The studio is named after something older than software.
The yogic tradition describes a full human life in fours. There are four paths of practice, the four yogas, and four aims of life, the puruṣārthas. Laid next to the four things this studio cares about, they line up more closely than you might expect.
| Path | Practice | Aim |
|---|---|---|
| Family | Bhakti: devotion, love | Dharma: duty, right relationship |
| Technology | Karma: skilled action | Artha: livelihood, means |
| Philosophy | Jñāna: knowledge, inquiry | Mokṣa: liberation |
| Creativity | Rāja: absorption of the mind | Kāma: joy, beauty, the arts |
Three ways of reading one path
Each column answers a different question.
- The path is where the work lives: home, money, practice, play.
- The practice is how it’s done. Family is a practice of devotion as much as duty. Building tools is karma yoga; the Gita calls yoga “skill in action.”
- The aim is what it serves. Dharma is right relationship, artha the means to live, kāma the joy and beauty that make it worth living, and mokṣa the freedom underneath all of it.
Some of these pairings are old. Knowledge has always been the classical road to liberation, and the householder’s dharma has always started at home. Others are looser. Creative absorption and the meditative absorption of rāja yoga aren’t the same thing, but anyone who has lost track of time making something knows they’re related.
The householder’s life
In the tradition, all four aims are pursued together in one stage of life: the householder’s, the gṛhastha. Raising a family, earning a living, making things, and keeping a practice, all at once.
That is the life these apps come from and the life they’re for. Chore Credits sits on the family path, ClearLedger on technology, Pillars and Life Atlas on philosophy, and Forge 5x5 on creativity.
What it means for how we build
If building software is a practice, then how it treats people is part of the work, not decoration on top of it. That’s why every app here holds to the same standard: agency over compulsion, stewardship over extraction, truth over persuasion, and calm over stimulation. In practice that means no streak guilt, as little data as possible, plain-language policies, and interfaces that get out of the way.
You can read more about the studio on the About page.