Weekly · product
Proprietary by design: Try Gate, Access, and honest public packages
This week we stopped pretending the product was “open enough to dump online.” We made the public process clear: evaluate, pay, access — without shipping the private core.
What “process” means here
When we say process in public, we mean the buyer and operator path:
- How you try the product (free demo vs paid evaluation seat)
- How you pay (Stripe for humans)
- How you get delivery after pay (Access)
- What you can install from npm without false promises
We do not mean the private compression mathematics or implementation details that stay in the lab. Those stay closed. Public benches and demos show what comes out — not how the vault is built.
Timeline (this week)
- 2026-08-02 Try Gate $9 goes commercial. A paid evaluation seat alongside sponsor/donate options. Not a fake waitlist — a real chip-in to start a serious conversation and seat.
- 2026-08-02 → 08-03 Licensing cleanup. Name and license text corrected; proprietary Slid Phi Labs commercial framing replaces MIT-style claims that misled people about what was actually open.
- 2026-08-03 Homepage restored around proprietary ZRW + Try Gate. The site says what we sell: outcomes, evaluation, suite — not “download the secret engine free.”
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2026-08-03
npm honesty.
Public
slid-phiis treated as a stub/placeholder on the open registry. Real codec delivery is via purchase / Try Gate — so we don’t overclaim open source. - 2026-08-03 /access process page. Post-purchase and Try Gate delivery path documented as a clean public flow: pay → land on Access → verify session → receive deliverable steps.
- 2026-08-03 Brand lock. Master poster art, product logo, and “Slid Phi Labs” display names locked across README and site SEO.
How we talk about Compression without leaking the core
Compression is a module people can evaluate:
- Web mode — free path for HTML/CSS/JS/JSON-style demos (public outcomes)
- Suite mode — metered jobs, quote → pay (price is public; engines under the hood are not)
- CDDG:Split — a process product name you can buy; the internal method stays private
- Standings / truth — published numbers vs industry baselines where we choose to publish
That is the process you can audit as a buyer: demo → proof → quote → pay → access. The sauce stays in the kitchen.
Why this matters
Labs die in two ways: they leak everything and lose leverage, or they hide so hard nobody can buy. This week we chose the middle path — clear rails, closed core.