Happy STL

The Island of Crete on a laptop, Operation Tankity on a tablet and sveltemail on a phone

What We Do

Happy STL · St. Louis Area Software Studio

What We Do

Websites, apps, cloud, AI, machine learning, optimization and quantum computing: one studio designs it, builds it, tests it and ships it, on every device your customers use.

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Play Our Games
The Island of Crete on a laptop and a tablet, and sveltemail on a phone

01

Websites & Web Apps

Fast, accessible sites and the web apps behind them, built to last and easy to run.

  • Business sites, stores and marketplaces
  • Accounts, payments and admin dashboards
  • Data platforms, pipelines and the dashboards on top of them
  • Browser extensions that bring your service into the toolbar
  • Private by design, secure by default

sveltemail, our privacy-first disposable email: mail is encrypted for your browser alone, and our servers only ever hold ciphertext.

Try sveltemail · How We Built It

sveltemail in a desktop browser and on a phone: a temporary address, a choice of how long the inbox lasts, and how it works in three steps
sveltemail on a desktop and a phone, from one codebase.

02

Apps for Every Device

One app for phones, tablets, Windows, Mac and Linux: installable, touch-friendly, and still working when the connection drops.

  • Installable apps that keep working offline
  • Touch, mouse and keyboard, each a first-class way in
  • Layouts that fit every screen, from a phone held upright to a wide monitor
  • Tested at phone and tablet sizes on every change

The Island of Crete runs the same painted 3D Labyrinth on a phone, a tablet and a desktop, and keeps playing offline.

Play The Island of Crete

The Island of Crete on a desktop, a tablet and a phone: the same painted 3D Labyrinth, with touch controls on the smaller screens
The Island of Crete on a desktop, a tablet and a phone.

03

Cloud & Infrastructure

On-prem, cloud or hybrid: infrastructure set up as code, released through staging before production, and documented so your team can run it.

  • Staging and production environments, with gated releases
  • Server setup scripted and repeatable, with Ansible and containers
  • Linux hosting with PostgreSQL, nginx and automatic TLS
  • Secrets kept in a vault, never in the code
  • Database backups checked before every migration
  • Continuous integration that runs the tests a change affects, across parallel runners

Every release takes the same path: it is tested, then tried on a staging copy, and only then reaches your customers.

Talk to Us About Your Infrastructure

Diagram: plan, build, test, staging, then production, with staging highlighted; under it: server setup scripted and repeatable, secrets in a vault, TLS renewed automatically, Linux with containers, PostgreSQL and nginx, a CDN and DNS in front
The path every release takes. Staging always comes before production.
Diagram: plan, build, test, staging, then production, with staging highlighted; under it: server setup scripted and repeatable, secrets in a vault, TLS renewed automatically, Linux with containers, PostgreSQL and nginx, a CDN and DNS in front
The path every release takes. Staging always comes before production.

04

AI Agents & Models

Practical AI that saves real hours, from assistants inside the tools you already use to agents that take on whole workflows.

  • AI agents that carry out multi-step work
  • Assistants connected to your own tools and data
  • Search and chat over your documents
  • Honest advice on where AI pays off, and where it does not

We build with AI agents every day. The Island of Crete went from a plain text box on October 17 to a painted 3D game with 100 levels in early November, built by a team of AI coding agents we direct.

How Crete Was Built · Composing With an AI Partner

The Island of Crete's title card on October 17, a plain text box, above today's: the Labyrinth at night with the Minotaur in the doorway
Crete’s title card on October 17, and today.

05

Machine Learning & Forecasting

Models that predict, classify and forecast, measured against a plain baseline so you know what they are worth.

  • Forecasts and trend signals from time-series data
  • Classification and scoring models
  • Trading indicators and strategies
  • Fund and cash-flow models
  • Data pipelines that keep models fed

06

Optimization & Search

When there is a best answer, we find it and prove it: exact solvers, search and scheduling for problems too big to try by hand.

  • Exact solvers that prove an answer is the best one
  • Search over millions of possibilities within a fixed memory budget
  • Scheduling and fair assignment of people to teams
  • Generators that only keep results that pass your rules

Our solver finds the fewest moves for all 100 levels of The Island of Crete. The hardest took 149,484 positions, well inside its 2,000,000-position budget.

How the Solver Works

Chart: positions searched by the exact solver for each of The Island of Crete's 100 campaign levels, by chapter, on a log scale from 1 to 10 million; every level is solved, all far below the 2,000,000-position budget
Positions searched to solve each campaign level exactly, one bar per level, by chapter.
Chart: positions searched by the exact solver for each of The Island of Crete's 100 campaign levels, by chapter, on a log scale from 1 to 10 million; every level is solved, all far below the 2,000,000-position budget
Positions searched to solve each campaign level exactly, one bar per level, by chapter.

07

Quantum Computing

We take on the hardest class of optimization problems with quantum annealing, and check every answer against strong classical methods.

