The tools I needed to exist.
A name imagined at school, revived in 2025 as a place to explore ideas without being confined to one product family. These tools began with problems I met while building other software.
A laboratory, not a single product line.
Every project I build produces the same pattern: a piece of friction that keeps showing up, unrelated to whatever product I'm actually shipping. Config that needs validating, an environment that needs syncing, a Git operation that needs to be made safe for an AI agent to run.
When that friction is specific to one codebase, I fix it and move on. When it clearly is not — when I can tell the next project will hit it again — it becomes a candidate for its own tool. Hard Machine Labs is where those candidates get built out, named, and shipped as open-source npm packages instead of staying buried as one-off scripts.
env-sync and zod-config emerged from developing an early commercial monorepo. I published them because the friction I encountered was unlikely to be mine alone. Shipset is the next tool I plan to make available independently.
Inspect the tools.
Published packages include installation links, source code and documentation. Work that is not published is explicitly labelled.
Stop copying .env values into CI settings by hand.
One configuration contract, inside and outside NestJS.
Turn an AI-readable web proposal into an inspectable implementation.
Git diff in, impacted services out: build only what changed, deploy it, verify it.
A published package is not proof of widespread adoption. Current versions and download figures should be read directly from npm.
Public packages, current downloads.
The counters below represent package activity on npm. Current versions and download figures can be verified directly on npm.
A missing capability you recognise?
Engineering opportunities, technical collaboration, or a challenging problem worth exploring.
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