Product and technology studio
Chilosophy is a product and technology studio. We help founders and businesses turn goals, problems, and domain expertise into shipped products.
Ed-tech · New York
Revision History replays how student work was written, rather than guessing with AI detection. Extending it to Google Slides meant reconstructing a deck where anything on a canvas can move, operation by operation.
We worked out the architecture and built Slide Replay end to end, along with Byline, which lets students use AI openly while teachers see how.
Revision History is used by 250,000+ teachers.
ESG · Taiwan
An ESG software company asked for a frontend rewrite to fix slow iteration. We rebuilt the product on one foundation for web and mobile, simple enough for their team, new to app development, to keep building on.
The team now ships and tests a change in the time it used to take to plan one.
Agriculture · Netherlands
Two leaders at a European vegetable trading company wanted to turn a daily problem into a startup: supplier price lists in every format, all typed in by hand.
We shaped their idea into a product direction and built a first MVP that extracts and structures the data automatically.
A working prototype, tested on real supplier price lists.
The technical questions come later. Before anything gets built, we work out what outcome matters, which assumptions need testing, and whether custom software, existing tools, or something much simpler is the right investment.
Sometimes that means building less. When the answer is to build, we build it, and the thinking carries into the build.
Some of our best work starts with something that isn’t naturally a software problem: an operational process, years of domain knowledge, an undocumented system. We work closely with the people who understand that world, and find the model underneath it.
Your world. The process, the expertise, and the edge cases only your team knows.
The model underneath. What is really going on, made explicit enough to build on.
The product. Logic and structure that software can act on, shipped.
When the model is wrong, better code doesn’t fix the product.
New products usually begin at 01; existing ones can start wherever the problem is.
A conversation about what you’re trying to do and what’s making it hard. You leave with an honest view of whether we can help.
Testing assumptions, prototyping where it helps, deciding what to build, buy, or integrate, and designing the system. Sometimes that’s the whole engagement.
Production software across web, mobile, backend, AI, and data, with the thinking from Shape carried through to launch.
New capabilities, architecture that needs rethinking, faster shipping, and working out where AI genuinely belongs.
What we build with
Chilosophy grew out of three startups Charles co-founded or led before the studio existed. They taught him to ship fast, and taught him the expensive way that believing in something isn’t the same as knowing it works. That’s why every project here starts with what needs to be true before anything gets built.
Emotion visualization · 2024–2025
Emotions made visible through a gamified fish-raising app. A two-person team took the MVP from nothing to launch in three weeks, then shipped updates every four days against real user feedback.
Culture-fit job matching · 2021–2024
A hiring platform matching people on culture and personality. Built end to end by a two-person dev team: matching, in-app payments, real-time messaging, and social features. Nearly 1,000 users.
Personality-matched dating · 2019–2020
Dating through a shared virtual pet. A ten-person team across marketing, design, and engineering grew it past 2,000 users, raised USD 30K, and won several startup awards.
Charles Chen founded Chilosophy after co-founding two startups, leading a third, and spending seven years building software for companies across the U.S., Europe, and Asia.
The name comes from Chi, his Chinese name, and philosophy: the idea that the thinking behind a product matters as much as the product itself.
Away from the work, he’s usually somewhere with a camera.
Not sure your situation fits? Tell us what you’re trying to do. We’ll tell you honestly whether we’re the right people.
Years inside a market, an operation, or a user, and a sense that it could become a product.
Technology is probably part of the answer, but you’re not sure what shape it should take.
It has traction, but the technology has started to hold the business back.
You want to know whether, and where, it genuinely belongs in what you do.
Tell us where you are and what you’re trying to accomplish. We’ll start there.
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