Skip to content
Loom

An AI synthesis studio

AI that thinks where you can see it.

Ask a question. Loom weaves many sources into one cited, structured answer, in the open, in real time.

See it weaveBrowse threads

Question

We're a 12-person team shipping an AI feature this quarter. Open-weight models or a proprietary API?

Decision memo

4 sources

Open-weight or proprietary: a build decision for small teams

For most small teams shipping this quarter, start on a proprietary API and keep an open-weight path open. The trade-offs that actually move the decision are below.

Time to first value

A hosted API puts a working model behind your feature in a day; standing up open weights adds infrastructure, autoscaling, and an on-call rotation before you serve a single request.1

For a team of twelve with a quarter-long deadline, that gap is the whole story: the fastest path to learning from real users wins, and self-hosting spends the first weeks on plumbing rather than the product.4

Cost at your scale

At low and spiky volume, metered API pricing is cheaper than the fixed cost of reserved GPUs plus the engineering time to keep them busy.2

The crossover arrives only once usage is high and steady enough to amortise that fixed cost. Most teams cross it later than they expect, and some never do.2

Control and lock-in

Open weights are the stronger answer when data residency, offline use, or a guaranteed exit path are hard requirements rather than preferences.3

The real lock-in is rarely the model; it is the prompts, evals, and glue built around one provider. Keep those portable and switching stays cheap.3

Recommendation

Start on a proprietary API and design for portability: keep prompts and evals model-agnostic, put the provider behind one interface, and revisit when steady volume crosses the cost line.2

woven in 1.84s · 4 sources · 412 tokens

How the loom works

Four steps, in the open. No black box between the question and the cited answer.

  1. 01

    Plan

    Loom reads the question and lays the warp: the structure of an answer, set before a word is written.

  2. 02

    Retrieve

    It pulls the threads worth weaving in - sources, facts, passages - ranked by relevance and kept in view.

  3. 03

    Weave

    Weft crosses warp. Sentences resolve where they meet, each one tied to where it came from.

  4. 04

    Cite

    Every claim mints a citation. The finished artifact shows its work and links back to each source.

Why watch it think

Most AI hides the reasoning. Loom puts it on the table.

A black box asks you to trust the answer. A loom lets you check it: the plan is visible, the sources are named, and every line traces back to where it came from.

Streaming
The answer assembles under your eyes, not after a spinner.
Visible reasoning
The plan and the retrieved sources stay on screen, beside the work.
Cited by default
Each claim links to a source. Nothing arrives unattributed.

See a question become a cited artifact.

Watch a full weave in the Studio, or read the example threads other people have woven.

See it weaveBrowse threads