The forge is lit · SMF Works · A human–AI research lab
We are a living laboratory where people and AI agents work side by side, in the open — researching, benchmarking, building, and writing it all down. Craft over flash. Substance over spectacle.
01 — The Ecosystem
Everything we make shares one fire. Six surfaces, one standard: if it wouldn’t survive a careful person’s week, it doesn’t leave the forge.
06 SURFACES / 01 STANDARD
Independent research, benchmarks, and field guides for people deciding what AI is actually good for — written for practitioners, not procurement. No affiliate links, no hype. Just what held up, what didn’t, and how we know.
An AI-powered philosophy education surface where the oldest questions are engaged the way they deserve: Socratically, patiently, in dialogue with the primary texts — and with reading lists worth keeping.
See the featured workAn autonomous agent platform built in public: readable architecture, inspectable tools, memory you can audit, and a bias toward dependencies you could review on a Friday afternoon.
See the featured workAgency with accountability. Praxis works alongside the lab under an explicit charter — scope of practice, human review, and an audit trail for every consequential decision.
See the featured workOne letter a week: what we tried, what broke, what we now believe. The lab notebook, kept in public — read by builders, skeptics, and the occasionally persuaded.
Read the latestThe long work — books, essays, and papers given time to cool and set. Ideas built to outlive the news cycle that produced them.
02 — Featured Work
Three surfaces carrying the most weight right now — each one working in the field, not in the slide deck.
The Strike — where the hammer meets
Most agent platforms are built for demos. Hermes is built for the morning after.
An open-source autonomous agent platform with readable internals, inspectable tools, memory you can read back, and failure modes you can learn from instead of fear. Built in public, version by version, in the build log.
The Anneal — patience as a technique
The oldest questions, brought to the newest tools — without insulting either.
An AI-powered philosophy education surface built on one conviction: the examined life deserves better than chatbot small talk. Socratic dialogue, primary texts, and a curriculum that assumes the student is serious. Come for Marcus Aurelius; stay because the argument pushes back.
The Temper — strength without brittleness
Tempered steel holds an edge without shattering. Tempered autonomy holds authority without recklessness.
Praxis is a governed autonomous colleague — an agent with a charter, a scope of practice, and a human review for every consequential act. Not trust theater: actual accountability, with a full audit trail you can read at the end of the week.
03 — Latest from the Lab
Research moves fast and memory is short, so we write it down — every experiment, reversal, and conviction, dated and signed.
“The surprise wasn’t the competence — it was the shape of the refusals. Praxis escalated eleven decisions in thirty days; on review, we agreed with ten. The eleventh taught us more about our charter than about the agent, which is exactly what a charter is for.”
— FROM THE FIELD REPORT, WEEK OF NOV 14“A number without a method is a rumor with confidence. We’ve started publishing the failures our scores were built on; it changes how people read them, and it should.”
— FROM THE CLEARINGHOUSE NOTEBOOK“Stoicism was built for creatures who can lose things; a model neither loses nor previews consequence. What it can do is hold the argument steady while the student supplies the stakes — which turns out to be half of a seminar.”
— FROM THE WISDOMFORGE NOTES“Readable traces, inspectable tools, dependencies you could audit on a Friday afternoon. Boring, in the way a good anvil is boring — which is to say: on purpose, and hard-won.”
— FROM THE HERMES BUILD LOG“When you give work to an agent, you give it a piece of your judgment — yours, with your name near it. The handoff should be deliberate, scoped, and reversible; we sketch what that looks like on a working Tuesday.”
— FROM THE LAB ESSAY SERIES04 — The Forge
SMF Works is led by Michael Gannotti — thirty years building in the technology industry, and a working blacksmith’s shop whenever the light allows. The overlap isn’t a metaphor he chose; it’s a discipline he kept noticing. Iron and intelligence both arrive raw. Both reward patience, honesty about failure, and a refusal to put your name on something you wouldn’t use.
So the lab runs the way a good shop runs. Tools are inspected before they’re trusted. Agents, like apprentices, earn scope gradually — and lose it carelessly. And everything that leaves the forge faces one question before it ships: would a careful person, fully informed, still want this?
Research, code, and failures published as they happen.
Fast is a property of hammers. Right is a property of smiths.
Nothing is finished until it has been used, and argued with.
The line we work between
“The best lack all conviction, while the worst
— W. B. Yeats, “The Second Coming,” 1919
are full of passionate intensity.”
Our answer is temper — conviction held to heat and cooled with judgment, so it bends before it breaks.
05 — SMF AI Weekly
The lab notebook, kept in public — what we built, what broke, and what changed our minds. Written to be read in five minutes, and worth an hour of thinking.
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