Two things that shouldn't belong together.
One is soft, almost absurdly vulnerable, and spends its nights following the light. The other is rough, ordinary, and made to survive being walked on. Neither is the sort of thing you'd expect to find above the door of a software studio.
That's why Moth & Gravel stayed. The two words keep disagreeing with one another. A moth suggests attention, instinct and the peculiar pull of an unfamiliar question. Gravel suggests the material that pushes back: constraints, friction, time and use.
Interesting work needs both. Curiosity gets you moving. Resistance tells you whether you've made anything worth keeping.
Useful doesn't have to look conventional.
Most of the vocabulary around software has been polished to the point where you can predict a product's name before learning what it does. Another hub. Another flow. Another platform promising to change everything.
We wanted a name that didn't explain the category. Not because the work should be mysterious, but because the name can carry the character while the product carries the explanation. Good software should tell you what it does plainly. Its maker is allowed to be a little stranger.
Drawn to light.
Built for rough ground.
Show the seams.
This small website is the first thing the studio has chosen to put in the open. Its source, the brand assets and the design decisions are available to inspect. They're not presented as proof of a large product portfolio. They are simply work that exists.
There will be experiments. Some will deserve to become real tools. Others will reveal that the idea was more interesting than the result. Both outcomes are worth learning from, provided the record is clear and the next decision is better.
For now, that's the commitment: useful tools, independent thought, straightforward explanations and enough care to make strange things work properly.
A little instinct. A lot of persistence.
We aren't interested in using complexity as evidence of intelligence, or polish as a substitute for substance. We want things you can understand, question, repair and keep using. And we want enough curiosity left over to make the next thing feel worth attempting.
The rest is on the workbench.