G-code Microscope
Inspect how modal commands change the meaning of a toolpath. See the supported moves and the limits of the interpretation.
Open toolIteration Department
Progress through repeated failure.
The Iteration Department is an inadequately supervised research organization dedicated to tools that build tools, machines that improve machines, software that rewrites software, and the increasingly difficult task of determining which department is responsible when all of those things happen at once.
We investigate 3D printing, software development, local artificial intelligence, electronics, automation, recursive systems, and anything else capable of producing a version two.
Version one remains under investigation.
Our Mandate
Most technology is built to do something.
We are more interested in technology that helps us do the thing again, except slightly less badly.
A printer makes a bad part. The bad part teaches us something. The printer gets modified. The next part is less bad. Eventually somebody calls this engineering and the Department receives additional funding.
The same pattern now appears everywhere.
Machines manufacture upgrades for machines. Software measures and rewrites software. AI helps build better AI systems. Fabrication workflows turn failed objects into useful information. Humans continue changing three variables at once and insisting the results are conclusive.
Iteration happens whenever information from one attempt survives long enough to interfere with the next.
The Department exists to study this process.
Attempts to stop it have been unsuccessful.
Put something on the bench
From the divisionsPortable Mini-App Workshop
Customize a small application, try it here, and take home an HTML file that works on its own.
Open toolMemory Workbench
Account for model, cache and runtime memory without making the unknown parts disappear.
Open toolPower Budget Workbench
Turn operating states into a power budget, with every measurement and assumption still attached.
Open toolWhere the tools meet
All field notesA microscope that starts as a print
OpenFlexure turns printed mechanics into an instrument. The interesting part is what survives the trip from design file to measurement.
Read the field noteGive your project a memory
A small experiment record makes the next revision depend on evidence instead of whatever you happen to remember.
Read the field noteThe file between departments
A small, explicit data contract lets a sensor, a chart, and a design revision participate in the same project.
Read the field noteDepartmental Divisions
Four divisions currently exist.
This number was not selected strategically. It is simply how many domains we purchased.
3D PRINTING DIVISION
- Status
- Operational
- Primary hazard
- Confidence immediately following one successful first layer
Additive manufacturing, minus the brochure language.
Printers, materials, calibration, modifications, failures, repairs, giant machines built by people who regard manufacturer specifications as personal insults, and enough Benchies to begin questioning the original maritime purpose of the vessel.
Departmental finding: The problem is probably your first layer.
Unless it isn't.
Visit 3dprinter.fyi →WEB DEVELOPMENT DIVISION
- Status
- Operational
- Last known stable framework
- Disputed
The browser was originally designed to display documents.
There have been developments.
We investigate the technologies used to build the modern web, including the extremely important work of installing 1,400 dependencies so a button can move six pixels to the left.
Some of these developments are genuinely useful.
An investigation is ongoing.
This could have been HTML.
Visit webdev.fyi →LOCAL AI DIVISION
- Status
- Models loaded
- Available VRAM
- Never enough
Artificial intelligence without asking somebody else's computer for permission.
Local models, agents, memory, inference, retrieval, automation, tool use, quantization, and the increasingly scientific practice of closing absolutely everything else because the model needs another 1.7 GB.
The Department remains confident that there is always another 2 GB of VRAM if you believe hard enough.
Evidence supporting this position has not been located.
Visit localai.fyi →CIRCUITS DIVISION
- Status
- Energized
- Cause
- Unknown
Eventually software encounters electricity.
At that point it becomes somebody else's problem.
The Circuits Division investigates electronics, embedded systems, sensors, motors, microcontrollers, custom hardware, robotics-adjacent incidents, and why the magic smoke remains such an unreliable diagnostic indicator.
NOTICE: Voltage has been detected.
Personnel are advised to stop licking things.
Visit circuits.fyi →Departmental Status
- Operational
- Technically.
- Funding
- We found twenty dollars.
- Headcount
- Depends whether agents count.
- Oversight
- Aspirational.
- Mission creep
- No longer measurable using conventional instruments.
- Number of projects described as “basically done”
- Classified.
- Number actually done
- This metric has been deprecated.
- Known safety incidents
- Define “incident.”
- Projected shutdown date
- Immediately following completion of the current iteration.
- Next iteration
- Already started.
Build. Measure. Learn. Repeat.
An unofficial organization investigating technologies increasingly capable of participating in their own improvement.
No taxpayer funding has been identified at this time.
We checked.