One person who can't quite choose between the workshop and the terminal.
Kerf and Code is Terry Mickail, a measurement scientist in Seattle who also likes to make things. Five products, four free calculators, one bench.
Why the name
A kerf is the slit a saw leaves behind: the material a cut removes. It's what you have to plan around if you want two pieces to meet cleanly. Code is the other way I make things. Put them together and you get the whole idea: build carefully, account for what your cut takes away, and join the pieces so the seam holds. Measure twice. Cut once. Ship something you'd be happy to be handed.
Most software is built to capture you. I'd rather build things that respect you and still earn their keep.
Measurement, then craft
I came to software sideways, through measurement. My background is in cognitive science and applied statistics: years spent turning noisy, human data into answers you could actually trust, and learning exactly how easy it is to fool yourself with a small sample and a hopeful chart. That's the part I care about most, and it's the thread running through everything here.
It's why Six Axes measures your game night, so it can tell you your "Moderate" fights are landing like Hard ones. It's why Litmus shows you the spectrum of your reading without ever scolding or guessing at a person. And it's why the free tools exist at all: they're the statistics rules I use myself, made small enough to hand to anyone testing an ad, a survey, an idea, or a product drop.
What's on the bench
Four products and four calculators are out in the world. One more is still being cut.
- QuestSolo Live
- A solo tabletop RPG with an AI game master. 20 free turns every day.
- Litmus Live on Google Play
- A reading tracker that shows whose voices you read. 35,842 books tracked so far.
- Shyll Live, invite only
- An AI marketing engine you can correct at every stage.
- Six Axes In pilot
- Session notes and stats for tabletop groups. 127 hours of real sessions recorded in the pilot.
- The free calculators
- Verdict, Kiln, Ledger, and Instrument started life as the internal instruments behind these products. They were too useful to keep in a drawer, so they're out here, free and client-side.
SpoolStack In development is the next one taking shape: a run log for people who make physical things. One event log, four views: log every 3D print, CNC cut, or laser job; get honest job costing with a real failure rate baked in, and calibration advice that sharpens as your history grows. It's the most literal expression of the studio's name: measurement in service of making.
How the studio works
- Show the uncertainty. Every free calculator reports a range and says so when a sample is too small to call.
- Your data is yours. Litmus works before you make an account, the calculators never send your numbers anywhere, and a Six Axes table can take everything it recorded back out. Nothing is sold, and nothing is used to train models.
- Small enough to answer your email. Feedback, a pilot seat for your table, or notes on measurement and making: I read everything myself.
Say hello.
Questions, bugs, a seat in a pilot, or a product you want built: write to Terry directly.