The lab
A lab that ships its evidence.
theLabs is an applied-AI lab in Indonesia. Three shipped products, one discipline: every claim traces to something you can run, read, or measure.
The products were built to prove themselves. Kayon shows its fit arithmetic per quant, Cempala keeps an append-only audit log of every handoff, and Dalang’s benchmark harness was written before the gateway it measures. This site holds itself to the same rule: no invented customers, no imported numbers, no titles for a division of labor that does not exist.
- Based in
- Indonesia · thelabs.id
- Shipped
- Kayon · Cempala · Dalang
- In design
- Simpingan
- Open source
- Kayon (MIT) · Cempala
- Contact
- [email protected]
How the work ships
Not scale. Discipline, applied the same way every time.
Spec before code.
Each product has a requirements document that is the single source of truth; anything under-specified is resolved there first, not improvised in code.
Measurement before marketing.
Dalang’s eval harness was built before its gateway. Kayon’s fit engine re-measures its constants against the exact runtime build it ships. A claim gets made after the instrument exists.
External review, on the record.
Phases ship through independent Codex review, iteration counts and all. The review trail is part of the product, not a private comfort.
State the limitation next to the capability.
Not code-signed yet. Not a sandbox. Not SWE-bench. Invitation-only. If an admission would surprise you later, it belongs on the page now.
Why the products have these names
The names come from Javanese wayang kulit, the shadow theater in which one performer runs an entire world. For this lab, that is not decoration; it is a job description.
- dalang
- the puppeteer — The one performer who voices every character and runs the whole play. Dalang coordinates a pool of models and answers as one voice.
- kayon
- the tree-of-life figure — The leaf-shaped figure that opens the performance and frames the stage. Kayon is where local work begins: the workstation that decides what can actually run.
- cempala
- the cue mallet — The small mallet the dalang knocks to cue a change of scene. Cempala is the knock that hands the work from one agent to the other.
- simpingan
- the puppets waiting at the rail — Before the play begins, every puppet stands planted along the stage rail, ordered and waiting, one at a time drawn into the dalang's hand. Simpingan is that rail: everything an agent has proposed, waiting in order, until you take one up yourself.
The model strings semar and kresna are fixed vocabulary from the same tradition and are never renamed — kresna itself is retired (requests return 400); semar is the only tier Dalang serves. The heritage is carried as story and structure, never as ornament.
Talk to the lab, not a funnel.
Questions about the products, Dalang access, or the lab itself: every message reaches someone who can actually answer it.