ARGUS
Watch one place on a map · open source
Free software for one place you care about. Put reports on a map, grade which ones to trust, and leave with a short, sourced brief. Not a news feed, and not a chatbot making things up.
Free tools for making sense of a complex world.
Shama Research builds free, open-source software that helps you organize information and think clearly. Three tools so far — one for world events, one for research journals, one for writing them up.
Independent and non-commercial.
Products
WJM
Wisdom Journal Manager · open source
Free software for running a small academic journal on WordPress. Writers submit their papers on a public page, editors review them in one inbox, and you publish. Built for campus journals, student magazines, and small society titles. Payments and DOIs stay optional.
About · Guide · Tour · Loop · Limits · WordPress.org · GitHub
Shama Writer
Local-first research writing · open source
Free software for writing research papers in the browser. Gather sources, map arguments, structure chapters, and typeset with Typst — all saved locally on your device. No account, no server, works offline once loaded.
About
Shama Research builds and maintains software for three jobs: watching world events (ARGUS), running research journals (WJM), and writing research papers (Shama Writer).
All three do the same thing at heart. They take a pile of raw information and organize it into something you can actually work with — and every claim links back to its source, so anyone can check it rather than take your word for it.
Everything is free. We are independent and non-commercial — not a registered nonprofit, and not a startup chasing launches. We build these slowly and carefully, as long-term tools, not products to sell.
Origin
Named for a light.
Shama means lamp, a light to see by. The work does what a lamp does, making it a little easier to see in a complex world.
It is also the name of Maaz Ahmad's mother, Shama Yasmin. The studio is named for her.
Maaz Ahmad, founder. Zachary Adam, cofounder.