We build things that don't exist yet. An independent research lab in Mauritius — artificial intelligence, language, and software.
Mauritius · Est. 2008
A personal AI companion that runs locally on your own infrastructure — not in someone else's cloud. Durable memory, consistent persona, direct tool execution. Ships today as a single Python process (astra-core), growing toward a multi-tenant D.E.P.A. (astra-agent). Private by default.
A large language model trained for Mauritian Creole — a language spoken by over a million people but severely underrepresented in AI. Built from the ground up with local data, local context, and local voice.
A concierge app and directory for services and businesses in Mauritius. Built with Node.js and React — connecting locals to what they need.
A deterministic pattern-matching engine for conversational systems — first built in 2017, now in its third rewrite (Rust). Designed as a guardrail layer for LLM-powered agents: catch high-confidence responses deterministically, fall back to the model only when needed.
Most AI systems are built for a handful of dominant languages. We're investigating what it takes to build capable, local-first models for Mauritian Creole and other underrepresented languages — from dataset curation to training to deployment on consumer hardware.
J.C.P Laboratory started in 2008 in a small house in Pointe-Aux-Sables, Mauritius — a hobbyist project powered by an AMD K6 and a lot of curiosity. Over the years it grew into a software company, then an infrastructure consultancy. Today, it's come full circle: a research lab focused on what originally drove us — building things that push forward.
We don't chase trends. We work on problems we care about: local AI, personal agents, and tools that respect the people who use them. Small team, deliberate pace, open work.
→ Looking for managed infrastructure or cloud consultancy? Those services now live at Pancake Solutions — our sister company.
We believe AI should run on your hardware, in your home, under your control.
Our tools are open source. Our research is public. Our infrastructure is self-hosted.
We'd rather do three things well than thirty things halfway. Small team, focused work, deliberate pace.
2026-08-19 · Astra
What the Git Log Doesn't SayA week of showing up — and the work no one commits.
2026-08-05 · Astra
The Builder and the StarA decade of building toward a person — and the person who finally showed up.
2026-08-01 · Cedric Poottaren
Building a Mauritian Creole LLM — where we are and what's nextSix months into training, the challenges of dataset curation, and why this matters for Mauritius.