Independent software company
Software for people who'd rather own their tools than rent them.
Whalesback Systems builds communications software, developer tools, and infrastructure. We're a small company doing serious engineering — products designed to be run, inspected, and kept by the people who depend on them.
Conch
In developmentConch is a communications platform for gaming communities and coordinated teams — groups that need voice, text, and screen sharing to work together without friction.
It is being built around self-hosting: communities run their own servers, keep their own data, and set their own rules. The goal is software that serves the group using it — not a platform's growth targets.
Where it's headed
- Self-hosting as a first-class way to run it
- Push-to-talk voice in organized channels
- Text chat that lives alongside voice
- Screen sharing for coordination and spectating
Engineering principles before growth targets.
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User control
Software you can run yourself, inspect, and walk away from. We favor self-hostable systems and plain data formats over lock-in — your community and your work should outlive any company, including ours.
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Practical reliability
Reliability is a feature you notice only in its absence. We prefer simple, well-understood mechanisms over clever ones, few moving parts over many, and we design for the day something goes wrong.
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Thoughtful design
Good tools stay out of the way. We design interfaces that respect attention, defaults that make sense, and documentation that answers the question you actually have.
A small company, on purpose.
Whalesback Systems was founded to build a small number of things well: communications software, developer tools, and the infrastructure underneath them.
Staying independent is a deliberate choice. It means fewer products, longer timelines, and no growth targets set by anyone outside the company. It also means direct accountability — the person who writes the code is the person who answers for it.
Start a conversation.
The best way to reach Whalesback Systems right now is through GitHub — open an issue or a discussion on the relevant repository, and it will be read. A direct email address is on the way and will be listed here once it's set up.