About Onyx
A studio,not a factory.
We make small, deliberate software products that solve one problem well. Not everything needs to be big; not everything needs to become a platform. Some products should simply feel precise, useful, and finished.
Onyx exists to prove that AI software can be made the way fine objects are made — slowly, carefully, and to last.
Philosophy
We take our name from the stone: formed under pressure, dark by nature, valuable only after it is cut.
Most software is assembled. Ours is worked. We begin with a single question a product must answer, remove everything that does not serve the answer, and refine what remains until it feels inevitable.
Intelligence is our material, not our message. We do not ship features because a model makes them possible; we ship them because a person needs them. The result should never feel like AI — it should simply feel correct.
We stay small on purpose. Small enough that every screen passes through the same hands, every sentence through the same ear, and every product keeps a clear point of view. That is the only quality process we trust.
Principles
Three words we answer to.
01
Precision
Every decision is made on purpose — each word of copy, each model call, each interaction, each millisecond of motion. If we cannot say why something is there, it is not there.
02
Restraint
We add nothing that asks for attention it has not earned. Features, colours, notifications, prompts — the default answer is no, so that every yes carries weight.
03
Craft
Software is worked like a material. We polish past the point anyone would notice — because in aggregate, everyone notices.
How we work
One idea at a time.
We research until the problem is plain, prototype until the answer is obvious, and cut everything else. A product leaves the studio when it can stand without explanation — and we keep working on it long after, because finished is a standard, not a date.
The builder
One pair of hands.
Onyx is designed and built end to end by Anthony Pan, a fourteen-year-old developer and founder based in Beijing.
Anthony writes the code, designs the screens, tests the models, shapes the copy, and ships the products himself. His work sits at the intersection of AI, software, hardware, and design.
His first products include Feedii, an AI nutrition assistant live on the Apple App Store in five countries, and FillMate, an AI persona simulation tool. For Feedii, he also built a working Smart Plate prototype by hand — combining software with physical sensing to solve a problem photo-only apps struggle with: knowing how much food is actually there.
Anthony is young, but Onyx is not a school project. It is his studio for finished work — small, deliberate, and shipped.