  • Scheduling and routing
  • Allocation and portfolio selection
  • Network partitioning and constraint satisfaction

Quantum tunneling lets an annealer slip through the energy barriers that trap classical search.

Diagram, an illustration rather than data: a hard problem drawn as a small graph; quantum annealing drawn as an energy landscape where tunneling passes a barrier to the lowest valley; the lowest-energy answers kept and checked against classical methods
From a hard problem to its best answer, checked.
Diagram, an illustration rather than data: a hard problem drawn as a small graph; quantum annealing drawn as an energy landscape where tunneling passes a barrier to the lowest valley; the lowest-energy answers kept and checked against classical methods
From a hard problem to its best answer, checked.

08

Applied Research

Measure first, then build. We turn questions into experiments, and published research into working software.

  • Experiments and measurements that settle a question
  • Literature reviews that end in working code
  • Prototypes that test an idea before you invest in it

Playtesting showed that simple habits could beat our generated mazes. We measured it, drew on published puzzle research, and rebuilt how difficulty is scored. Now no habit wins.

Read the Research Story

Chart: before the research, 29% of Endless levels fell to a simple habit player; after, 0% at Easy, Medium and Hard. The four habits: just walks to the goal, drops the cow on move one, raises the mirror when the beast is close, carefully dodges
Share of Endless levels in The Island of Crete that a simple habit player could beat.
Chart: before the research, 29% of Endless levels fell to a simple habit player; after, 0% at Easy, Medium and Hard. The four habits: just walks to the goal, drops the cow on move one, raises the mirror when the beast is close, carefully dodges
Share of Endless levels in The Island of Crete that a simple habit player could beat.

Proof of Craft

Games & Interactive 3D

Games are some of the hardest software to get right: real time, every device, judged in seconds. Ours run in any browser, no install needed.

The Island of Crete: Theseus crossing the painted 3D Labyrinth

Puzzle · Painted 3D

The Island of Crete

Outwit the Minotaur in a hundred labyrinth puzzles, endless generated mazes at three difficulties, and a level editor. An exact solver proves every level fair.

Play Crete
Operation Tankity: tanks trading shots across rolling hills under a night sky

Artillery · Solo or With Friends

Operation Tankity

Mind the wind and out-shoot a drone battery across endless hills, or open a room and take turns with friends.

Play Tankity
The CIC: drones and missiles sweeping across a web page

A Game That Takes Over the Page

The CIC

One line of code drops it onto any web page. Drones attack, and the page’s own words scatter across the screen.

Enter the CIC
All Games

How We Work

A Studio Powered by AI Agents

We direct teams of AI coding agents the way a lead directs engineers. Every change is planned, tested and reviewed before it ships.

  • PlanA written design, decided with you.
  • BuildA team of AI agents builds it, under senior-level process.
  • ProveAutomated tests and review on every change.
  • StageYou try it on a staging copy of your system.
  • ShipTo production on your schedule, from a tagged release you can roll back to.
  • Test EverywherePhones, tablets, Windows, Mac and Linux.

Proprietary

Our Own Tools, Your Head Start

Foundry, our in-house AI engineering platform, is why a small studio can take on big builds.

Diagram: your request, a plan you approve, build and review, staging, then production
Every request takes the same path, from your words to production.
Diagram: your request, a plan you approve, build and review, staging, then production
Every request takes the same path, from your words to production.

Faster

Our in-house platform runs teams of AI agents in parallel under senior-level process, so a small studio takes on big builds. The Island of Crete went from first draft to a 100-level release in 21 days of work.

Higher Quality

Every change is planned first, built test-first and reviewed before it merges. Nothing reaches you on a failing check.

Better Results

You approve the design and try the work on staging before your customers see it.

Also built in-house: QED, an automatic grading system for programming courses.

By the Numbers

We Measure What Matters

  • 325changes shipped to our games and sites in the last year, each one tested and reviewed
  • 4,000+automated tests guarding those games and sites
  • 100puzzle levels in The Island of Crete, every one solved exactly
  • 21 daysof work, from the first draft of The Island of Crete to its published 100-level release
  • 2Mpositions our puzzle solver can search for a single level
  • 2023the year we started building for our customers

Experience

Where We’ve Worked

Our team has built software where it has to be right. We have worked in, and built for:

  • Wall StreetFinancial trading systems and market data
  • Video GamesBuilding and shipping games in the industry
  • CybersecuritySecurity engineering, and software secure by default
  • AcademiaTeaching and research in computer science
  • InsuranceA website redesign for an independent insurance agency
  • Health & FitnessA web app for a boxing fitness studio
  • Privacy & EmailEncrypted, disposable email open to the public
  • Education TechnologyAutomatic grading for programming courses

Let’s Talk

Tell Us What You Want Built

A website, an app, a model, a solver or a quantum question: send us a note and we will tell you honestly how we would approach it.

Contact Us
Play Our Games