About the lab
Small on purpose.
Kahf is an independent software and AI lab in Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia. We keep the list of products short so each one gets everything it needs: the spec, the system, the edge cases, and the last ten percent most teams skip.
01The name
A cave, and three stories.
Kahf (كهف) means cave: the quiet place you withdraw to for work that matters, and leave with something finished. We write it Kahf in English and كهف in Arabic, and it sounds the same in both.
The name comes from Surah al-Kahf. Three of its stories shaped how the lab works, and each became a rule we keep.
- 01 · THE YOUTHS
A group of young people withdrew from the crowd to protect what they believed in.
Protect the work from noise.
- 02 · MUSA AND AL-KHIDR
A prophet asked to follow a teacher so he could learn from him, and kept learning when the lessons were hard to accept.
Stay a student.
- 03 · DHUL-QARNAYN
He built a barrier with knowledge, iron and the people's own effort, for people who needed protection.
Build what protects people.
02The mark
Refuge.
A solid hill with the mouth of a cave cut into it, and the sun outside, beside it. The hill is the shelter where the work gets done. The sun stays outside: light near the work, never glare on it.
- GRID
- 32 units, one shape and one circle
- HILL
- A steep face, then a long slope into the ground
- MOUTH
- Low and wide under the summit, an opening and not a door
- SUN
- Level with the summit, clear of the slope, always on the right
03Principles
What every product inherits.
Every product has its own colour and character. These six rules travel with all of them.
Quiet until it matters.
No streaks, no guilt, no badges. When everything is fine, the interface says nothing at all.
Proof on the surface.
Every state has a tone, an icon and a label. Answers cite their source and scores show their method.
Private by construction.
On the device first. No ads and no dark patterns. We say where your data lives, in plain words.
Two languages, one standard.
Arabic is written, never translated, and every layout reads both ways.
Built for your parents too.
48 px touch targets, text at 16 px or larger, layouts that hold at 200% text size, WCAG AA in both themes.
Nothing invented.
Real numbers, real screenshots, real model names. No stock photos, and no metric we cannot back up.
04How we work
Four gates, always in this order.
No product skips one. It is slower at the start, and faster everywhere after.
- 01 · SPEC
Written before it is built
A product spec and a software spec, so every decision has its reason on paper before any code exists.
- 02 · SYSTEM
A system before screens
Tokens and components first, then every screen, then a prototype, approved at each step.
- 03 · BUILD
In shippable steps
Small milestones, each one usable on its own, so nothing waits for one big launch.
- 04 · MEASURE
Judged on evidence
Evaluations and traces ship with the product, and every change is compared with the last.
05Founder
Ahmad AlModhayanأحمد المضيان
I started Kahf to build products whole: the models and the data underneath, the infrastructure that keeps them running, and the interface people actually touch.
I come from the side of technology where mistakes are expensive: executive reporting at Saudi Aramco, systems at JAAZL Industrial that were not allowed to stop, enterprise IT at Rezayat Group. Kahf is where that discipline becomes products people can hold.
- Focus
- Agentic systems, retrieval and memory, data platforms
- Disciplines
- Product design, software engineering, data
- Experience
- Saudi Aramco · JAAZL Industrial · Rezayat Group
- Certified
- Professional Scrum Master I
- Based in
- Al Khobar, Saudi Arabia
- Works in
- Arabic and English
06Capabilities
Where we go deep.
Four areas where the slow work is already done, each tied to a product or a result you can check.
Arabic AI that holds up
Search, answers and evaluation built for Arabic as people really type it: in dialect, with or without diacritics, in Arabizi, or switching to English mid-sentence.
Agents that ask first
Agents that act only through tools they are allowed to use, stop for a person before anything sensitive, and ship only after passing their evaluations.
Data leaders act on
Pipelines, governed records and reporting that industrial and enterprise teams make real decisions with.
Work with us.
Collaborations, technical work, or an early seat in a beta. Every message is read, and answered, by a person.