Principles — Joel Häberli

01 H

Human First

Technology exists to serve people — not the other way around. Every system we build starts with a simple question: does this make someone's life meaningfully better, or does it just add complexity for its own sake?

Human first means the person using the software matters more than the elegance of the architecture. A brilliant data model that confuses every user is a failure. A simple interface that people actually understand is a success.

This principle sits above all others. Sovereignty, privacy, open standards — they are all in service of this one idea: the humans at the end of the wire deserve software that respects them.

02 P

Privacy

Privacy is not a compliance checkbox. It's a design constraint that should shape architecture from day one — not get bolted on as an afterthought before a launch.

Data minimisation, local-first thinking, end-to-end encryption where it matters — these aren't premium features. They're defaults we argue for in every system we touch.

Your users trusted you with their data. That trust is worth protecting, even when no regulator is watching.

03 S

Sovereignty

You should own your software, your data, and your infrastructure. Not rent access to it from a platform that can change terms, raise prices, or disappear overnight. This doesn't mean you have to do everything on your own, but partners you rely on should act as partners and not turn against you, when somebody else pays them more to do so.

Sovereignty means control. Control over where your data lives, who can access it, and what happens to it. We build systems that you can run, audit, and migrate — without asking permission.

Whether that means self-hosted services, on-premise deployments, or carefully selected cloud primitives that don't create invisible dependencies — sovereignty is always on the table. Vendor lock-in is a slow tax on your future. It starts small — a proprietary data format here, a platform-specific API there — and compounds until switching costs make bad decisions feel permanent.

We design for exit. Not because we expect things to go wrong, but because the ability to leave a vendor is what keeps that vendor honest. Portable data. Standard interfaces. Infrastructure that doesn't require a specific cloud account to function. Your architecture should give you options — not close them off.

04 G

Software Generation

We are at a turning point in how software is written. LLM-assisted development, code generation, and LLM tooling are not hype — they are a real and accelerating shift in what a small team can build.

We embrace this shift deliberately. Not to replace craftsmanship, but to amplify it. The best engineers of the next decade will be those who know how to direct, evaluate, and refine generated code — not those who fear it.

For clients this means faster iteration cycles, lower costs, and software that can evolve without a 6-week backlog for every small change. We love doing and thinking about what matters, leaving the nasty stuff to the machines.