AI Developer

about the role

Numa is our first attempt at an answer to the lab's odd question: how does software cross from something you use to something that seems, somehow, awake — and how do we make that good? You would build it: an agent that lives on the desktop, holds context, notices change, and acts on its own when it is sure.

The hard part is not the automation. It is the feel — the judgement of when to act and when to wait, the sense of presence without a face. This is an interaction-design problem as much as an engineering one, and we want someone who feels both.

responsibilities

• Design and build agent capabilities that act across the desktop, not inside a single app.
• Work on the model-facing layer: tool use, context, memory, and the judgement of when to act.
• Build for legibility — the user should be able to read back what Numa did, in plain language.
• Hold the line on presence and restraint: lower idle resource use, quieter notifications, a calmer model.
• Write up what you tried as catalogue entries — capabilities, updates, playbooks.

you may be a good fit if you

• Have shipped real software that runs on people's machines, not only in the cloud.
• Have worked with LLMs / agents — tool use, function calling, context engineering — in production.
• Care about interaction design and the feel of a thing, not only its correctness.
• Can hold an ambiguous research question and turn it into something that runs.

some strong candidates may also

• Have built desktop or systems software (macOS, Windows, or Linux).
• Have a point of view on what 'presence' should mean in software.
• Have contributed to agent frameworks or developer tooling.

how the lab works

We are small and designer-led. There is no funnel of approvals — the person doing the work owns the decision, and writes down what they learned. We measure ourselves by the odd questions we manage to answer well, not by headcount or velocity.

Work is done in the open inside the studio: every attempt becomes an entry in the index, signed and dated. You will be expected to write — clearly, in plain language — about what you tried and why.

logistics

The studio is the anchor. Remote roles are genuinely remote; hybrid roles expect a few days a quarter in the studio for the work that only happens in a room together. We sponsor visas where we can and will say so plainly if we can't for a given role.

Compensation is a band, not a negotiation theatre — we tell you the band up front and place you in it honestly.

how to apply

Write to [email protected] with the role code in the subject line. Send a CV or portfolio — whatever best shows the work you are proud of — and a few sentences on why animiste, specifically. We read every one. No cover-letter theatre; tell us something true.