenberg explaining why a version-control tool for students belongs in a research lab: 'nobody is here to do version control.'
the philosophy
themes tracked across the writing: tools for thought, local-first software, ownership and agency, industrial research, the hollywood model, end-user programming, malleable software, programmable ink, version control for everything, crdts and sync, patronage over venture, the essay as artifact.
- 2015–2026the founding-year driftthe founding-year drift — linkedin and cb insights list 'founded 2015'; matt webb cites a 'march 2015 pitch deck'; wiggins says 'somewhere around… 2015 is when we reconvened'; but the lab's own announcement says 'ink & switch turns ten this year' in april 2026, i.e. ~2016. both dates are self-reported and both are in the record.the dossier preserves both: plausibly 2015 is the reconvening and 2016 the operating start — an inference, not a reconciliation. github's org creation (2015-08-19) is the earliest hard artifact.
- 2017–collaborator, not employeethe kleppmann attribution — martin kleppmann is routinely described as part of the lab because automerge and the local-first essay sit inside it. the record shows a collaborator and co-author: cambridge professor, patreon-supported in parallel, present at lab events — and no source documents employment.the lab itself is precise about this — automerge.org calls the project 'an independent open source project' built by 'production engineers who cofounded heroku, and computer scientists like renowned cambridge professor martin kleppmann.'
- 2023–the wrong 'end of an era'the misattached 'end of an era' — metamuse #83's phrase describes muse's 2023 restructuring (wiggins and most of the team departing, wulf continuing solo). it circulates as if the lab wound down; the record shows the opposite — new staff announced 2025-09, 2025-11, and 2026-06, and a tenth-anniversary celebration in 2026.treat any 'ink & switch wind-down' claim as unverified conflation with muse; the dispatch archive shows continuous operation november 2023 through june 2026.
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.