# Maro Labs: company and product summary

Website: https://marolabs.kr/ · Contact: founder@marolabs.kr · Based in South Korea · Founded April 2026

## Who we are

Maro Labs is a one-person company based in South Korea. Our founder, Maro, is a math teacher, not a professional programmer, who started building software with AI in April 2026 and kept running into the same problem: the tools lost context along the way. Maro Portal began as the workspace our founder needed. We believe the people now building with AI, without a developer's background, need the same thing.

## The problem

- Context gets lost: each AI session starts fresh, and plans, constraints, and earlier decisions have to be explained again.
- Work is scattered: results live across many chats, tools, and folders.
- Hard to check AI's work: without a developer's background, it is difficult to review what several AI tools produced and keep them working in one direction.

## Maro Portal (macOS)

A local-first workbench for the Mac: a native macOS app with a local Node.js server. Records stay in the app's data folder on the user's own Mac; AI calls go out only to the providers the user connects.

- Central conversation: one place to talk to Maro and hand off work.
- Six steps per task: born, checked, run, evaluated, harvested, closed.
- Reviewed before it counts: a separate reviewer checks work before it closes; review receipts name the provider, and a partial pass is never rounded up.
- Personal wiki: daily briefings, decisions, and research as pages with sources, revisions, and open questions. Daily AI news pages for October 3 through 8, 2026 are in the wiki.
- Knowledge map with seven ways to view records; work routes and a chronicle that replays past work as a story.
- Library: wiki shelf, second brain, knowledge map, viewer, knowledge garden.
- Work encyclopedia: more than 200 documents of rules, concepts, and lessons learned.
- Decisions on the record: founder decisions logged with original wording and where they were said.
- Model-neutral: connects to Anthropic Claude, OpenAI Codex, and an on-device model; a task keeps its history when the model changes.

## Maro Writer (macOS)

A standalone writing app spun out of Maro Portal's writing extension, built for long-form and serialized fiction. The writer stays in charge: AI drafts become part of the manuscript only when the writer adopts them.

- Chapter-by-chapter story memory, so the AI answers from the story's own record.
- Three co-writing modes: AI-led, writer-led, or writing together, switchable per work.
- Built-in glossary of several hundred martial-arts terms, a name finder, genre-specific themes, and a bookshelf for multiple works.
- Claude connection for co-writing.
- Installed as a separate macOS app in late September 2026; it holds the founder's martial-arts novel manuscript today.

## Built with Claude

Claude is our main tool. Over 70% of our important work runs on Claude: direction, design, planning, and the key reviews. Other AI workers take the rest, mainly implementation and second reviews. A math teacher with no programming background built two macOS apps this way.

| Fact | Detail |
|---|---|
| Main lane | October 5, 2026: "the main lane is Claude." |
| Share of important work on Claude | Over 70% (direction, design, planning, key reviews); other AI workers take the rest |
| Work panes on Claude | 8 of 17 active work panes (October 8, 2026); implementation and second reviews are spread across the other panes |
| Reviewed by Claude | 63 closed pieces of work |
| Decisions from the Claude control room | 1,125 logged founder decisions (September 26 to October 8, 2026) |
| Maro Writer in Claude Code | Specified September 27, 2026; 309/309 regression checks passed that day; installed as its own app two days later |
| Inside the products | Claude connected as a provider in the Maro Portal server; Claude co-writing connection in Maro Writer |
| Company research | Product fact sheet, name and trademark checks compiled in a Claude lane, with a source for every line |

Why Claude leads: we give Claude the work that needs judgment (design, direction, and review). It holds long project context and follows our written rules closely. For a founder who is not a developer, that is what makes it possible to keep many AI workers moving in one direction. Maro Portal is model-neutral, so other models also implement and give second reviews. That is why Claude holds 8 of 17 work panes yet carries over 70% of the important work: Claude is the one that leads.

### Timeline

- April 2026: Maro Labs founded; first software built with AI.
- May 2026: a management app for the founder's own small math class, planned in conversations with Claude.
- July 2026: Maro Portal, first version.
- August 2026: Maro Portal 2 rebuilt from the ground up; Claude Code joins the rebuild.
- September 2026: Maro Writer specified in a Claude Code session and split out as its own macOS app.
- October 2026: Claude becomes the lead lane for direction, design, and review; company website and email at marolabs.kr.

## The record (as of October 8, 2026)

470 closed work records · 424 closed after review · 1,125 logged founder decisions · 493 test files · 128 contract documents · 117 product build receipts · 799 dated work output folders.

## Status

- Maro Portal macOS app and local server: running; server reported healthy on October 8, 2026.
- Personal wiki, knowledge map, work records: running; used to manage our own work.
- Maro Writer macOS app: running; used for the founder's martial-arts novel.

## Contact

founder@marolabs.kr