Issue N°04 · Spring 2026 · Open for briefs
41°N 29°E — 40°N 74°W
A studioof three, drawnto the margins.
// the premise
Three Amigos is a small, opinionated studio at the intersection of design, code, and AI. We make distinctive products for teams that read their own stack traces.
Founded
2024
Discipline
Design engineering · AI products
Shipped in flight
Marginalia · Halftone
Availability
Two slots · Q3 2026
01
Principles
Four rules the studio runs by. They’re short so we can remember them at 2 a.m.
Software is a medium. Good software is a point of view, expressed at a reasonable frame rate.
N°01
Opinionated by default
Neutrality is a failure to choose. Every product we ship has a posture — a loud one. Clients who want consensus shouldn't hire us.
N°02
Typography is infrastructure
The first thing a user notices is the last thing most teams think about. We start with the type, then build the database around it.
N°03
Models are collaborators, not services
We don't bolt AI onto finished products. We design with the model in the room, letting its shape inform the interface.
N°04
Ship the thin slice, then the sharp edge
A loud, opinionated 60% always beats a timid, comprehensive 100%. We ship the slice that proves the thesis, then we come back for the edges.
02
Selected Work · 2024–2026
Two products. Each an argument.
002 / 002
N°01 · 2026
Reader · AI · Editorial UX
Marginalia.
A reading app that argues back. PDFs and long articles get a margin that pushes on the author's claims — not a chat sidebar.
Read the case study
Next.js 14
Electron
Claude Sonnet
PostgreSQL
Interlude
“The studio is a workshop, not a factory.”
⇅
N°02 · 2025
Design tool · Color · AI
Halftone.
A material studio for designers. A folder of reference images becomes a named, editable palette — in minutes, not afternoons.
Read the case study
Next.js 14
Chakra UI v3
Claude Sonnet
WebGL
3
Founders — Istanbul & New York
12
Products shipped since 2024
4m
Median palette build, Halftone
∞
Appetite for typography
03
Dispatches
Notes from the back of the studio.
Short essays, release notes, and field reports. We write when something changes — no newsletter cadence, no SEO calendar.
April 14, 2026
Field note
On margins that argue, and the end of the summary button
Marginalia is built on the suspicion that a good reader wants to be pushed, not spared. The summary button was the first thing we cut.
March 28, 2026
Release
Halftone 1.4 — Locked palettes and the new swatch card
This release reframes the palette as a conversation: every color is lockable, and the rest of the palette re-clusters around what you've decided to keep.
March 09, 2026
Essay
The studio is a workshop, not a factory
Three reasons we stay small, turn down retainers, and ship fewer things than we could.
04
The Founders
Three people in one room. No account managers, no handoffs.
003 / 003
Founder N°1
Ayla
Design Engineer
“Interface is the argument the product makes for itself.”
Draws the line between interface and intention. Ayla prototypes at the speed of thought, sketching in code and refining in Figma until the pixels earn their place.
Founder N°2
Niko
Chief Product Officer
“A good product is a paragraph. A great product is a sentence.”
Sets the brief and edits the horizon. Niko writes the story a product is trying to tell, then fights for the version that actually reads out loud.
Founder N°3
Kenji
Chief Technology Officer
“Infrastructure is invisible when it is loved.”
Architects the systems that carry the ideas. Kenji keeps the stack honest: simple where it can be, ambitious where it has to be.
05
Sign-off
Have a thing you can’t
quite describe yet?
Write to us.
// preferred medium: long email
We respond within two working days. Tell us what you’re stuck on, who it’s for, and what the loud version looks like — we’ll take it from there.