A small studio, on purpose.

We build tools for people who want their software to stay out of the way. Right now that's Workspace — a developer workspace for managing projects, tasks, notes, sprints, and milestones, with two-way GitHub Issues sync — and Caspian Office, a browser toolkit for PDF, image, and file work that never uploads your files. The Caspian-Taskmaster and Caspian-Notes VS Code extensions are their own products; they sync into Workspace for developers who want it.

The common thread is restraint: local-first where it's possible, no data we don't need, and a free tier that keeps working. We'd rather cut a feature than compromise on that.

Take Workspace: both clients — the web app and the VS Code extensions — are equal writers. Neither one is a server-authoritative oracle. Edits flow through Firestore, which acts as a shared queue; the two sides reconcile by reading each other's changes. The extensions queue writes while offline and flush them when connectivity returns.

We don't host a custom OAuth backend, a sync server, or a queue worker for anything other than email delivery and a couple of slug-claim transactions. The fewer pieces of bespoke infrastructure between your editor and your data, the fewer places things can silently break.

We work under a small set of principles — drawn from an Islamic ethical framework — that constrain feature, data, and business model choices. Not branding language; actual constraints on what we will and won't build.

• Amanah— user data is held in trust. Collect only what's needed. No selling. No user-level tracking; analytics never identifies you and you can opt out. Deletion is real deletion.
• Sidq — marketing claims match implementation. No dark patterns. AI outputs are disclosed.
• Adl — pricing transparent and proportionate. No paywalling safety features. Cancellation frictionless.
• Ihsan — quality over feature count. Performance and reliability come first.
• No facilitation of riba, gambling, or content harmful to dignity, including through third-party integrations.

The full principles document is in the repo: docs/ETHICS.md. It will change as the product changes; the commits make the history visible.

The studio's work is open. The main repositories:

• caspiantools — the studio site and the Workspace web app. Next.js, TypeScript, Firebase.
• caspian-taskmaster — the VS Code extension for tasks.
• caspian-notes — the VS Code extension for notes.
• caspian-office — the offline, browser-based PDF/image/file toolkit.