Research
Bootstrapping the frontier, our monthly R&D publication, and case studies from real deployments.
No theory for theory's sake. Everything here comes from real tests, real deployments, and products we're building.
Bootstrapped Frontier
Bootstrapping on the AI Frontier
In one of the most aggressive, highly funded industries, we're building a frontier systems lab our own way without the VC money.
Builders
Jackson & Ryker built the stack themselves
We developed Courier OS, built Courier Cloud from scratch, and deployed Scout — the local agent stack that runs on your Mac. No outsourced substrate. The same systems we research are the systems we ship.
Courier OS
Local-first production runtime on Apple Silicon
Courier Cloud
Same software, rented as flat-rate APIs
Scout
Free chat, Pro code & automations — deployed
Courier vs Ollama
Head-to-head tool-calling — measured
Same M5 MacBook Pro. Same Gemma 4 26B A4B (matched 4-bit). Official BFCL scoring. Courier wins on speed and tool-calling accuracy — including when Ollama is allowed to think.
- Hardware
- M5 MacBook Pro
- Measured
- 2026-07-22
Faster
+37% decode · 2.3× sooner first token
123.8 vs 90.1 tok/s decode. Time to first token 0.122s vs 0.277s — on the same 26B 4-bit weights.
Courier
123.8 tok/s
Ollama
90.1 tok/s
More accurate
Better tool-calling — even when Ollama thinks
Courier wins every matched mode on the 26B. With thinking on, Courier clears 90% (0.902) on BFCL's AST tool-calling categories — still ahead of Ollama-thinking at 0.874.
Structure holds
+13.5 pts on parallel tool calls
Parallel category 0.830 vs 0.695 matched no-think — where structured tool-calling reliability matters most.
Courier
0.830
Ollama (no-think)
0.695
Scorer: BFCL v4 official ast_checker. Function-calling path only — native OpenAI tool_calls scored by Berkeley's checker.