An agent workspace where nothing leaves unseen.
You give an agent work. It proposes a change. You see exactly what would happen before anything leaves the machine, and almost everything can be walked back. Simpingan is what a capable agent looks like when the credentials stay with the human, not with it.
in design · closed application · no account, ever
Nothing on this page can be installed or run. Simpingan has not shipped: this describes the design theLabs is building against, drawn from the same requirements document as the build itself, not from a pitch.
The problem
A capable agent holding credentials is a liability, not an assistant.
The failure is rarely that it cannot do the work. It is that you cannot see what it is about to do, cannot tell what it already did, and cannot undo it.
Three surfaces carry the product.
Everything else is built to serve these three.
- Register
- Everything waiting on you, ordered by consequence rather than arrival time.
- Inspect
- A rendered preview of exactly what will change, in a form suited to the thing changing — a redline for prose, changed cells for a spreadsheet, the real recipient list for a message. Never a generic text diff standing in for all of them.
- History
- An append-only, attributed record of what was attempted and what was approved. No version and no entry is ever edited or deleted.
The gate
Consequence decides the friction, not the agent's mood.
Every action an agent can attempt is declared and tiered in advance. The tier, not the runtime, decides what happens next.
- Tier 1 · private and reversibleNo gate. Applies immediately, stays reviewable, nothing outside the machine sees it.
- Tier 2 · changes something you keepGate required. Diff required. Similar items can be approved together, but each still gets its own version and its own history entry.
- Tier 3 · outward or irreversibleGate required, one item at a time. Full preview of the exact effect, and no "approve all" control exists at any volume.
A gate clicked through on reflex is worse than no gate. Tier 3 approval is disabled for a short minimum dwell after the diff renders — an anti-reflex floor, not a reading timer — and Simpingan measures its own review behaviour rather than assuming the gate is working.
What the design won't compromise on
Six of the nine design commitments binding on the implementation, before a line of the build is called done.
- Provider and model agnostic: the gate behaves the same whether an agent runs on an API key, a local model, or an installed CLI.
- The gate is the only path to an effect Simpingan performs. Credentials live with the broker, never with the agent.
- Enforcement is reported honestly: brokered where Simpingan holds the only credential, advisory where the agent's own runtime could reach the same system anyway.
- Append-only. Configuration can change, but every change to it is itself an appended record — the account of what happened is never rewritten.
- Local by default: no account, no sign-up, no server call required to run it.
- The claims will be checkable without the source. The application will be closed; the history format, the export format, and a standalone verifier are committed to publication, and will run without Simpingan installed — not built yet, alongside everything else on this page.
Questions a skeptic would ask
- Is this available now?
- No. Simpingan is in design; nothing on this page can be installed or run. It describes what theLabs is building against, taken from the same requirements document as the build itself.
- Is Simpingan open source?
- No — Kayon and Cempala are; Simpingan is planned as a closed application. What is open are the formats: the history record spec, the workspace export spec, and a standalone verifier anyone will be able to run without Simpingan installed.
- Does it use my own API key?
- That's the plan. Simpingan is designed to never resell inference: you bring a key, authenticate a CLI, or point it at a model you run yourself. Inference is always yours, never routed through a theLabs server.
- What happens if an agent tries to act outside the project folder?
- It depends on the route. Through Simpingan's own broker, the design calls for the attempt to be refused and recorded. Through a CLI's own tools running under your OS account, Simpingan cannot see or stop it — and the plan is to say so plainly rather than claim a sandbox it doesn't have.
- Is it built for teams?
- No. This edition is designed for one person, one set of eyes. A Teams edition is a separate, later document.
Follow the build, not a countdown.
There's no signup that pretends this exists yet. Leave an email and you'll hear about it when there's something real to look at — the first working milestone, not a marketing date.
Prefer to read as it's written? See the Updates page