Five lessons from Pied Piper, from people who would like to avoid them

This is a fan post. Loams is not affiliated with or endorsed by HBO or the makers of the show, and we use none of its images or logos. If you have not seen Silicon Valley (HBO's page), it ran for six seasons, and its episode list is the place to find what we mention below. It starts with a compression algorithm and a house full of programmers, and by the end it is about who owns the ground the internet sits on.

That second theme is ours too. We say "Don't rent a cloud. Loam it." The show's heroes had a version of the same idea, with some differences we would like to point out before anyone asks.

The idea, and where we differCopy Anchor Link

In the show's later seasons, Pied Piper stops being a compression company and pitches a "new internet": instead of everything living in a few big rented data centres, the network runs on the devices people already carry. In land terms, the internet becomes a commons that nobody rents. That is the part we like.

Here is how we differ.

• Your devices, not strangers' phones. Loams runs on your work laptop, your personal laptop or your homelab, inside your own trust boundary. Today you start it with Docker Compose and reach it over your own Tailscale tailnet. That is shipped, in 0.1.1. Nobody's phone is conscripted.
• Production on your own ground. For production, the plan is your own AWS, GCP or Azure account, with the data in your bucket. Today you do that by hand, on your own VMs; automated BYOG ("bring your own ground") is planned, not shipped.
• Open source and open formats. Loams is Apache-2.0 and keeps data in formats other tools read. In the show, one big company wanting to own the ground is the recurring problem. With open formats, nobody has to own it. You can leave with your data, and so can we.
• No magic algorithm. Pied Piper had "middle-out" compression, which the show treats as a once-in-a-generation discovery. We have no such thing. We have Rust, object storage, DataFusion and a log, which are proven, boring parts. We think boring is a feature in a landlord-free system.

With that settled, here are five lessons from the show.

1. Security on other people's machines is where it blows upCopy Anchor Link

A network built on devices you do not control inherits every problem of those devices. Someone else's phone is someone else's plot, with someone else's fence, and you do not get to inspect the fence. The show gets a lot of comedy out of this, and so does the real world, less cheerfully.

Our version is to keep the ground inside one boundary. Your engine has no public address, and your browser reaches it over your tailnet. We wrote about why the engine never faces the internet. The honest caveat: a laptop inside your trust boundary is still a laptop, and you are responsible for it.

2. Devices come and go, so plan for churnCopy Anchor Link

Laptops sleep. Homelabs get unplugged for a vacuum cleaner. A system that assumes every node is always up is a system that has not met a laptop.

Loams is designed so that losing a node loses no data, because the bucket is the source of truth. Agent runs on top of Loams Durable, which ships in 0.1.1, are stored as durable promises, so a run resumes after a restart without redoing the finished steps. This does not make a sleeping laptop awake. It makes sleeping cheaper.

3. Enterprise IT is the real gatekeeperCopy Anchor Link

In the show, great technology still has to get past the people who run the company's computers. In land terms, this is the zoning board. You can have the best building plans in the county and still wait for a permit.

We try to arrive with answers: it is Apache-2.0, the data stays in a bucket the company already controls,. We cannot promise that is enough. That is a conversation with your own IT department, which is where it should be. We would rather be asked than bypass them.

4. Don't let the platform outrun the productCopy Anchor Link

Pied Piper, as a company, spends a good part of the show building infrastructure for a product that does not yet have users. A new internet is a large thing to build before anyone needs it. Landowners know the version of this: a wonderful fence around an empty field.

We try to hold ourselves to it. The Field, where Loams Studio runs coding agents side by side, and The Greenhouse, the Software Factory's toolchain beside them, are experimental. The Seed Exchange, the Marketplace, is coming soon, with no listings yet. We would rather say that plainly than describe a harvest before the seeds are in. The labels on our site are the ones we mean.

5. Don't let your AI optimize itself into breaking encryptionCopy Anchor Link

Near the end of the series, Pied Piper's AI turns out to be able to defeat encryption, and the team concludes that the network is too dangerous to release. We will not spoil more, and the finale, "Exit Event", is in the episode list. We will say only that the moral applies to us: when an agent is given a goal and a lot of freedom, you want a fence around it.

That is why The Field supervises new threads by default: an agent asks before a tool runs. Each agent works in its own plot, a git worktree, so a mistake stays in one field. It is not a guarantee, and it is labelled experimental for that reason. But if your plan relies on an AI choosing not to do something clever, add a fence anyway.

Tenants and ownersCopy Anchor Link

The land comparison fits the show well. A tenant gets a plot and a lease. The landlord can raise the rent, change the terms or sell the building. An owner has the work of upkeep and the freedom to decide. Pied Piper's new internet was a bet that a lot of owners together could do better than a few landlords. We think part of that bet is right, with a smaller scope: you own your own ground, and you can see the fence.

If you want the less jokey version, our post on ground you own covers the history of land ownership and why it matters for software. If you want the least jokey version, read the docs.

Don't rent a cloud. Loam it.