Nacre Lab

Everything was made by someone. Here’s what we made.

Nacre Lab is the museum of our passion projects: two builders turning real problems into shipped software, one thin layer at a time.

View the collection Commission us

01 — Origin

Every pearl starts with grit.

An oyster doesn’t set out to make a pearl. A grain of grit gets in, and it answers the only way it knows: with nacre, one layer thinner than a wavelength of light, then another, and another, until the irritant is the most luminous thing in the sea. We build the same way.

  1. 001GritA problem someone actually has.
  2. 002A conversationWe hear it in their words, not ours.
  3. 003A prototype nobody seesRough, fast, honest.
  4. 004An architectureBuilt to carry the next thousand layers.
  5. 005First releaseSomeone else uses it. Everything changes.
  6. 006The fix they asked for
  7. 007Another release

Releases, as tagged · 50

  1. 13 OctKepes 0.29.0
  2. 11 OctKepes 0.28.1
  3. 10 OctKepes 0.28.0
  4. 9 OctKepes 0.27.2
  5. 9 OctKepes 0.27.1
  6. 9 OctKepes 0.27.0
  7. 9 OctKepes 0.26.2
  8. 9 OctKepes 0.26.1
  9. 9 OctMontage Studio 0.4.1
  10. 9 OctMontage Studio 0.4.0
  11. 8 OctKepes 0.26.0
  12. 8 OctKepes 0.25.1
  13. 8 OctKepes 0.25.0
  14. 7 OctMontage Studio 0.3.0
  15. 7 OctMontage Studio 0.2.4
  16. 6 OctMontage Studio 0.2.3
  17. 6 OctMontage Studio 0.2.2
  18. 5 OctKepes 0.24.1
  19. 5 OctKepes 0.24.0
  20. 5 OctKepes 0.23.0
  21. 5 OctMontage Studio 0.2.1
  22. 5 OctMontage Studio 0.2.0
  23. 3 OctKepes 0.22.0
  24. 3 OctKepes 0.21.0
  25. 1 OctKepes 0.20.0
  26. 1 OctKepes 0.19.0
  27. 29 SeptKepes 0.18.0
  28. 29 SeptKepes 0.17.0
  29. 28 SeptKepes 0.16.0
  30. 28 SeptKepes 0.15.0
  31. 28 SeptKepes 0.14.0
  32. 27 SeptKepes 0.13.0
  33. 25 SeptKepes 0.12.1
  34. 25 SeptKepes 0.12.0
  35. 25 SeptKepes 0.11.0
  36. 24 SeptKepes 0.10.0
  37. 23 SeptKepes 0.9.0
  38. 23 SeptKepes 0.8.0
  39. 23 SeptKepes 0.7.0
  40. 21 SeptKepes 0.6.2
  41. 21 SeptKepes 0.6.1
  42. 21 SeptKepes 0.6.0
  43. 20 SeptKepes 0.5.0
  44. 18 SeptKepes 0.4.1
  45. 18 SeptKepes 0.4.0
  46. 18 SeptKepes 0.3.1
  47. 17 SeptKepes 0.3.0
  48. 16 SeptKepes 0.2.2
  49. 16 SeptKepes 0.2.1
  50. 16 SeptKepes 0.2.0
Layers so far 1,869 Commits across three products since July 2026. Counted, not estimated.

“The world is a museum of passion projects.”

— John Collison, 2022

02 — The makers

Two of us. One finds the grit; the other lays the layers.

Product

Finds the grit.

A product manager who goes looking for problems before solutions. Sits with users, listens for the sentence they keep repeating, and won’t let us build anything until it’s worth building.

Engineering

Lays the layers.

A software engineer and solution architect who loves technology most when it’s running in production. Designs systems that hold up under real users, ships them, then ships again.

Neither half makes a pearl alone.

03 — Principles

What we build by.

  1. I

    Start with grit.

    A real problem, from a real person, in their own words. We don’t build solutions that go looking for a problem.

  2. II

    Layer, don’t leap.

    Small releases, often, for years. Nacre is far tougher than the mineral it’s made of, precisely because every layer is thin.

  3. III

    Shipped beats imagined.

    If it isn’t live, it isn’t in the collection. Real users are the only review that counts.

  4. IV

    AI is the chisel. Taste is the hand.

    We build with AI every day. It makes us faster; it doesn’t decide what’s worth making.

04 — On view

The permanent collection.

Three works, all in production. Each one began as somebody’s grit.

Pace Spring, 2026

“Teach the whole class. Elevate every student.”

Turns the worksheets and past papers a teacher already trusts into a practice loop. AI drafts feedback, flags what it isn’t sure of, and suggests each student’s next step. The teacher stays in charge.

Medium
Rust, React, and a teacher’s own worksheets.
Form
Web app · in pilot with tutors and schools.
Provenance
Teachers have good materials and no time to turn them into practice that adapts to every student.
Layers
747One ring per working day; each gap is that day’s commits.
Visit pacespring.com

Kepes, 2026

“Turn what you read into a model you can think with.”

Reads your books, papers and PDFs and builds a graph of the ideas inside them, every concept linked back to the passage that supports it, so you can form a view of your own.

Medium
Rust, TypeScript, and a few hundred papers.
Form
macOS app · free during early access.
Provenance
You read fifty sources and remember five. The connections between them live nowhere.
Layers
746One ring per working day; each gap is that day’s commits.
Visit kepes.app

Montage Studio, 2026

“Shipped it? Now film it.”

Your coding agent becomes a film crew. It proposes the story and the look, builds every shot as real motion graphics from your actual UI, and cuts to the beat. You make the taste calls, the way you’d review a pull request.

Medium
Rust, Swift, TypeScript, and your coding agent.
Form
macOS app · free download.
Provenance
Founders ship the product, then launch it with a screen recording, because there is no video team.
Layers
376One ring per working day; each gap is that day’s commits.
Visit montagestudio.app

Have grit of your own? Commission a first layer

05 — Commissions

Bring us your grit.

We do for businesses exactly what we do for ourselves. If something in your company is slow, manual, or held together by spreadsheets, that’s grit, and grit is where good software starts. We’re built for small and mid-sized businesses taking their first serious step with AI.

  1. I2 weeks

    Find the grit

    We sit with your team, map how the work really happens, and name the one problem worth solving first. You leave with a written diagnosis and a plan, whether or not you build it with us.

  2. II4–6 weeks

    First layer

    A working pilot in your team’s hands: real data, real users, deployed. Small enough to be fast, real enough to judge.

  3. IIIOngoing

    Keep layering

    We stay on as your product and engineering partner: releases, architecture, and the AI workflows that keep paying for themselves.

Grit we often hear

  • Orders reconciled by hand in Excel, every Friday.
  • Quotes that take a day to put together.
  • Stock counts that never match the system.
  • The same customer questions, answered fifty times a week.
  • Knowledge that lives in one person’s head.

Everything on view above is in production. That’s the standard we hold commissions to.

Open studio

Soon on YouTube and TikTok: how we design, build and ship apps with AI. The real process, mistakes included.

Tell us about it.

This opens your email app with everything filled in. On webmail? Write to hello@nacrelab.ai