01 · Pattern
PATTERN
We scan hundreds of sources — news, policy documents, social, internal files. We strip the noise and bring together signals that touch each other. What were loose reports become a recognisable movement.
The challenge
Societal challenges are complex, fragmented and constantly in motion. The signals are there — in motions, media, reports, research and conversations — but no one can read them all, let alone connect them into a direction.
Murmur makes collective intelligence operational: software that listens to complex environments and turns the noise into pattern, perspective and direction. Not by talking louder, but by listening better — and always with source.
Collective intelligence
Schooling behaviour is perhaps the most beautiful form of collective intelligence we know in nature. Thousands of independent creatures move as one — without a leader, without a plan, without haste. Each fish responds to fewer than seven neighbours, through sight and through the lateral line (pressure waves in the water). That's enough. The pattern emerges on its own — adaptive, resilient, precise.
This coordination serves purposes. Feeding together: the school follows nutrient-rich currents no single fish would find. Defending together: under threat the school forms a bait ball — a compact sphere that shifts shape at lightning speed and confuses predators. Learning together: younger fish pick up behaviour from older ones, without formal instruction. Social, without hierarchy.
We build software that works this way. Not one central model that decides everything. No dashboard that recites numbers. But a system of small, specific, listening components that together form a school: broader sight than any single analyst could have, and faster than any single reporting cycle allows.
The same simple rules beneath the swarm produce, depending on the current, a different form each time. That is exactly how Murmur works: one underlying intelligence, many forms.
The engine
Beneath every Murmur application runs the same engine. We don't build a new system each time; we give the engine a new form.
The engine understands context — people, relationships, developments, knowledge — and lets it move. Every platform follows the same chain: from signal to direction, in three steps.
01 · Pattern
We scan hundreds of sources — news, policy documents, social, internal files. We strip the noise and bring together signals that touch each other. What were loose reports become a recognisable movement.
02 · Perspective
A pattern without interpretation is dangerous. So we translate it to your domain: what does this movement mean for your organisation, your region, your theme? Always with source, always traceable.
03 · Plan
Insight alone is not enough. Every platform proposes which action fits the pattern — a campaign, a letter to the board, an agenda item, a conversation with a partner. People decide, we illuminate.
Data sovereignty by design
The intelligence comes to your data — not the other way around.
Local processing, data sovereignty and governance are in the foundation, not a sticker added later. The model is chosen per task and per data sensitivity: a public news article may hit a frontier model; a sensitive file physically cannot reach a commercial cloud. For public organisations that is not a preference, but a requirement.
What the engine can do
The same intelligence, deployed along four lines — depending on the challenge.
01
Make complex dynamics and stakeholder relationships visible. Hundreds of sources become one living map of what is at play — with evidence, context and direction.
02
Organise communities and collaboration. The engine brings people, positions and signals together and keeps a shared conversation liveable and traceable.
03
Collect, make searchable and return — always with source. A knowledge base that grows with you instead of an archive that gathers dust.
04
Co-creation, studio mode and a built-in feedback loop. Because we use our own intelligence to build our products, a new form is up in weeks — not years.
Applications
The form differs per challenge. The intelligence beneath is the same.
Making societal undercurrents, developments and stakeholder relationships visible and operational into roles. The most mature platform under Murmur (working name: UrbanStakes), together with anti-discrimination bodies and municipalities.
View this platformFacilitate societal communities and organise the conversation between parties. Same engine, a different form — together with partners in, among others, Deventer and education (BNB).
Schedule an introductionUnlock, share and bring knowledge and perspectives into dialogue — as in the Gestolde Lava heritage platform, an in-house project with SDGHUB. From fragmented sources to a shared, searchable picture.
Schedule an introductionAlso born from the same engine
Smaller, sharp applications — often as a service for existing relationships. They show how far the engine reaches.
Real-time, multilingual communication that connects people across language barriers.
A private, sovereign knowledge base (Obsidian + local AI) that makes documents searchable without the cloud.
A research assistant that collects, orders and summarises sources — with traceable references.
Trusted by


Shared values
No vendor–client relationship. Co-architecture with the organisations that use it every day.
A platform for the public sector has value only when it is aligned with the needs of the organisations that use it, and with the dynamics of their domain. That cannot be delivered. That you build together.
Partner organisations are not clients purchasing software with us. They are co-architects who build the fabric with us — sources, taxonomies, context, interpretation. The platform therefore becomes richer for each new partner than for the previous one. That is not accidental. It is the business model. Societal challenges are too complex for one organisation, one vendor, one model. They demand shared intelligence — literally.
01 · Built together
Onboarding is not implementation; it is domain codification. Six to eight weeks in which we shape the taxonomy together, curate sources and define roles. Your organisational knowledge becomes part of the platform.
02 · Dogfooding & speed
We build our own products with our own intelligence. That feedback loop makes us fast: a new form for your challenge is up in weeks, not years — with broader scope than manual work ever reaches.
03 · Shared governance
Partner Council every quarter. Partners co-decide on the roadmap. Prioritisation based on societal impact, not growth KPIs. Transparent changelog: who asked what, what was built, what was not — and why.
