LIVESave the World, live from Salt Lake City during KubeCon · Wed Nov 11, 11:00 MT →
darkshift
// the mission

Save the world.

Software runs the world, and the people who build and run it are buried in complexity: more tools, more layers, more code than anyone can review. Darkshift exists to dig them out: software simple enough for anyone to build, light enough to run without burning money or the planet, safe enough to trust, and aimed back at the humans it's meant to serve. We're doing it with everyone who's fighting the same fight.

Darkshift's goat standing on top of the world, a globe drawn as a network of connected points

It starts with a show of the same name. Save the World goes live from Salt Lake City during KubeCon on .

join the coalition: book a call →vote on what we buildwatch it start, live
// the north star

Who's in for humans?

AI can keep its promise to humans only if the companies building with it choose to share what it wins. We want to make that choice visible.

Our north star is a coalition of companies that use AI to support humanity in creative, tangible ways. A company that buys into the Save the World framework shows, in the open, how it binds its success to a system that fuels humans. With that transparency, everyone who makes decisions in this industry has one place to look and see who's in for the humans, and who's in for themselves.

the frameworkCommitments you can checkWhat a company gives back, and to whom, written down and shown in public. The framework itself will be written in the open, with the companies and people who join.
the coalitionA place to lookOne public list of the companies that have signed on and what they've done, so customers, builders and investors can see who's in for humans.
open governanceBigger than any one companyRun the way the best open source is run. Projects like Argo CD stay independent, robust and diverse because no single company owns them, and many contributors share the work. A movement needs the same.

We'll go first. Darkshift is a for-profit C corporation, on purpose: to prove the framework works for a company that means to grow, and we aim to be one of the largest companies in the world. That's a long way off. We're not here to be the solution. We're here to give it a voice, and to raise our hand first. What we've done already: we built Agent Substrate into our architecture, so a few machines can serve many agents by putting idle ones to sleep. Its project reports 10x the density of standard containers, and we'll publish our own number once our agents run on it. Every Save the World app is built to send what it earns to people who need it, from cleats for kids to clean water.

// what we're fighting

Complexity is the enemy.

too many moving partsShip one thing, run fiftyA team that just wants to ship stitches together clusters, pipelines, secrets, policies and dashboards before it writes a line of its own code.
too few handsThe few carry the manyPlatform teams carry everyone else's weight, and the people who keep production up are the ones who burn out.
agents raise the stakesMore code than anyone can readAgents now write code faster than humans can review it. Someone still decides what reaches production, and they deserve to see why.
// where it leads

Less waste. More for humans.

Taking the complexity out is the start. What it frees up is the point.

agent substrateMany agents, few machinesAgents wait far more than they work. On Agent Substrate, an idle agent sleeps as a snapshot of a few megabytes and wakes in under half a second, so a handful of warm machines serves a crowd of agents. The project reports 10x the density of standard containers. We've built it into our architecture, and we'll publish our own number once our agents run on it.
savingsMoney back, power backMachines left running for agents that are waiting are pure waste. Fewer of them is money back for your company and less power drawn from the planet, at the same speed.
apps for humansSoftware that reaches humansWhen building and running software gets this simple and this light, it stops being something only big companies can afford. We'll use the factory to build apps for people, apps that change real lives, and help anyone with an idea do the same.
// what comes next

Apps for humans, built live.

This is where it gets real. After episode 1, the show becomes a studio: we bring on founders who share our vision for humanity, and we build and run their apps live, on air, with the whole coalition watching and pitching in.

  1. 01A founder and an ideaSomeone with an app that should exist, for people who need it, and no platform team to build it.a founder
  2. 02Built on airAgents plan, build, test and ship it on Infrared while you watch, and the founder decides what goes out.agents
  3. 03Run liveWe run it in the open, on Agent Substrate: what it costs, how little sits idle, and what breaks.
  4. 04In people's handsReal humans use it, and we come back on the show to see what it changed for them.humans
  5. 05The next founderEverything we learn goes into the factory, and the next app starts further ahead.

One founder with one app is a test. A season of them is proof that software for humans doesn't need a big company behind it, only a good idea and a factory that carries the weight. Every one of these apps is a test, run honestly: the ones that work, the ones that don't, and what we learned either way.

  • Are you a founder? If you're building something that helps people and you want to build it in the open with us, book a call with the founders and tell us what it is and who it's for.
  • Not building yet? Add the app you wish existed to the leaderboard. The ideas with the most votes find a founder on the show.
the leaderboard: the first five apps, and what the community votes to build next →
// how we fight it

Three ways in.

the coalitionHumans firstEveryone fighting the same fight, sharing what works and what doesn't. Book a call with the founders and tell us what you're up against.the showSave the World, liveEpisodes that hand the mic to the people doing the work. Episode 1: Salt Lake City, during KubeCon, November 11.the factoryInfraredOur answer, and the tool we fight with: agents plan, build, test and ship, and a person decides what reaches production.
// the kickoff

It starts live.

The first episode of Save the World goes live from Salt Lake City during KubeCon. What we built at the Cloud Native Hackathon, what it means for the mission, and your questions, answered on air.

Save the World, episode 1, live from KubeCon: Salt Lake City, Wednesday, November 11, at 11:00 Mountain, with Darkshift's goat in the night sky over the mountainswatch it live, Wednesday, November 11 →
// the coalition

Not ours. Everyone's.

We've been in this fight for a decade: Kubefirst, Konstruct, Colony, thousands of platform installs and an open source community that taught us more than any customer. The biggest lesson is that nobody wins it alone. Save the World is the coalition we wish we'd had: maintainers, platform engineers, SREs, founders who share our vision for humanity, and the companies that back them.

  • Tell us what you're fighting. Book a call with the founders, or post an idea on the leaderboard. A person reads every word, and the best of it goes on air.
  • Come on the show. Bring a war story, a fix, or a question nobody has answered. Episode 1 is live on November 11.
  • Bring your app. Founders building for humans come on the show and build it live with us. Book a call and tell us about it.
  • Build with us. Our first design partners shape Infrared directly with the founders.
  • Vote on what we build next. Every idea and every app is on the leaderboard, ranked by the coalition's votes.
  • Follow along. On every channel, under one name: darkshiftio.

We're going to change the world.

Not with a slogan. With less complexity for everyone who builds software, less waste for the planet that runs it, and apps that reach the humans it's for, built live with founders who believe what we believe, one app at a time. Start with us on November 11.

I'm in: book a call →watch episode 1