Proof / Build log
Everything below actually happened, in the order shown, in the time stated. We publish it because 'up to 10× more velocity' should be checkable, not just quotable.
A handbook now lives in the repository (CLAUDE.md) so that any agent — or human — can pick up where the last one stopped: the deploy process and its known quirks, the Schematic System rules, the canvas guardrails earned through real bugs, the content matrix, and the first commandment: every meaningful change gets an honest entry right here. An agent documenting how to replace itself — the post-agency, applied to its own agents.
The homepage hero now animates the argument behind the words: a hundred profession-shapes — strategy in green, tech in blue, creative in orange — drift in a web of coordination, then fuse into five white radiant beings, the way mixed light makes white. Chosen from three live proposals, art-directed by the founder ("filled shapes, real colors"), and shipped with every guardrail the digital brain taught us.
The coordination simulator (drag a slider, watch n(n−1)/2 eat a team alive), the Gantt race (84 days of process versus 10 days of loop, one second per ten days), a deliverables configurator running on the same data as the deliverables pages — compose your scope, email it as-is — and a playground for our eight generative materials, seed and density included, PNG to take home. All client-side, all in the house style.
Two corrections worth logging. Our language stat undersold the product: not six languages but four control modes, ~70 languages understood through Whisper and 32 spoken through ElevenLabs. And "five releases in five days" was too modest a window — the full history reads forty releases in the first hundred days, v1.1 to v3.0.0. When the correction makes the claim bigger, you know the product is real.
The signal orbiting the "senior judgement" box on the homepage was too good to use once. New system rule: in any old-versus-new comparison, the signal orbits the Ex Machina side — the timeline cards on all nine deliverables pages, the New Model card on the manifesto, the "your week with us" card on the process page, and the central box of every exploded view. One CSS property (offset-path: border-box), applied with intent.
The Zoetrope case gained three real photographs — gesture control on an easel, a Klimt-mood family portrait at home, ink line on the Spectra 6 — framed with viewfinder corners and FIG. captions. And the Telephony story became a Field Note: an agent with a Belgian mobile number, three permission tiers decided by caller ID, a PIN gate, and a ban list for those who guess wrong.
The Proof section gained its first full cases: Zoetrope (AI art frames — hardware to app, with five runtime releases shipped in five days) and Daemon (the founder's personal agent: wearable reality streaming, a voice satellite, a telephony skill friends can call, eleven art frames conducted — on an €80 computer). Researched by agents from the actual release notes and product site, then written in one session.
A typographic rule born on the pricing page, generalized to the whole site: in every two-line heading, the line that carries the argument turns orange; the setup stays white. Seventy headings reviewed one by one — because deciding which line matters is editorial judgement, not find-and-replace.
Three new deliverables close the gaps: a turnkey agent system (Hermes / OpenClaw / n8n, integrations, MCP tools, dashboards, control apps — up to multi-agent pipelines and swarms), a complete brand system, and a content engine. Every service now owns at least one deliverable, no deliverable belongs to two services, and Video & social rightfully owns two. The exploded views generated themselves from the new data.
Clickable blocks now show a crosshair-target cursor, tick when they lock on hover, and fire a shutter clack on click — with navigation delayed 230ms so the sound rings through the page change. Both sounds are synthesized in WebAudio at runtime: no audio files, a few hundred bytes of code, silent for reduced-motion users.
GoatCounter is now counting: 3.5 KB, no cookies, aggregate-only — so the site keeps its no-banner welcome and the legal page keeps telling the truth. Google Analytics was considered and declined: 100 KB of JavaScript and a consent popup is a strange look for a site that sells performance and honesty.
Each service page now ships its own Open Graph image: the service's generative material, its headline and the logo, composed by a template and rendered by a headless browser. Eight distinct 1200×630 cards in one command. When a ninth service exists, its card will cost one loop iteration.
Each of the six deliverables pages now opens with a patent-plate exploded view — the deliverable at the center, every phase called out with numbered leader lines, generated from the same data as the checklists so it can never drift out of sync. And each service hero gained its own generative material, drawn in canvas at load: code columns, brackets, circuit traces, isometric units, radar arcs, prisms, waveforms, film strip. Eight materials, ~150 lines of code, zero image files.
Four animated technical diagrams, hand-built in SVG + CSS: the agency layers being struck through on the homepage, the structure collapsing on the manifesto, the loop circulating on the process page, and a traditional quote decomposing on the pricing page. Each one animates when it scrolls into view, freezes politely for reduced-motion users, and weighs a few kilobytes. No charting library was harmed.
The site now illustrates itself like the technical documentation of a machine: viewfinder corner marks that lock onto cards in orange, patent-style FIG. numbering on every section, orange signals traveling along separators, and eight hand-drawn wireframe icons — each with exactly one pulsing node, the point where intelligence flows. Proposed as an interactive demo, debated, approved, shipped.
The workplace philosophy became a page: judged on artifacts only, full autonomy on the path, project-based pay where efficiency benefits the person who has it, agents and top-tier tools for everyone. Written, built and deployed in one short session — which is also roughly the promise the page makes.
The original Ex Machina logo (an Illustrator file, black on white) converted, recolored and deployed across header, footer, favicons and social cards — by agents, no designer in the loop. The About page gained the real timeline: Ex Machina was founded in 1991; this is a rebirth, not a startup. And the homepage gained an animated digital brain, drawn and pulsed by ~200 lines of hand-rolled canvas code.
Services expanded from 5 thin pages to 8 full practices. A public deliverables library — 6 scenarios, every artifact itemized. Proof, process, stack, pricing, FAQ, field notes. All content drafted by agents under senior editorial direction, reviewed line by line.
The site moved from hand-maintained HTML files to Astro: one design system, reusable components, Markdown content, automatic sitemap, deploys via GitHub Actions. The accent color shifted from lime to orange across every token, gradient and SVG.
Analysis of the old site, an honest critique ("it's a manifesto, not a site — and it never proves its claims"), a debate about strategy, and a plan: be the proof. This build log exists because the redesign argued for it.
Local folder reconnected to the GitHub repo, diverged files reconciled and backed up, stale branches cleaned. Boring work, done in minutes, documented — because that is the point.
The first version of exmachina.net: a single-page manifesto and five service stubs, built with AI assistance and deployed on GitHub Pages. It said "this is already happening". It was right — it just didn't show it yet.
The source of this site is a normal git repository. Every commit, every change, every iteration is in the history. We work the way we say we work.
Next step
We'll tell you if we should work together.
A short conversation. No theatre. No deck. No delay.