Founding co-architects
Brengt sources, casework, anti-discrimination taxonomy.
Ontvangt trend visibility ahead of governance questions, evidence for policy conversations and awareness campaigns.
Brengt network of experts, professionals and domain specialists.
Ontvangt training context and casework fed by current events — a living curriculum, not a static programme.
Brengt local traction, network activation, implementation capacity.
Ontvangt impact portfolio and systems-thinking platform for their own public-sector work.
Join Is your organisation active in the public domain and working on complex societal themes, and do you recognise the Murmur approach? Let's schedule an exploratory conversation about what you would bring and receive as co-architect.
Trust
Compliance by architecture — not as a sticker added later.
For governments, sovereignty is not a preference but an obligation. EU AI Act, GDPR, NIS2, BIO — every regulation imposes requirements on how you handle data, models and decision-making. We have not translated those requirements into a checklist page. We have built them into the architecture.
L2 — Geheim
Persoonsgegevens, klachtdossiers, medische info. Draait op een zelf-gehost open model (Llama, Qwen, Mistral) via Ollama, binnen klant-infrastructuur of een MurmurWorks OnPremise-omgeving. Data verlaat de klantomgeving fysiek niet — ook niet voor embeddings of indexering. Strikt need-to-know toegang, altijd gelogd.
Eén platform. Vier veiligheidsklassen. De classificatie bepaalt automatisch welk AI-model de data mag raken. Geen instelling — architectuur.
Murmur | Works chooses the AI model per task and per data sensitivity. A public news article may hit a frontier model for maximum quality; a complaint file with special-category personal data physically cannot reach a commercial cloud. The choice is not a setting — it is architecture.
How it worksHuman oversight, risk management, technical documentation, audit log — the Act's obligations are built in, not bolted on. Working on a high-risk application? We activate the heavier set (conformity assessment, EU database registration).
Our Act positioningYour data stays on Dutch or EU soil. We are processor, you are controller — with a standard data processing agreement per art. 28. Extra-sensitive data is stored strictly separated, with its own security. All data is encrypted — at rest and in transit. When a citizen requests erasure, we actually erase everything: raw data, derived analyses, copies. Your privacy counsel receives a ready-to-use DPIA template that saves hours.
Request DPIA templateEvery outgoing action requires human approval. Every AI call is logged — which document, which model, which prompt, which response, which classification. Stored immutably, reported per quarter in anonymised form.
Sample transparency reportWhat we don't have yet: ISO 27001 (in preparation, Q4 2026), 24/7 SOC (on-call in place), continuous pen-testing (currently annual). We publish our gap-analysis openly — more transparent than a certificate logo that doesn't exist.
Domains
Local and regional traction, carried by shared intelligence. See what is moving in your area — linked to casework, taxonomy and context drawn from the whole network.
Read more for ADBsFrom 800 messages a week to one meaningful overview. For policymakers, strategists and information directors.
Read more for municipalitiesA single view across all connected municipalities. Multi-tenant, role-based, screenable per municipality.
Read more for regionsManifesto
A society talks constantly.
The question is not whether there is a signal, but whether anyone is listening. Every motion, every media report, every complaint, every conversation — together they form a continuous fabric of meaning. We build the infrastructure to make that fabric legible, without flattening it.
Loose numbers are not knowledge.
Knowledge emerges only when signals touch each other. One data point is noise; ten data points in motion reveal a trend; a hundred data points in context become a story. That story — with the source per sentence — is what policymakers actually need to act.
No single analyst can read a thousand sources.
A swarm of analysts can. Not because one model is smarter than a person, but because a collective of small, specific listeners together covers more than any single central reader ever could. The smartest design choice is to distribute, not centralise.
Direction matters more than prediction.
We show where the centre of gravity sits now, and where it is moving. Prediction creates false certainty; direction creates room to act. In complex public systems the question 'where is the movement' is always more useful than 'what will happen tomorrow'.
Every platform is an instrument, not an oracle.
People decide. We illuminate. A platform that draws conclusions without source or context amplifies the problem it should be solving. Our role is preparatory work — connecting sources, showing patterns, offering proposals — without ever taking over control. That stays with you.
Software for a sector cannot be delivered to that sector.
You must build it with that sector. An ADB recognises a different signal than a municipality; a policymaker asks something different than a researcher. Only through co-architecture can software emerge that listens to a domain instead of talking over it.
Openness as the foundation of trust.
Transparency is not optional — it is the architecture. Every AI call is traceable, every source findable, every processing logged. We publish our choices so partners, regulators and citizens can verify what is happening — not as marketing, but as the basis for well-founded trust.
Organisation
Murmur is built by a small team with years of experience in public sector, AI engineering and societal research. We work from the Netherlands. We publish our choices. We choose small good products over large loud ones.
Interest
We happily schedule a 30-minute demo or exploratory conversation. Tell us briefly what you are working on — we align with your domain and your questions.
No sales script. No polished slides. A conversation.
Prefer email directly?
hallo@murmurworks.nl