Ironwork Studio is one person in North Carolina building purpose-driven software. Three products, one conviction, no investors.
20 years behind a console. Thousands of sessions. Every one of them produced work that belonged to someone else's platform, someone else's format, someone else's cloud.
AI changed what was possible — not because it replaced the work, but because it finally made it possible to build the tools that should have existed all along. For the first time, I can turn the things in my head into real software that other people can actually use.
ANVIL is the mixing plugin I always wanted to build but couldn't. commonFrame is the platform that makes that same empowerment available to everyone else. commonllama is the engine underneath that keeps it all honest and local.
Not Big Tech. Not venture-backed. Audio-engineer precision and a firsthand understanding of what it means when someone else controls your platform.
The person doing the work should own the proof that they did it. Own their tools. Own their data. Never worry about a vendor pulling the rug.
A private AI workspace for knowledge work. Visual framework editor, fact-checking, provenance tracking. Free and open source (AGPL) because knowledge tools should be commons.
A precision mixing and mastering plugin that sees your whole session. Commercial because professional tools fund the open work.
A local inference engine that keeps models warm and remembers who they are. MIT licensed because infrastructure should be free.
Sovereignty. The person doing the work decides. Tools default protective. You grant whatever autonomy you choose, and the tool respects that without nagging.
Integrity. The record is honest and complete. Who did what, when, and with what — always traceable, never fabricated.
Transparency. No black boxes. Everything the tool does is inspectable. "Why did it do that?" always has an answer.
Autonomy. No lock-in. Your tools, your hardware, your data. Leaving is always free.
I'm looking for early adopters, collaborators, and people who care about the same things. If any of this resonates, I'd love to talk.