MEC Research Labs · Beta
How we build, and what we refuse to build.
We set ourselves two tests before either product may stop being called Beta. Both products fail both today. The whole scorecard is at the bottom of this page.
What we believe
Six rules that decide what we do on an ordinary day.
Insight before action
We earn the right to build by understanding the problem and the technology first.
Ship to learn
Real products in real hands teach us more than any plan does.
Leverage over labour
We build reusable engines, so effort compounds instead of repeating.
Empower the one who has least
Success is not that a customer is pleased. Success is that someone can now do what they could not do before — and we care most about the person for whom that gap was widest.
Their life is theirs
Separate by default. Deleted for real. Every part of that must be verifiable, not just stated — see the grading below.
Know how little we know
From the quantum to the cosmos, almost everything is unexplored. We say what we can prove, and we say plainly when we cannot.
Built for need, not attention
Attention follows money, not need.
COVID was everybody's problem, so the world solved it in a year. Tuberculosis is a poor person's problem. It has been curable since 1952 and it still kills over a million people every year. The cure is not missing. The reach is missing.
The same failure runs through knowledge. Most of what a person needs to learn to change their life already exists. It does not reach them.
So we do not build for whoever is easiest to reach. We build for the person for whom the gap is widest.
⚠️ We have not earned this yet, and we will say so plainly. Our products need a good screen and a decent connection. Until that changes, this is something we are aiming at, not something we have done.
What we can prove, and what we cannot
A promise counts only when a test can fail. Here is where each of ours really stands.
Separate by default
Held by convention and proven by a gate. A database schema is a namespace, not a permission boundary.
Deleted for real
Your own data, yes. A shared family tree keeps your surname and your position in it on purpose, so the living family's tree is not broken. Backups, caches and renders are not swept yet.
Never sold
This is our policy. Nothing enforces it but our own decision, so we will not claim it as if it were.
Shared only with your consent
Not built. Nothing is shared between our products yet, so nothing leaks — but consent is not enforced, it is simply not needed yet.
What we will not build
Not a roadmap we have not reached. Things we have decided against.
Health and wellbeing data
It is regulated, and the companies already in it are enormous. We may read from it one day. We will never own it.
Money and finance
The same, and worse. Money is a licence business.
Anything that classifies people by ancestry
This is a permanent refusal, not a scheduling decision.
Any measure of time spent on our site
A metric that rewards attention would quietly turn the product into something else.
How we score ourselves
Two tests. A product stays in Beta until it passes both. Neither of ours passes either.
⏳ The law of time
Does it handle the past, the present and the future? A product that only remembers, or only plans, is half a product.
◐ The law of depth
Does it serve the outer life and the inner life? What a person has, and what a person is.
Mastery
Time
It handles what you are learning now and what you want to learn next. There is nowhere to record what you already knew before you arrived.
Depth
It teaches skills and gives certificates. It does not yet touch wisdom — understanding why.
Kinship
Time
The past only. Nothing about the family now, and nothing about what you pass on.
Depth
Names and dates. There is nowhere to say what a person meant to you.
We publish this because a test we do not report is not a test. Everything we make stays in Beta until it passes.