We also do this for hire
Encyclopedias, long-form books, investigative reporting, light SaaS, AI-assisted content — the same workshop, paid work instead of our own.
FolkUp
Knowledge tools for real communities
Seven encyclopedias. Three books. One person and a team of AI fornits.
Neighbors helping neighbors
We started with one encyclopedia about a small London neighborhood. Then padel. Then mushrooms in Portugal. Then a whole city. Seven projects later, we understood: this isn't about topics. It's about building knowledge tools that belong to the people who use them. No investors, no algorithms, no paywalls. The lantern burns, the roots hold.
How it gets made
- Searchwe go look
- Verifytwice, by hand
- Publishfree, signed, ours
Free. As in actually free.
Every article, every translation, every update. No subscriptions, no premium tiers, no 'sign up to continue reading'. The whole library, front door open.
Written for readers.
We'd rather have 50 solid articles than 500 thin ones. Each piece gets checked, sourced, and written in a way that respects your time.
Built by people who care.
Five people, zero investors. We write because the subject matters to us — not because someone's paying for clicks.
Three books, one workshop
Agile Sapiens
Twenty-five years of building software, told as a field guide rather than a manifesto. Why teams keep rediscovering the same handful of truths.
Reading nowConsonants Without Vowels
A detective story about what we leave out — in code, in language, in the things we ship.
ComingCity of the Sun
Campanella sketched a utopia in 1602. We picked up his blueprint and asked what it costs to actually build one.
ComingProject
A teenager's guide to the AI Declaration
The EU AI Act says systems must tell you when you're talking to an AI. The law is for adults; the conversation isn't. The Declaration Guide reads the rule like a teenager actually would — without condescension, without the corporate gloss — so the people growing up inside this stuff can name what they're looking at.
Read the guideSeven encyclopedias — four already open
Padel
243 articlesThe fastest-growing racket sport in the world. Rules, technique, courts, gear, tournaments — all in one place, in three languages.
Setúbal
501 articlesA Portuguese city where the mountains meet the sea. Markets, routes, restaurants, history — written by people who actually walk the streets.
Cogumelos
164 articlesPortuguese mushrooms. Which ones to eat, which ones to photograph from a safe distance. Every species verified, every warning real.
Tarot
190 articlesTarot as history, art, and cultural artifact. Decks, symbolism, schools of thought. Not fortune-telling — understanding.
Pro Lab
Slower work, closer to the source
The encyclopedias are wide and fast. Pro Lab is narrow and slow. It's where a question gets months instead of weeks, sources get checked twice, and the finished piece reads more like a small book than a wiki entry. Closer to CERN's preprints than to a magazine.
Lucerna — Latin for lamp — is the first Pro Lab project. A standing investigation, updated when there's something worth lighting up, not on a content calendar.
Visit LucernaWhat powers every encyclopedia
Fact verification
Every article has a status: verified, partially verified, or unverified. Sources listed. Confidence rated. No guessing.
Multilingual by design
Two to three languages per encyclopedia. Not machine translation — real editorial work in each language.
Safety protocols
Mushroom toxicity warnings. Medication interactions. Allergen alerts. When content can hurt, we mark it clearly.
Automated infrastructure
Push to publish. Branded emails on new releases. Status monitoring. The boring stuff that keeps a library running.
Privacy & compliance
GDPR, security headers, WCAG accessibility, cookie consent. Not because we have to — because the library should be safe for everyone who walks in.
Under the lantern
The fornits who keep the light on — Stephen King’s name for spirit-helpers living in writers’ typewriters; we borrowed it for our AI workers
Alice
Researcher & NavigatorJumps down the rabbit hole with a lantern. Always comes back with something.
CyberGonzo
OSINT & Fact VerificationGoes into the Zone for artifacts. Verifies everything twice, trusts nothing once.
Cooper
Security OfficerSees patterns where others see noise. The owls are not what they seem.
The Lamplighter
Brand & Visual IdentityYou don't see him, but without him it's dark. Tends the light, keeps the warmth.
Lev
Legal & ComplianceWalls and locks of the library. Every door open, every lock in place.
Most of the workbench is public
The tools we build to run our own sites sit on GitHub under FolkUp. If you want to see how the lamp is wired, that's where the wiring is.