TEMPER / SYSTEMS
From Mike Samuel · Co-creator of Google Calendar

Trust the build, not the review.

Temper is a new layer beneath the languages a system runs on. It keeps behavior consistent across all of them, and makes whole categories of mistake impossible to make.

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§ 01The thesis

What if entire categories of mistakes simply couldn't be made?

I.

One semantic model

Describe behavior, schemas, and policy once, in a form that has meaning independent of any target language.

II.

Every target runtime

Emit idiomatic, reviewable code in the languages a stack already runs, or migrate an existing system into one of them. The semantics stay the same, by construction.

III.

Secure by construction

Whole categories of vulnerability aren't flagged after the fact. They simply cannot be expressed.

One engine · two applications

The same engine secures the code a team writes today and modernizes the systems already running beneath it.

§ 02Legacy

The systems that cannot be taken down.

Banks, insurers, and governments still run on code that works. What has grown scarce is the people who can safely change it, and a small part of that code consumes most of their time. Every proposal to fix this asks an institution to bet the business on a rewrite. Temper does not ask for that bet.

I.

Start where it costs most

Not the whole system. One piece. The part that consumes most of the maintenance effort, while the rest of it runs quietly, year after year, and is best left alone.

II.

Generated, not hand-written

Temper produces the modern version of that piece, and the seam that lets the existing system call it, from one source, on every build. It drops back in where it came from.

III.

The burden moves

From then on the piece belongs to a modern-language developer, not to the scarce expert who used to carry it. Do it again, and the load comes down, on a normal release schedule.

No rewrite · no cutover

Modernization happens inside the system, not instead of it.

§ 03The founder

“The best fixes remove an entire category of mistake, so no one has to remember to get it right. Temper does that for the code itself.”

Mike Samuel, Founder & CEO

Mike SamuelFounder & CEO · 17 years at Google, Technical Infrastructure

Co-createdGoogle CalendarIt began as his 20% project. He built its first web client and led its localization into seventeen languages.
ImplementedContextual auto-escapingThe defense that makes XSS unrepresentable in a template, rather than caught in review. Principal implementer at Google, and first author of the paper that formalized it.
ContributedW3C Trusted TypesMajor contributor to the standard that prevents DOM-based XSS by construction. Now in every major browser, and used by Microsoft and Meta.
OriginatedAn ECMAScript proposalDynamic Code Brand Checks, now at TC39 Stage 3, which brings Trusted Types enforcement into the JavaScript language itself.
AuthoredGo's html/templateThe XSS defense in the Go standard library. It ships with every Go install, and Go's published security model cites his design document.
HardenedGerritThe code review system that gates Android, Chromium and Go. He built a runtime guard into it that ran for nine years.
HonoredGoogle's OC and Founders' AwardsFor outstanding contributions to Google Calendar, and for lasting impact on the company.
§ 04Contact

We're speaking with a small group of partners.

Six years of compiler research, patents issued and pending. If there's a reason to talk, reach us directly.