side quests
the projects around the lab — automerge, the tracks, the prototypes, muse, the residencies, and the conference circuit.
the lab's tracks
- 2017–automerge · activethe library the lab spun out of cambridge research: a json-shaped crdt for local-first apps. rust core under a js/wasm api; 2.0 in 2023-01 after the ground-up rewrite; orion henry's columnar 3.0 in 2025-07. funded by nlnet/ngi zero core plus enterprise sponsors fly.io, prisma, and bowtie — and through kleppmann's patreon supporters. the record's largest number: moby dick costing 700mb in v2, 1.3mb in v3.
- 2024–patchwork · active'project 030': the universal version control track — collaboration-as-primitive software where every change is inspectable, every app a user-modifiable shape. the public notebook opened 2024-02; tenfold itself was built inside patchwork. the aria sgai programme requires open-sourcing it; its descendant gaios is the malleable platform for that work.
- 2024–keyhive · active'project 035': access control for local-first apps — beekem keyhive, brooklyn zelenka leading, with john mumm and alex good. beekeb the c-based version; beelay the standalone sync service for the automerge ecosystem. the notebook opened 2024-08; keyhive was open-sourced in 2025.
- 2024–backstitch · activeformerly 'beckett': version control and collaboration for students learning godot — a git-like workflow inside the engine, funded by the endless os foundation, built by sonnentag, zatkovich, and duncan. first lab note 2025-11; a godotcon talk in 2026-04 drew 'a euphoric response' per dispatch 018.
- 2025–gaios / coln · activethe gaios project — 'guardian ai os' — announced in dispatch 014: a malleable, collaborative platform derived from patchwork, built for the uk aria safeguarded ai programme (~2.5 years, joined 2025-09). coln, leo stewen's local-first proof-checking database, joins it in 2026.
- 2022–the programmable ink line · continuingthe programmable ink track's through-line: crosscut (2022-03, drawing dynamic models) → inkbase (2022-11, the 675-point manifesto) → untangle (2023-01, smt-solver sketch constraints) → sketchy calendar (2025-05) → playbook (2026, with lindenbaum, warth, reese; the live 2025 papers came out of it). the question — what if sketches were programmable like spreadsheets? — is still open.
- 2022–malleable software · continuingthe malleable software track: potluck (2022) and embark (2023) as prototypes, litt's age-of-llms bridge essay (2023-03), and the flagship 'malleable software' essay (2025-06) — 'restoring user agency in a world of locked-down apps.' its lead researcher departed for notion four months after publication.
- 2025–the sync stack · continuingthe infra layer the lab keeps open-sourcing: the automerge-repo networking wrapper (2.0 in 2025-05); subduction, the deterministic-chunking sync engine inside gaios; beelay; and livelymerge — dan ingalls and alex warth building 'a smalltalk / lively kernel-like system that rides on top of automerge.'
- 2018–2020the early prototypes · endedthe early prototypes that produced the papers and then stopped by design: pixelpusher (2018, the react/automerge collab demo), livebook and trellis (the 2018 homepage's first links), capstone (2018, the tablet for thinking — source open on github), and pushpin (2020, 'production-quality p2p,' internally used, then archived 'for posterity' as the dat/hypermerge ecosystem died under it — maintenance handed to community developers).
- 2023–the dispatch · activethe dispatch — the lab's own chronicle, issues 001–018 from 2023-11 to 2026-06, each carrying project news, staff changes, and event calendars. the primary source for roughly half the timeline events in this dossier.
the people's orbits
- 2019–muse / allume · handed-offthe only consumer spinout: the muse team created muse software, inc. in summer 2019, taking the lab's ip for a stake. $2m raised (wiggins' self-report), tens of thousands of active users — and in 2023-08/09, 'the end of an era': wiggins and most of the team departed, adam wulf carried on solo, and muse continues today as allume. the phrase was muse's, never the lab's.
- 2023–the residency projects · continuingthe researcher-in-residence artifacts: obenauer's ollos and workbench (itemized-os essays), mary rose cook's lude (chess-puzzle gpt, 2023-11), elliott evans and josh horowitz's droste's lair (recursive-card writing space, 2024-12), june gardner's nova, mimi reyburn's residency → staff, derek yen's beekem formalization, and wiggins' own firehose (a personal triage algorithm for the message stream, 2026).
the ecosystem
- 2024–local-first conf and the unconferences · continuingthe community's conference, not the lab's — local-first conf 2024 ('the world's first,' berlin, co-organized by lab-adjacent people including wiggins) and lfc 2026 (festsaal kreuzberg, 2026-07-12→14) with an ink & switch 'lab day' on patchwork, playbook, and automerge. the lab's own public gathering form is the unconference: st. louis 2023-09 beside the last strange loop, lisbon 2023-10 with fission and dxos (~100 friends), la 2024-10 at the preserve.
AI-drafted at Ben Guo's direct request and credited to Hraness; every claim links to its cataloged source.