The person behind the studio
Hi, I'm Adam.
Hi Low Studio is my studio. Right now, “studio” and “I” are the same thing. That may change one day. For now, when you're reading this page, you're reading a single person's note about the work he is doing, why he is doing it, and how every branch of it connects to the others.
I'm Adam Vega. I'm a married dad of three homeschooled boys. I live in the greater Chicago area. I run Hi Low Studio. Before this, I spent a decade in healthcare operations tackling hospital telecommunications, information security, and clinical team management. I also spent eight years, concurrently, planting a church. That church was the work I loved most and the work that broke me. It ended in burnout and rendering myself unfit to continue in ministry. In the aftermath, I have learned that compartmentalization and masking of self are not sustainable.
One lesson I took out of that season is that I am no longer willing to build work on top of a version of myself that isn't real, and I don't think anyone else should have to either.
Whole-self integration is central to my work, and it's what I most want to model for other ADHD founders wondering whether they can bring their whole brain to their work. You can.
The Throughline
Every Job I Ever Loved Was the Same Act
Every chapter of my career has been a version of the same act: gathering people around a mission, teaching complex things in accessible ways, and building the quiet infrastructure that lets real care happen. Hi Low Studio is what happens when I stop running those instincts on separate tracks and build the whole thing from integration.
The Studio
Three Interlocking Parts
Hi Low Studio is a calm tech practice with three interlocking parts. None of them stands alone. Each one serves the others.
Products
We build software for the verticals where people are actively leaving institutional systems behind. Four products are live or near-live:
- Hilow Browser: a desktop browser built as a cognitive support tool, primarily for people with ADHD, that treats your attention as a limited resource worth protecting.
- Podcatch: a podcast knowledge platform that transcribes, summarizes, and organizes your library so the knowledge comes to you without pulling you back to the screen.
- Quill & Compass: a thoughtful toolkit for modern Christian homeschooling families, designed to get you back to your children instead of trapping you in another app.
- Kin & Cairn: the operating system for the post-institutional death care industry, built for the bedside at 2am.
Every product ships under the same commitments: design for the smallest possible amount of your attention, solve the problem then get out of the way, your data belongs to you.
Services
I take on bespoke engagements for founders and small teams who need this same philosophy applied to their own work, and I ship a catalog of fixed-scope offerings — Claude Code routines, productized builds, workshops, advisory retainers, and formal QSF audits — for people who already know what they want. This is how the lights stay on while the products mature, and it's how I bring Hi Low's approach into client environments that need it.
The Quiet Standards Framework
I authored the QSF — the first open, auditable, product-level certification standard for attention-respecting software. 104 criteria across 7 domains. 27 must-pass gates. Designed so two independent auditors reach the same conclusion.
The QSF is the intellectual anchor of everything else: it keeps the products honest, gives consulting engagements a rigorous standard to argue from, and makes it possible to talk about calm technology as a measurable practice rather than a vibe. It also ships as a Claude Code skill anyone can install and run themselves.
Each of these feeds the others. The products prove the QSF isn't theory. The QSF keeps the products honest. The consulting pays for the runway and pulls lessons back from real client environments.
Business Model
How Hi Low Stays Honest
Hi Low Studio is bootstrapped. It is funded entirely by consulting services and product sales. I do not sell data. I do not run ads. I do not take investment that would require me to optimize for growth curves I don't believe in.
This is not a marketing claim. It is the material basis for every calm-tech commitment I make on the rest of this site. If that ever changes, I will say so on this page, publicly, before it takes effect.
Working Together
If You're Here to Work Together
If you're here because you want to work together, there are two front doors.
If neither of those fits, the simplest thing is to email me directly or send a note through the contact form. I read every message.
A Note on Who This Studio Is For
I am not trying to be everyone's guy. Hi Low Studio is for people who are already partway out of the institutional systems that defined the last century. Homeschooling parents, death care practitioners, solo builders, founders trying to hold a line on their own attention, anyone who wants tools that serve their life instead of consuming it.
If that describes you, I hope this place feels like home.
Adam