Artificial Illumination
Agentic products for everyone.
Claude-Joseph Vernet, 1772. oil on canvas
Artificial Illumination believes intelligence should be a utility, like light or heat — simple, clear, and useful. Not gatekept behind technical know-how and the command line.
We build beautiful, open-source agentic software that makes learning, using, and interacting with intelligence as simple as flipping a light switch.
George Inness, 1891. oil on canvas
small, serious tools — open from the first line.
George Inness, 1891. oil on canvas
Vesper.
named for the evening star — a companion for the hours after work.
Vesper lives where you already talk: your texts. Say what you need the way you'd say it to a person — it remembers your people, your dates, and your way of doing things, and it gets a little better at being yours every week. There's nothing to install and nothing to set up. Text it, and it begins.
Marguerite Gérard, 1788–1789. oil on canvas
Margins.
for letters, plans, and drafts that matter enough to keep.
Margins is a shared page that several people can write on at once — like the docs you know, except everything underneath is plain text you'll still be able to open in fifty years, on anything. Comments live where they've always belonged: in the margins.
The garden made it through the winter, which is more than we can say for the fence.
We're planting the plum tree in March — come see it when it blooms
George Inness, c. 1856. oil on canvas
Guild.
a workshop of helpers, sworn to your team.
Guild is for workplaces. Write down how your company runs — once — and then take on helpers: one writes the morning report, one watches the inbox, one chases the loose ends. Every member works from the same charter, so nothing gets explained twice.
Camille Pissarro, 1856. oil on canvas
Legible.
speech becomes writing before you finish the sentence.
Hold a key, talk, let go — your words appear as clean, finished writing, anywhere you can type. Legible runs entirely on your Mac, so it answers instantly and nothing you say ever leaves the room.
talking is about four times faster than typing — so just talk.
Open, all the way down.
every product is open source — read it, change it, keep it. a tool you can't look inside is a tool you have to take on faith; we'd rather be checked.
Private by default.
the work happens on your own devices wherever possible. what you write, say, and plan is yours — not material for us.
Calm over clever.
good tools end the conversation sooner. we measure ourselves by how little you have to think about us.