These four months came before any Stacktube code. They were the months where the studio identity and the business model took shape.
- Studio identity — a faceless studio, things over personality, archive in chronological order.
- Five decision filters — five questions that any new opportunity, pitch, or inbound has to pass.
- Anti-list, 17 lines — no billable hours, no paid ads, no course business, no AI in the body of Letters.
- Business model, v1 → v2 → v3 — Letters promoted to distribution engine (v2), then SaaS-first with hybrid architecture (v3). A 4-way cap on Advisory; Labs (Stacktube) as the main work.
- Letters voice rule — no AI on the first draft, ever. AI assisted only on the first pass of translation.
The first code commit landed on 9 April 2026. Everything before was about deciding what to build.