Insights

Research, field notes and honest postmortems from the work behind our products and systems.

A dark field of 1,144 faint plotted traces, one for each experiment in a night's run. All but thirty-six stay flat; those thirty-six climb away from the rest.

Research and Development · 18 min read

Always-On Research and the Future of Science

We went looking for the labs already running research around the clock, and for who ends up owning what they find.

An aerial render of the whole site: the house, windmill and pool among the olive trees on one side, and the fenced observatory campus with its four observing rooms and parked roofs on the other.

Research and Development · 21 min read

AI Just Solved 3D. Here's How We Designed an Observatory House in Alentejo, Portugal

Early impressions of OpenAI's new GPT-6 Astra, and how well it thinks in 3D. We gave it a house, a telescope and a business case to hold at the same time.

The Darkmatter Agents workspace with a red sun setting behind it, in the sunset frame the product used to have on the homepage.

Postmortem · 5 min read

What We Learned Building Darkmatter Agents

It began as a client project and became a product we tried to sell. What we got wrong about workflows and agents, and where the attention goes now.