The Circuit Board.

CascadeLights is a free social pixel grid built by a small studio above King Street in Toronto. The relay is a single nine-cell grid wired in cascading neon, paced like a coffee, intended for adults aged 18 and over. The studio is a side project for everyone on the team; we make our living elsewhere and the relay is what we do for fun after the day job switches off.

1. WHERE WE WORK

The studio sits above an electronics-repair shop on King Street West, three blocks from Roy Thomson Hall. Two windows face north over the streetcar line; the third looks down on a small alley that fills with steam in the winter. The room itself is a converted print shop — high ceilings, exposed brick, an industrial radiator that has been there since 1962. We rent it from the building's owner, a former electrical engineer who keeps the rent reasonable in exchange for a weekly tea.

2. WHO IS ON THE BUILD

Four people are on the build. Two motion designers (Devi handles the cabinet glyphs and the cell-drop ease; Marcus handles the typography and the marquee). One audio engineer who doubles as the relay engineer (Lin, who also writes the cookie-banner copy). One writer (Ana, who keeps the relay manuals readable and answers most of the inbox). The same four people have been on the build since the first relay powered up on a slow Wednesday in February.

3. WHAT WE BELIEVE ABOUT QUIET TIME

We believe that a pixel grid should never push a reader past their own comfort. We do not run streak counters, comeback prompts, or anniversary nudges. We do not collect the kind of behavioural data that would let us. We do not have growth investors, retention specialists, or A/B tests trying to keep you on the page longer than you wanted to be there. The relay opens, three taps land, the page closes. That is the whole loop.

4. THE FOUNDERS' NOTE

5. WHAT WE DO NOT DO

• We do not accept payments — no cards on file, no premium tier, no token shop.
• We do not record personal data — no email forms, no sign-up, no tracking pixels from third parties.
• We do not push notifications, ever — the relay does not have a server-side component that can reach out to a phone.
• We do not run streak loops, FOMO mechanics, or anniversary timers.
• We do not paint the relay in the language of real-money formats — the score panel is editorial furniture, not a balance.

6. WHAT WE DO

• We ship a small relay update every few weeks — the cartridge log on the homepage records each one.
• We answer the inbox personally — usually within a working day, always by a member of the studio.
• We keep the regulator footer honest — the same three organisations on every page, with their real URLs.
• We test the relay on a 380-pixel viewport before any change ships — phone-first, every time.
• We retire any cartridge mechanic that starts to feel like a hook — we have removed two so far.

7. HOW WE MEASURE SUCCESS

The studio has no growth target. We do not track session length; we do not track returning visitors. The only metric that matters to us is whether the relay still feels honest the next time we open it. If the answer is yes, the relay stays. If the answer is no — if the cartridge has drifted somewhere we cannot defend — the offending mechanic gets removed. That is the whole framework. The two mechanics we have already retired are documented in the cartridge log.

8. CONTACT

The inbox is read by Ana from the studio, usually within a working day. If you want to write to us about anything — a typo on a page, a glyph that brings up an unwelcome memory, a question about the cabinet, a piece of feedback — the address is [email protected]. The studio post arrives weekly.

The studio address is 187 King Street West, Toronto, ON M5H 1J9, Canada. The voicemail at +1 (416) 555-0184 is checked Monday afternoons. If something is urgent, the inbox is the faster route — we do not have a switchboard and the line goes to a single answering machine.

9. THE STUDIO TEAM