About Astrolabe Works
The astrolabe was refined by astronomers across the Islamic world and later medieval Europe to measure the sky, tell time and find direction. We chose the name because our work is similar: we take the information an organization already has and use it to work out where it stands and what to do next.
Who we are
Astrolabe Works is a digital consultancy and engineering studio. Our team has built and run systems for mid-sized and large businesses, international NGOs and government contracts, and we have written our own platforms for healthcare, education and nonprofit operations from scratch.
Our core team is small and senior, and we bring in specialists we've worked with before when a project needs them. You deal directly with the people designing and writing your system.
We don't resell any vendor's products. We favour open standards, can deploy to your cloud or ours, and avoid proprietary lock-in. When we use AI, we can tell you which model sees which data and why.
Principles
- 01
Separate customers at the database.
We isolate each customer's data at the database and encryption-key level, so a bug in application code can't expose one customer to another.
- 02
A person signs off on AI output.
Models draft and suggest. A named person approves, and we design that review step as carefully as the model itself.
- 03
Make records verifiable.
Hash chains, timestamps and audit trails let auditors and the public check what happened for themselves.
- 04
Keep data in your jurisdiction.
We deploy where you need us to, with full data export and no dependency you can't replace.
- 05
Use proven tools.
Established databases, explicit migrations and tested integrations. New technology only where it solves something the old tools can't.
- 06
Start from the actual problem.
We begin with the specific process that is failing, such as a denied claim, a missing receipt or a report nobody reads, rather than a template.
Named after the parts of an astrolabe
The parts of a project
- LIMBContext & constraintsRegulation, residency, budget, timelines and the people who will use it. The fixed frame everything else turns within.
- PLATEData model & architectureWhere every record lives, who may see it, how tenants are isolated and how it all recovers.
- RETEWorkflows & intelligenceThe moving parts: automations, integrations, models and agents that do the work.
- RULEMeasurementThe sightline. Baselines, dashboards and evaluations that show whether it is working.
Security and compliance
- 01Tenant isolationPer-tenant databases or forced row-level security; least-privilege application roles.
- 02EncryptionManaged keys at rest, TLS in transit, per-tenant secrets that never fall back to another tenant's.
- 03Audit trailsTransactional audit trails, tamper-evident logs and cryptographic timestamps.
- 04RecoveryPoint-in-time recovery, cross-region backups and retention matched to your regulatory duty.
- 05Limits on AIContracted, business-associate-covered model gateways; data minimisation; on-device inference where needed.
- 06Clear documentationWe tell you what is implemented, what is planned and what is your responsibility, in writing.