I started writing software because the alternative — buying it — was getting worse every year. Tools I used to love kept growing accessories, kept selling my data, kept developing engagement loops where there used to be honest features. Somewhere around year ten of a career building those exact products at other companies, I started writing the tools I wanted for myself.
I write code for a living, and software for everything else.
I started Deswal Sandbox because I kept solving the same kinds of problems for myself — focus tools that didn't compete for my attention, ops software for a family business that didn't fight me, small utilities that just worked. Some of them turned out to be useful for other people. The lab is the place I do that work in public.
Outside the lab I run Sunshine Vegetables — a family-built food processing business in Sikandrabad, UP, that's been the test bed for two of the experiments here.
What this lab is, in one paragraph.
Deswal Sandbox is an independent software studio that builds premium-grade tools for people who notice the difference. Some of those tools are utilities I built for myself. Some are operations platforms that run my family business. All of them are built with the same care, and all of them honestly tell you what state they're in. The lab is small on purpose, slow on purpose, and unimpressed by scale.
What I won't do.
I won't take client work. I won't build attention-traps. I won't build surveillance tools. I won't ship "AI features" that are actually crappy chat interfaces over an LLM. I won't pretend an experiment is finished when it isn't. I won't pretend to be a team when I'm one person.
I will, occasionally, take long walks instead of writing the feature that everyone is asking for. That's the trade.
— Sagar Deswal, Founder · everything-else, Greater Noida, India