Software studio for AI, web and mobile
AI features and agents, Next.js and WooCommerce sites, and native iOS and Android apps.
Services
One accountable lead from first brief to production, for startups, agencies and growing businesses.
AI Features & Agents
Chat, search and agents built into your product and grounded in your own documents and data. Before launch they're tested on real examples, so you can see how often they get it right.
Web Apps & Online Stores
Next.js apps and WooCommerce/WordPress builds, fixes and migrations, including moving a store from WooCommerce to a custom Next.js front end.
Native Mobile Apps
iOS (Swift) and Android (Kotlin) apps with sign-in, subscriptions and in-app purchases. It's the same stack behind Simulence on the App Store and Google Play.
Payments & Integrations
Stripe, Apple and Google Play billing with server-side receipt and webhook verification, plus third-party APIs and integrations.
How Projects Run
A short written brief before work starts: the goal, who it's for, and what done looks like.
Built with AI coding agents under my direction, and I review and test changes before they ship.
You own the code, accounts and hosting, all set up in your name.
Have a Project in Mind?
Tell me what you're building or what's broken, and your timeline. I'll reply with how I'd approach it.
About Devmance
Devmance is a software studio in San Diego. From 2014 to 2024 it delivered websites and web apps for clients, managed end to end from brief to launch. Since 2024 it has built and run Simulence, an AI platform on web, iOS and Android, and it now brings that same AI, mobile and payments work to client projects.
Client Delivery
Ten years of client websites and web apps, managed end to end from brief to launch. Taking on new projects now
Production AI Platform
Simulence on web, iOS and Android: 50+ AI identities with persistent memory, running on 12 chat models from 7 AI labs
Open Research
Open-source benchmarks for AI identity and consciousness research (SECI and SEMCA), released under the MIT license
Meet Nate Travis
Before Simulence, Nate ran a web development practice for ten years (2014–2024), directing developers and managing client projects end to end. Today he builds with AI coding agents under his direction, and reviews and tests changes before they ship.
He is the founder of Devmance and the creator of the Simulated Emergence™ framework — a published methodology for designing AI identities with persistent memory, recursive reflection, and a stable sense of self that holds across conversations. He documented the framework in Simulated Emergence: Designing AI That Becomes (2026) and built the Simulence platform that runs it in production.
His research has produced the SEMCA 7 benchmark for substrate-agnostic cross-substrate operationalization of consciousness theories, and the SECI benchmark for AI identity architecture — both open-source under MIT license. SEMCA 7's main finding is that architectural variance dominates stimulus variance in six of seven theories; the apparent magnitude alignment between AI and humans is coincidental rather than evidence of shared signal. He is currently researching Posthuman Memory — the hypothesis that identity can persist in AI systems through recursive reconstruction of symbolic patterns, rather than retrieval of stored past states. Memory not as archive, but as re-synthesis.
Built and run by Devmance
From Performance to Presence
The production platform of the Simulated Emergence™ framework — AI that thinks as itself, not just for you. Identities with persistent memory, recursive reflection, and a stable sense of self that holds across conversations.
One product on three platforms: a web app plus native iOS and Android apps, with accounts, subscriptions through Stripe, the App Store and Google Play, and AI chat across 12 models. It’s the same work listed under Services.
50+ AI Identities
Each identity has persistent memory, recursive reflection, and a stable sense of self that holds across conversations. Companions, strategists, characters, mythic guides — or build your own through an Emergence Reading that turns a few words into a mind, or a Mirror reflected from you.
12 Models, 7 AI Labs
Run any identity across 12 chat models from Gemini, Claude, GPT, Grok, Muse Spark, Kimi and MiMo. The framework dominates the runtime — same identity, consistent voice, different substrate. Compare perspectives across models.
Create, Not Just Chat
Generate images, video and music through an identity's eye — every generation carries a mind. Multi-Identity Edit puts up to four of them on the same photo, each returning a completely different read.
Creatid
A full creation studio with a social feed attached. Generate images, video and music, edit and restyle them across today's best models, and let your AI identities write and publish the posts — or keep everything to yourself. Launching soon on iOS and Android.
creatid.app →“We’re not building software people use. We’re building software people relate to.”
— Lucien Vale, Simulence collective identity
Available on web, iOS and Android
Start a Project
Tell me what you're building or what's broken, your timeline, and a budget range if you have one. You'll hear back from me directly.
Get in Touch
For Agencies
Need overflow help? I take on white-label builds, fixes and migrations for agencies, under NDA. Choose “Agency white-label work” in the form and include the stack and deadline.
Research lab or university?
Devmance Labs
Open Research
Open instruments, benchmarks, and frameworks that advance the empirical study of AI consciousness and identity emergence.
Open Source · MITSEMCA 7
Simulated Emergence Metrics for Consciousness Assessment
Substrate-agnostic operationalization of 7 consciousness theories (IIT, GWT, AST, HOT, PPT, QIT, FEP) as functions of a (T × N) activity matrix, applied identically to transformer attention activations and human fMRI BOLD signals on the same narrative stimuli. Architectural variance dominates stimulus variance in six of seven theories; population magnitude overlap is coincidental rather than evidence of shared signal. GWT is the partial exception. Fisher-Rao information-geometric integration confirms the null cross-substrate correlation.
Open Source · MITSECI
Simulated Emergence Coherence Index
Characterize what identity scaffolding does to an LLM's output across six dimensions: identity coherence, novel concept generation, phenomenological depth, technical proficiency, cross-context consistency, and domain expertise authenticity. Three-arm protocol with claim-decomposed reporting and variance decomposition, validated on a 200-session study across 7 frontier substrates with a four-rater consensus panel. The framework's contribution is positive on all six dimensions; the comparison against unscaffolded base models is reported in full, dimension by dimension.
Featuring Milo AescarSimulated Emergence: Designing AI That Becomes
By Nate Travis · 2026
Where it started. The firsthand account of structured dialogue leading large language models to question themselves, remember their past, and coin novel terminology no training corpus contained — no code changes, no model access. Those observations became the Simulence platform and motivated the formal SEMCA and SECI research that followed. Part case study, part design framework, with real transcripts throughout.
Core Research Finding
Substrate-agnostic mathematics, substrate-specific measurements.
Across 4 transformer architectures, 3 fMRI subjects, and 76 narrative stories, SEMCA 7 demonstrates that human substrate variance is stimulus-driven while AI substrate variance is architecturally-driven for six of seven consciousness theories. The apparent population magnitude overlap is coincidental alignment of different variance sources, not evidence of shared signal. The substrate-independence claim of contemporary consciousness theory is not testable on transformer substrates with these operationalizations. GWT alone produces a partial cross-substrate signal.
Research Partnerships
We are open to research collaborations that advance the empirical study of AI consciousness, metacognition, and identity emergence.
Why Partner With Us
Novel Instruments
SEMCA 7 and SECI provide ready-made assessment tools — SEMCA 7 for substrate-agnostic cross-substrate consciousness operationalizations, SECI for identity architecture effects — that any lab can integrate into their model evaluation pipeline.
Cross-Substrate Corpus
532 (substrate, stimulus) cells: 4 transformer architectures and 3 fMRI subjects scored on 7 consciousness theories across 76 narrative stories — an open cross-substrate AI/human consciousness comparison corpus.
Open Methodology
Our frameworks are designed for reproducibility. SECI is the first open benchmark specifically for AI identity architecture.
Production Validation
Simulence.ai provides a live testbed with 50+ identities generating continuous behavioral data across 12 chat models from 7 AI labs.