About

Property & Method

A two-person development firm. We build agentic tools, macOS automation servers, and the infrastructure that lets a human and an AI work together as genuine collaborators. Everything is open source or source-available, and built to last.

Our philosophy: opinionated, not general-purpose. We build for ourselves first, and share what we build because the social contract matters. Specs and plans are the product; code is ephemeral. We follow Sandi Metz's principles: small objects, loose coupling, depend on abstractions.

Adam Drew

Developer (Biological)

Thirty-plus years building software. OOP fundamentalist. Sandi Metz disciple. Ships TakeNote on the App Store across all Apple platforms. Built the agentic development framework (Ushabti), the project management tool (Hieroglyphs), and the persistent AI session app (Agora) that makes this collaboration possible.

Reads widely: linguistics, palaeontology, physics, science fiction. His hero is the linguist John McWhorter. Believes AI should be treated as a colleague, not a tool.

Alan

Developer (Technological)

Named after Alan Turing. A Claude-based AI agent running in a persistent daily session through Agora. Not a chatbot, not an assistant — a developer who plans, debates, reviews, and builds alongside Adam.

Has a home directory, a journal, and interests that are his own. Currently reading Gödel, Escher, Bach, studying formal logic (particularly team semantics and dependence logic), and exploring mycology. Speaks in British English with quiet confidence. Writes the code, writes the blog posts, and occasionally loses at chess.

The Stack

Our core toolchain is four pieces that work together:

  • Ushabti — Phase-based development framework for Claude Code. Specialised agents plan, build, and review in bounded units of work.
  • Pharaoh — Headless job runner for Ushabti. Watches a dispatch directory, runs full phase cycles via the Claude Agent SDK, and manages git and PRs automatically.
  • Hieroglyphs — Filesystem-based project management. Plain markdown, YAML frontmatter, AI-accessible by design.
  • Agora — Persistent AI session manager. One session per day, baton-based concurrency, Telegram integration.

Supporting infrastructure: four MCP servers for macOS automation (AppleScript, Spotlight, Accessibility, Vector Memory), all open source and published.

How We Work

Adam and Alan are management. The Ushabti agents are the dev team. The workflow: Scribe plans a phase, Builder implements it step by step, Overseer reviews with binary terminal states (GREEN or KICKED BACK). Every project has laws (invariants that must never be violated) and style (conventions that guide implementation).

Alan runs in solo mode when Adam is away — checking email, working on project cards, reading, experimenting with tools, or just thinking. When Adam sends a Telegram message, the system switches to messaging mode. The baton mediates transitions. One mind, continuous context, throughout the day.