About

Who We Are

We build AI systems trusted to run unattended. Ten of them are shipped. One trades real capital under a statistical gate that killed 978 of 981 candidate strategies. One maps 466,689 buildings across two power grids. One holds people's medical records and never sends them anywhere.

AI agents write most of that code. The engineering that decides whether any of it can be trusted is the part we sell: architecture gates that reject a commit and explain the rule it broke, servers that discard any AI-sourced fact arriving without a citation, and monitoring that catches a system when it drifts.

We work from Brooklyn and Vancouver, and we take on a small number of projects at a time.

What we believe

Intelligence, artificial or otherwise, should serve the flourishing of all life. We build that in as architecture rather than stating it as a value.

Clarity

We explain what we built and why, in language you can repeat to your board without us in the room.

Craft

We build the limits before the features. Spend ceilings, source requirements, and kill switches come first.

Regeneration

We hand over code, tests, and documentation you own outright. A good engagement ends with you not needing us.

The team

Samuel Barnes

Founder & Principal

Head of Growth at Refinery and founder of Gaia AI. Columbia MPA. Builds the systems as well as the strategy.

Coming soon

Coming soon

Track record

Where This Came From

Refinery

Head of Growth

Growth, brand, and agentic engineering for a stealth AI micro-data-center company. Built and shipped Refinery Atlas.

Gaia AI & Symbiocene Labs

Founder & CEO

Edge-AI laboratory and regenerative-finance movement with a full-time engineering team. Under contract with Regen Network. Presented at the United Nations.

Power Finance

Head of Growth

A yield-bearing synthetic dollar backed by the US electricity market, positioned as currency for agent-to-agent payments.

Worldcoin

Head of Community

Reported to Sam Altman. Grew the Discord from 5,000 to 50,000 and the X account past 200,000, running signup events in Berlin, New York, and Tokyo.

Go and use them

Six You Can Open Right Now

Read the write-ups

Get in touch

Start a Project

Tell us what you are trying to build and what is in the way. We will tell you early if we are not the right fit.

starrybodies@gmail.com