Dead Star Labs

What we build

Software for things that exist.

Four applications, all pointed at physical reality rather than at a feed: a catalogue for the books on your shelves, an operating system for a small homestead, a fishing assistant built around the water and the tackle you own, and a resource directory for people who have served. They share a shape (local records, explicit reasoning, and a refusal to guess) because they share the same problems.

See the products →

Why it exists

Most of what is wrong with software is an accounting decision.

Most consumer software is paid for by attention or by data, and it shows up in the product: accounts that exist to identify you, features that stop working on a train, recommendations with no stated reason, and confident answers to questions the system cannot actually answer. None of that is a technical necessity. It is a business-model artefact. Dead Star Labs is what is left when you remove the artefact and keep the software.

How decisions are made

1. 01

   Claims are scope-checked against the app repos

   Product copy on this site is written from the app's own README, store metadata, and screenshots. Capabilities that belong to a paid tier are not advertised on a page that sends people to a free beta.

2. 02

   A button exists only if its destination does

   One function decides what is clickable. A link that is absent produces no button; there is no disabled state and no placeholder CTA anywhere on this site, and the deploy check fails if one appears.

3. 03

   Accessibility is a build gate, not a review note

   Every colorway is machine-tuned until it provably clears WCAG AA against its actual background, across twelve contrast pairs per theme. A palette that cannot meet AA fails the build instead of shipping.

4. 04

   Privacy promises are asserted, not intended

   Same Ground's promise is that its surfaces make no third-party requests. That is checked on every deploy by rendering the pages and failing on any external font, script, or image, on this website included.

Technology

Boring on purpose.

This site is Flask and Jinja behind nginx: no database, no JavaScript framework, no analytics SDK, no build step, and exactly one script: a lightbox the gallery works fine without. The apps follow the same instinct. Records live locally and sync when they can, guidance carries provenance, a person approves research before it reaches a user, and exports land in formats other software can already read.

Who builds it

One person, on purpose.

Dead Star Labs is one person. That is a fact about the studio rather than a caveat about the work: it is why the products share a philosophy instead of a template, why there is no growth team asking for an account wall, and why the roadmap is short and honest. Every app has its own support address, and a person reads it.

Contact support@deadstarlabs.com