Calamio

Ideas take shape before they are built.

One sentence in; a build-ready brief out. In between, Calamio makes leads diverge, confronts them with an AI that argues against, and records every decision.

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The Calamio Laboratory: a board of 38 linked idea cards, all grown from a single starting idea
The Laboratory: 38 leads grown from one sentence, linked by lineage.
1 sentenceis enough to open a workshop
12creative verbs: invert, analogy, worst idea, exaggerate…
600+encyclopedia entries as raw material
100%of leads and decisions traced and replayable

The problem

Between the spark, "what if we…?", and a usable brief lies a no man's land: people circle around their first ideas, never really test them, and keep no trace of how they got there. A chat assistant reassures; it does not make you diverge.

Calamio sits upstream of the build. It builds nothing. It turns a hunch into a board of leads, puts each lead to the test, forces a decision with a written reason, and hands over a brief that build tools can take as is.

The workshop, in pictures

The action menu on a selected card: explore otherwise, invert, analogy, worst idea, exaggerate, push, imagine, fabricate
Creative verbs: each action spawns derived cards, linked to their origin.
A card reviewed by the council: solid, desirable, actionable, with opinions pending
The council: an AI that argues against a lead before you commit.
The same action menu on a phone, in French
On a phone too, in English or French.
  • The Laboratory

    From one sentence to a board of idea cards, in grid, radial, mind-map or tree view; grouping, How-Now-Wow sorting, success conditions, pre-mortem.

  • Decide

    A duel between competing leads; the reason is mandatory and stays in the history.

  • Make it concrete

    Turn a board into a structured deliverable: segment, falsifiable hypothesis, risks, backlog, exportable to a build tool.

  • Built-in encyclopedia

    A Markdown vault of 600+ entries, injectable into any lead.

  • Choice of engine

    Several language models, local or hosted, Claude among them, with their real health shown.

  • History and replay

    Every lead, decision and derivation is an event in a hash-chained journal; a session replays end to end.

Principles

Anti-fakery. Anything produced by the AI is labelled as such, never shown as a real measurement. On failure, an honest error, not a fake answer.

Divergence by design. Creative verbs force exploration where a chat reassures.

Safety. A profile suited to a young audience, secrets sealed on the machine, nothing exposed by default.

Roadmap

  1. Since May 2026: the workshop

    Laboratory, council, duel, concretisation, encyclopedia, replay. Working prototype, local use, one person.

  2. Next: Claude through the API

    Structured outputs for cards and briefs, tool calls into the encyclopedia, streaming; today Claude is wired through the command line.

  3. Then: a hosted version

    The same workshop, no install, for the first pilot users.

  4. Further: the bridge to the build

    The output brief feeds an execution tool directly; the idea becomes an executed plan.

Why this workshop

Today's AI tools answer fast and well, and that is their trap: they confirm the first idea. Calamio was born from a builder's frustration: needing a place where an idea gets pushed, contradicted and decided before any code is written.

The founder

Have an idea to put to the test?

We are opening the workshop to a few pilots before the hosted version.

Write to contact@calamio.com