ASTRAL / WORKSIndependent AI-native product studioLos Angeles · Est. 2025

We build AI-native products.

An independent product studio shipping end-to-end with modern AI coding tools. From first PRD to production, in weeks, not quarters.

01What we do
Three practices. One team.

Senior product thinkers who ship real product, not slide decks.

01

AI-Native Product Development

End-to-end builds for products where AI is the product, not a feature. RAG, agentic workflows, evals, and the UX scaffolding around them, shipped to production.

Agentic WorkflowsLangGraphRAGEvals
02

Data Powered Products

Operational software for the people running the business. Analyst dashboards, reporting pipelines, back-office apps. Built in days, not quarters.

Next.jsSQLObservability
03

Fractional Product Leadership

Senior PM embedded part-time: roadmap, discovery, prioritization, and execution discipline. For teams that need product judgement, not another dashboard.

StrategyDiscoveryRoadmapping
02Approach
01

Most studios separate the people who spec from the people who build. We don't. The person writing the PRD is the person shipping the feature.

02

We sit with your team and your end users, not in slide decks, not in Notion, not in quarterly review. Product is a conversation, not a deliverable.

03

Modern AI-assisted tooling is woven through every stage of our practice, compressing the feedback loop between intent and instrumented reality. Discovery, design, and engineering converge into a single iterative motion.

04

Senior operators, not junior contractors. You're not paying a markup on someone learning on your project.

03Product Highlight
Elara Learn

An AI platform for building, refining, and learning from any course you can describe.

Describe a topic and Elara generates a full curriculum: modules, lessons, exercises, and a rubric. Edit any piece of it in plain language. Then learn the course with an AI tutor that answers questions in context and an AI grader that scores your work against the rubric, criterion by criterion. Upload your own documents and the courses are grounded in them through retrieval-augmented generation.

Visit elaralearn.com →
StackNext.js · Mastra · LangChain · Gemini · pgvectorStatusIn private beta
04About
Benjamin Cappello, founder of AstralWorks
// Founder

Ten years building products that ship.

AstralWorks is led by Benjamin Cappello, a senior product manager, builder, and technical operator with a decade of experience taking products from first sketch to production. From subscription eCommerce at scale to AI-native applications, growth platforms, and reporting tools used by thousands of operators daily.

Hands-on across the full stack of modern product work: discovery and strategy, technical PRDs, data modeling, ML and AI development, frontend implementation. The kind of operator who can run the discovery session, write the spec, prototype the solution, and ship the production build. Few people can do all of that. That's the studio.

The studio is the brand, not the founder. The work speaks. But if you need a name to call, it's Ben, and you'll be working with him directly, not an account manager.

Previously
AE StudioPlated / AlbertsonsPetPlate
LinkedIn →
05Contact

Bring the problem.
We'll bring the build.

Email · Direct line

Reach out about AI-native product engagements or fractional product leadership.