Building in public
Why we share our progress, mistakes included.
A robot that lives in your home should come from a company you can see into. So we write down what we build, what works and what doesn't.
Trust can't be bolted on
A companion robot hears you talk, learns your routines and remembers what matters to you. That is a lot to ask of any product. A privacy policy can promise almost anything. What it can't do is show you how a company actually makes decisions when nobody is watching.
Building in public is our answer to that. Instead of asking you to trust a polished launch video, we would rather you watch Nohmu take shape: the prototypes, the trade-offs, the things we got wrong and what we did about them.
What you'll read here
You'll read about progress: what works on the prototype today, and what doesn't yet. About decisions: why we chose one path over another, including the ones that cost us something. And about open questions, the things we haven't figured out yet and where your opinion genuinely helps.
We will write about mistakes too. Not as a ritual, but because a company that only reports successes is telling you a story, not the truth.
A mistake we already made
Nohmu's first brain ran on a Raspberry Pi 5. It is a wonderful board, and we had already bought the parts. But once we tested real conversations, the answer was clear: the AI models it could run were too small to make Nohmu feel like it actually understood you. Talking to it felt like talking to a menu.
So we switched to a more capable compute platform, sent back what we could and kept the parts that still fit. It cost us time and money. It also taught us something we will keep coming back to: in a companion, the quality of the conversation is not a feature. It is the product.
What we hold back, for now
Building in public doesn't mean publishing everything on day one. Some parts of Nohmu, especially how its pieces connect, we will describe in detail once they are properly protected. When we hold something back, we will say so instead of pretending it doesn't exist.
And one thing we will never share: anything about the people who test Nohmu with us, unless they want us to.
Come along
Reegy is small and early, which is exactly why this is the best time to follow along. Join the waitlist to get new posts and updates, and to be among the first households to try Nohmu. If something here makes you think "you're doing this wrong", tell us. That is the whole point.