Applied AI · San Francisco · 2024

Finish the work.

Retard builds AI systems for people who would rather ship than explain. Agents, infrastructure, and models optimized for one metric: done.

Request access See the product
Focus
Task completion
Team
Operators only
Status
Building

Product

Ink — the agent that stays on the job

Ink is an autonomous execution layer for software and operations work. You give it an outcome. It runs until the outcome exists.

Outcome-first runs

Goals are specified as finished states, not task lists. Ink decomposes only as far as the work requires — then stops.

Hostile environments

Real repos. Real credentials boundaries. Real flaky tests. Trained and evaluated on mess, not demo sandboxes.

Human override, not human babysitting

Approve high-risk actions once. Everything else is assumed until it fails a check you defined.

Built for density

Ink is for small teams that already move fast and want machines that keep pace. Not a chatbot. Not a project manager. An operator that closes loops.

  • Long-horizon multi-step runs without babysitting
  • Repo, shell, browser, and ticket tool surfaces
  • Audit log of every action and decision boundary
  • Deployable in your VPC or ours
91% tasks closed without a second prompt
< 2 median human interventions per run
∞ tolerance for process theater

Operating principles

How we work

These are not values posters. They are constraints we hire and build against. If they make you uncomfortable, we are not a fit.

  1. 01

    Done beats clever

    A dull solution that ships today is worth more than an elegant design that ships never.

  2. 02

    Think in commits

    Progress is measured in deployed code and closed tickets. Strategy decks are optional.

  3. 03

    Meetings are a last resort

    If the work needs a room full of people to start, the goal was not clear enough to begin.

  4. 04

    Prefer simple agents

    Complexity is how projects die. We cut surfaces until only the useful path remains.

  5. 05

    No spectators

    Everyone on the team produces. Titles, status, and headcount theater do not.

  6. 06

    Stay dense

    Small team. High output. Hire operators who finish things without being asked twice.

Research

Lab notes

We publish only what survives contact with production. Theory is welcome; unfinished theory stays offline.

Technical report · 2026

Completion under distribution shift

Evaluating long-horizon agents on tasks that change mid-run — missing files, rotated credentials, broken dependencies — instead of static benchmarks.

Coming soon

Systems note · 2026

Intervention budgets as a product surface

Treating human check-ins as a scarce resource. Default runs assume zero; every interrupt is logged as a product failure.

Coming soon

Company

Who we are

Retard is a privately held applied AI company. We build software that finishes jobs. We do not sell strategy. We do not run workshops.

Team

A dense group of operators from infrastructure, research, and product. No pure managers. No pure presenters. Everyone ships.

HQ

San Francisco, with remote operators who already know how to work without being watched.

Stage

Private beta for design partners. General access is invite-only while we keep the product dense and the support surface small.

Careers

We hire people who get uncomfortable when a ticket sits open. If you need a process document to start, this is not the place.

jobs@retard.ink

Private beta

Request access

Tell us what you need finished. If there is mutual fit, we will reach out with onboarding steps. No sales call required to apply.