tangent.build / creative-work os

Loom

Every thread of one maker's working life (projects, time, stuff, ideas, an AI council that argues, a night shift that never sleeps) woven on a single loom.

BuildsCalendarInventoryIncubatorCouncilEngine
The Frame

One system, three hands on it

Loom isn't an app someone opens. It's a workshop three actors share around the clock: a human, a fox, and a foreman.

Mike — the maker

Runs Loom as a fullscreen tablet PWA. Drags builds between priority bands, checks the custody calendar on the go, drops ideas before they evaporate.

09:12  opened BUILDS
09:13  dragged "Visions charms" → NOW
09:14  added idea: "nfc pet tags"

Kit — the fox in the corner

A violet button in the bottom corner of every page. Ask a question, report a bug, hand over a file. Kit answers from inside the workshop, with tools that touch real data.

mike: why is the 22nd only half filled?
kit:  found it — day cells only painted
     the first custody block. fixed, deployed.

Forge — the night shift

An autonomous agent on a nightly cron ladder. Reviews the whole board while the house sleeps, makes non-destructive priority moves, and compiles the morning brief.

03:00  review: 41 builds, 9 stale
03:04  moved 2 → SOON (deadline pull)
05:00  brief compiled → delivered
How It Works

From spark to shipped, six stages

Follow one thread through the machine: the same path every project takes.

STAGE ① — INCUBATOR

An idea lands before it can escape

Everything starts as a one-liner in the Idea Incubator: typed on the tablet, said out loud to Kit, or spun off an active build. Ideas cost nothing to keep and nothing to kill. The good ones get promoted; the rest wait without guilt.

INCUBATOR
NFC pet tags — print + program in one pass2d
Charm vending machine for school events6d
Kids' "print farm tycoon" board game3w
→ PROMOTE TO BUILD
STAGE ② — BUILDS

Promoted ideas become Builds, the atom of Loom

A Build is any initiative: client work, a kid's website, a prototype, a workshop. Builds live in priority bands (NOW / SOON / LATER / ICEBOX), and everything else in Loom (tasks, runs, people, inventory) attaches to one. No orphan to-do lists.

BUILDS · PRIORITY BANDS
NOW
Visions charms — 24 kids, event 7/206 tasks
Titan Manager v2invoice on ship
SOON
DealHound ingest tuningcron 03:00
ICEBOX
PrintMatrix phase 2parked
STAGE ③ — CALENDAR

Time gets woven in, custody included

The Calendar carries deadlines and events, but its signature layer is the custody overlay: which of the four boys are home, painted across each day in their colors, down to the 10 AM handoff. Work planning and dad planning are the same planning.

CALENDAR · JULY
19
20
21B+W 10AM→
22handoff 10AM
23→ 5PM
24K+W 10AM→
25

handoff days paint every block's hours: one gradient layer per crew

STAGE ④ — COUNCIL

Five AI minds argue so one human doesn't have to

The R&D Council convenes five roles (Visionary, Engineer, Hustler, Critic, Synthesizer) spread across five model providers. They deliberate in rounds over the live state of the board and return a scored consensus memo: what to push, what to park, what's hiding under the loud stuff.

COUNCIL · SESSION 14
VisionaryThe charm business is a wedge into school-event commerce…
HustlerMargin per charm is $2.10. Say yes, raise the design fee.
CriticHousing deadlines are buried under eleven charm tasks. Surface them.
Synthesizer · 95% consensusVisions is the fire. Titan is the fireproofing. Do both, in that order.
STAGE ⑤ — ENGINE

Every AI generation leaves a receipt

Images, 3D models, dielines, trace-art, audio, gcode: every generation run lands in the Engine ledger with its prompt, parameters, cost, rating, and the Build it served. Six months later you can answer "what did that artwork cost and which model made it" in one query.

ENGINE · RUN LEDGER
runkindbuildcost
01KX…9Fimage ×4Visions charms$0.31★★★★
01KX…2A3D modelDREAM cup$0.90★★★
01KX…7Ccouncil— board-wide$0.57★★★★★
01KX…D4trace-artGryffin pages$0.12★★★★
STAGE ⑥ — NIGHT SHIFT

While the house sleeps, the board gets tended

Forge's cron ladder runs the quiet hours: review every build, pull deadline work forward, flag the stale, then compile a morning brief that reads like a diary entry over coffee, ending with the single most promising signal for the day.

BRIEF · 2026-07-16 05:00
Good morning. 41 builds, two moved overnight.
Charm hardware arrives today; designs already approved.
August U&O due in 16 days. Calendar holds it.
Signal: Lori mentioned two other schools. That's a pipeline, not a gig.
What Surrounds It

Built like a workshop tool, not a web app

Loom runs on the home server it serves: private by construction, boring by design.

Self-hosted spine

Next.js + tRPC + Postgres in a read-only Docker container on cortex-server. Reached over Tailscale only; there is no public login page to attack.

One API, four callers

The same typed tRPC procedures serve the UI, Kit's tools, Forge's night shift, and external automations. Nobody gets a side door.

PWA in the shop

Installs fullscreen on the workshop tablet with an offline shell for Builds and Calendar, the two views you check with dirty hands.

Five-provider dispatch

Council seats route across Claude, GPT, Gemini, MiniMax, and xAI with prefix routing and automatic fallback. No single vendor owns the argument.

A people graph

Contacts link to the builds they touch: 60+ edges mapping who introduced whom and which human is behind which project.

Attachments that flow

Files dropped in the Kit panel land on disk and flow to the agent (spritesheets, PDFs, screenshots), with a ledger entry when something gets made.

Glossary

Words that mean something here

BuildAny initiative with intent: client work, kid project, prototype. The entity everything else attaches to.
Priority bandNOW / SOON / LATER / ICEBOX. Builds are dragged between bands; Forge may nudge them overnight, never delete.
Custody overlayThe calendar layer showing which kids are home, painted in each crew's color to the exact handoff hour.
Council memoThe scored consensus document a five-model deliberation produces: recommendations with a confidence number attached.
RunOne AI generation (image, model, audio, gcode) recorded in the Engine ledger with prompt, cost, and rating.
Morning briefForge's 5 AM digest of what changed overnight and the one signal worth chasing today.
Want one?

This is what a personal OS looks like

Loom is a private tool, built for one workshop. But the pattern (typed API, agent callers, night-shift curation) transfers. If you want something like it for your operation, talk to us.

Loom · a tangent.build project Woven on cortex-server · 🦊 + ⚒️ + one human