It’s Daniel. Together with Matt, we are building Inanimate - devices and a platform to transform any home or workplace into an agentic environment. 

If you’re new here - welcome - thanks for signing up to Lab Notes. We are hiking up the mountain of human-agent augmentation together! 

Here’s what’s been happening since the last note.

Thanks to all of you for reading, replying, and following our journey via Lab Notes.

You are real ones. 🤜🤛

Our partnership with Alex, Julie, and the amazing designers at Approach enters a new phase.

Now our foundational tech is in place, we are moving up the abstraction layers into product and industrial design. That’s where Approach comes in.

Excited to share the work as we go. 🍿

Welcome on-board Zac, our first engineer and first employee.

Zac is a specialist embedded engineer and has been busy bringing up elements of the Inanimate user interface.

And he shipped to Main in his first week! 🔥

We’re looking for a Storyteller to upgrade our content game and bring our work to a wider audience. 

We need a freelance videographer / self-shooting director and editor, who can move from strategy and ideas to capture and execution.

Think: short-form content, not long-form documentaries. Based in/around London, starting immediately, fixed-term, and running 2-3 days a week until October. 

Do you know someone? Please pass this on or connect us. 🙏

We’ve improved how voice (over websockets) works with Courier, explored real-time transcription and tool calling with Resident, and worked to bring radar online in our prototypes.

And after coming back from the Netherlands, I have decided that with their blend of modernism, pragmatism, and cycling, the Dutch might have figured out civilization.

Here’s what’s been influencing and inspiring me since the last note.

Agents are great, but they struggle without context. That is, all the information and knowledge that was not included in the prompt, but implicitly sits behind the task you want the agent to complete.

If all that context could be captured, you could create your own digital twin that could act for you in the real world. That is Sol.

We spent time in May with Jeremie Miller, the creator of Sol. He is building something incredible.

Sol is now in public beta - try it out here - and learn more below.

Whenever we hear about new products that embody AI, our ears prick up. Chris Messina sent this over from IDEO (thanks Chris!).

The duck lets you pilot Claude Code using voice alone. It’s part of a growing sub-category of agent remote controls.

You can’t really buy them today. But the team has open sourced the code, the design files, and the component list (it’s made with ESP-32).

So if you’re feeling adventurous, you can make your own. For everyone else, download the software-only version today.

Interesting movements amidst the AI hyperscalers.

Microsoft announced Project Solara, an operating system for running agents. It’s built for in-context hardware (like the really intriguing lanyard) and designed around a concept called “just-in-time UI” (see: generative interface). But will it make it out of the lab…?

NVIDIA announced the RTX Spark chip architecture, signalling their entry into the integrated consumer silicon market. The RTX Spark brings processing, graphics, and memory all onto a single chip. This is an Apple Silicon moment. It enables a major shift towards on-device AI for Windows, the world’s most widely used operating system. NVIDIA laptops are coming to a desk near you.

Meanwhile, is Apple really going to make a foldable iPhone? Gurman says yes, but supply chain problems persist. There’s a Polymarket for that. Place your bets.

I’ve been re-watching classic Spielberg films - Close Encounters and E.T.

Released nearly 50 years ago (!) they reminded me of why Spielberg is sooo good. He tells stories about family relationships, but sets them amongst a world turned upside-down by aliens, dinosaurs, killer sharks!

B-movies with a heart. Hollywood storytelling at its best. But how does he do it?

Here’s editor and acclaimed video essayist Tony Zhou from Every Frame a Painting, breaking down The Oner, and shining light on Spielberg’s legendary craft.

See you in two weeks guys!

Daniel