Damien Chapus · Antibes, France
horizonbuilder.space
Powerful AI tools to take back control of your everyday life.
Neither online gadgets nor basic software: embedded, last-generation models that run on your own machine. They understand speech, read your documents, sort your inbox — and keep nothing. An AI development studio, and the community of people who want out of tools that lock them in.
What Horizon Builder is
Horizon Builder builds software entirely through vibe coding: artificial intelligence is the means of production, not the sales pitch. What matters is what the software does for the person using it — and what it refuses to take from them along the way.
Everyday tools that genuinely help people in daily life. Not platforms: tools.
Vibe coding throughout. AI writes, tests and documents; the human decides what deserves to exist and what gets thrown away.
What the community actually uses steers the roadmap. One usage report outweighs a market study.
No funding round, no data resale. Whatever can't be paid for by its direct users doesn't get built.
The technology
Every tool embeds last-generation models — transcription, speaker recognition, document reading, semantic analysis, audio fingerprinting. The difference with the usual services fits in one sentence: these models run on your machine, not on a server that keeps a copy of whatever you hand it.
Transcription and speaker identification across an entire meeting, locally. That's the core of VirtualHost.ai: compliant works council minutes without a second of audio leaving the machine.
Extraction and reconciliation across documents nothing standardises: bank statements, payslips, tax notices. VIGIE reads what three different engines produced over fifteen years.
Grouping an inbox by actual subject, prioritising, and drafting replies in your own tone and procedures. That's Cockpit — and the mailbox is never copied anywhere.
Audio fingerprinting and track identification inside a continuous mix. Mixprism recognises what a DJ played where the ear gives up.
The first four tools deal with work, money, housing and music. That's only a start: there isn't a corner of daily life where a lean, local tool wouldn't save time or prevent a mistake.
The rule stays the same in every field: the tool computes on your machine, hands you the result, and keeps none of it. The more personal the subject, the more that rule matters.
Meetings, minutes, inbox, running a business. Where wasted time is measured in hours per week.
Money, housing, admin, family logistics. The things people give up on for lack of a clear view.
Understanding your own documents and tracking your deadlines — never medical or legal advice, which belongs to qualified professionals.
Infrastructure monitoring, quality control, compliance. Fields where the data precisely must not leave.
The philosophy
Most platforms create value in order to place themselves between people and take their share. The opposite can be built: software that does one thing, does it well, and then gets out of the way.
Strategy and ambition
The ambition is not to grow one product until it dominates a market. It is to build a set of lean tools that stand on their own, are paid for by the people who actually use them, and need neither venture funding nor data resale to exist.
No funding round, no team to feed. Lean code isn't a slogan: it's the only way one person can maintain five products.
The cloud is used only where it is unavoidable. Everywhere else, computation happens on the user's machine.
You pay for software, not with your attention or your data. A clear subscription, or nothing.
Servers in Frankfurt, GDPR by design, and products built for European use.
How it is organised
Not everything built here is meant to be public, or to be sold. Each tool belongs to one of three circles — and the community is the one that moves fastest.
The products that are sold or freely available: VirtualHost.ai, Hivernago, Séjours Privés, Mixprism. You reach them without asking anyone, and you pay if you use them. They fund everything else.
See the software →Tools I build for myself first, then open free and ahead of everyone else to those who joined: VIGIE for finances, Cockpit for email, and the ones that follow.
It is also the human-scale testing ground: every tool is proven by a few dozen real people before it is industrialised or opened more widely. Nothing ships at scale without having served here first.
How to join →The dashboard that centralises every project, its back-office and its data. It is not public and will not be: it's the workshop, not the shop window. Some of its modules will end up open to the community.
Restricted accessWhat it changes
Part of what I build will never be put on sale. These are tools written for my own use, too specific to be commercialised, but that save hours to anyone with the same problem. They exist nowhere else, and they will go no further than the community.
| Visitor | Horizon Builder member | |
|---|---|---|
| The software that is sold | At public price | At public price |
| VIGIE, Cockpit and the internal tools | No access | Included, free |
| Tools that are never commercialised | Do not exist for them | Exclusive access, nothing asked in return |
| New releases | At public launch, if there is one | First, before any industrialisation |
| What gets built next | Decided for them | Decided by their feedback |
| The book Horizon Builders | On publication | Told first |
| Tool licence | None | Named and signed, issued to the member |
| Getting in touch | A contact form | A direct reply — I'm the one reading |
Every community tool ships with a cryptographically signed, named licence — the same mechanism that protects VirtualHost.ai. It carries the member's name, is not transferable, and stays revocable.
