The Terran Manifesto

The Moment

Something enormous is arriving. Within a few years, machines will out-think us at most of what we do at a desk. That part is settled. The open question is who holds the keys.

Today the answer is a handful of companies. You get a login. They get your questions, your documents, your plans and, soon enough, your pulse. It is a generous arrangement, right up until the terms change.

The Fire

Prometheus stole fire from the gods and gave it to everyone. The gods were furious, not because fire was dangerous, but because it was no longer theirs to ration.

Intelligence is the new fire. Right now it burns in a handful of data centres, and you may warm your hands for a monthly fee, under terms that change when they like.

We think the story can end better this time. Hand out the fire. Teach everyone to tend it. And nobody gets chained to a rock.

The Vows

1. I

   Beyond the frontier

   No single lab will hold the frontier for long, and no single model is best at everything. So we build the layer above them: many models, frontier and local, working as one system that answers to you. When a better one arrives, you change a setting. You don't change your life.

2. II

   For everyone on the planet

   A capability this large can't belong to a few companies and their best customers. Our software is open source and runs on hardware people already own. A student in Lagos and a lab in Zurich should be able to run the same stack, read the same code and improve it for each other.

3. III

   No landlord

   You should never have to ask permission to leave. Your data lives on your devices in formats you can open. Every component can be swapped for a competitor's. If Terran Labs disappeared tomorrow, your system would keep running. That is the point.

What We Are Building

Three projects, one direction. Freed gives you back your attention and your people. Vorteo lets one person build what used to take a company. Vorton is becoming the operating system that ties a life together, on your own devices, with each intelligence kept inside the realm you gave it.

Some of that ships today. Some is early. Some is still ahead of us. We tag which is which, everywhere, because a movement built on exaggeration deserves to lose.

What We Refuse

• We won't hold your data hostage. It lives on your disk.
• We won't choose your model. Bring your own. Swap it when you like.
• We won't sell your attention. There is nobody here to sell it to.
• We won't pretend. Every claim on this site says whether it exists yet.

Go Deeper