In practice: the licence is verified offline by the tool itself, calling no server at all. It identifies its holder, and the tool displays whose copy it is. This is not a subscription in disguise — it costs nothing and doesn't expire while you're a member.
What it is not: an unbreakable lock. Software running on its user's own machine can always be copied — anyone claiming otherwise is lying to you. What the licence guarantees is that every copy is identified, and that the community stays what it is: people, not copies.
Issued to the member and following them from one tool to the next. One holder — not a household, not a company.
Ed25519 signature, verifiable offline. A forged licence fails the check.
No server call, no telemetry, no account to open. Verification happens entirely on your machine.
A shared or resold licence can be invalidated at the tool's next update.
All of it with no subscription, no password and no payment. The only thing expected from a member is to say what works for them and what doesn't.
Join the community
No account to create, no subscription, no referral. You leave an address, you get the tools. In return, your usage steers what ships next — that's all that is expected of you.
No password to remember, no data passed to third parties, one-click unsubscribe. One letter a month at most.
Free for the community
I wrote them for myself and they run on my machine every day. They send nothing anywhere — no account to create, no server to trust. It's the simplest demonstration of the thesis.
Personal finance control. Imports your bank statements with no API at all: nothing to authorise, no delegated access. Reconciles payslips against incoming transfers, spots dormant subscriptions and silent price rises. Read-only: no money movement is possible.
Public version in preparationWork inbox triage. Groups threads by subject, prioritises, drafts replies grounded in your own procedures and tone. Runs on the mail client you already have — the mailbox is never copied anywhere.
Public version in preparationThe following tools will come from the same logic: a real need, a lean answer, executed locally. The community sets the order — that's what joining is for.
Have a say →The software
Published by Damien Chapus EI, a sole trader registered for software development since May 2023.
Minutes for French works council meetings. Embedded transcription and speaker identification, compliant minutes generated — without a single recording leaving the machine. Sold per mandate.
virtualhost.ai →Winter storage for boats, motorhomes and leisure vehicles along the French Riviera. Land eligibility checks, direct introductions.
hivernago.fr →Book the family house, or a friend's, with the convenience of a platform and none of the commercial logic. Synced calendars, request handling, zero commission.
sejoursprives.com →DJ set analysis: track identification, audio fingerprinting, crate preparation. Born from a producer's need, turned into a tool for others.
mixprism.eu →The services marketplace where contribution, not starting capital, grants access. It's where the book's UMCP were first tried — and where all the rest came from.
Where the idea began →The origin
Horizon Builders tells of the settling of Numen by pioneers who fled an Earth undermined by failing financial systems. They build a society where the worth of an act is measured not by what it earns, but by the chain of benefits it sets off.
The software came afterwards. Each product applies the book's thesis without having been designed to: give value back rather than capture it. That's why the project carries this name — it described the work before the work existed.
Publication in preparation. Community members hear first.
Numen's law: an act is judged on the chain of benefits it generates, not on its immediate usefulness.
Units of Planetary Contribution Merit. Neither hoardable nor convertible: accumulating brings no power.
Three entities — intent, guardianship, flow. The third, Heka-9X, "once known as UpMyChain".
Self-interest isn't suppressed but stated aloud: "this act lifts me, but its ripple reaches everyone".
Who builds this
Sales by day, developer by night. Seven years in the field as a corporate sales rep taught me what a time-wasting tool really costs — and that's where the obsession with leanness comes from. I write this software alone, starting from problems I ran into myself: hence its range, and its family resemblance.
I also produce electronic music as Damian William. That's not a biographical footnote: it's where Mixprism came from, and where the demands on form come from too — the black, the black sun, the absence of visual chatter. Software is built like a track: you strip away until only what matters is left.
Seven years of corporate sales on the French Riviera, with companies of every size.
Damien Chapus EI — software development, registered with the Antibes commercial court since May 2023.
Damian William: electronic production, label releases, DJ sets. The origin of Mixprism.
Horizon Builders, twenty-two chapters on a contribution economy. Where it all started.