Prahas has been helped by people, institutions and tools that gave their time, their knowledge or their assistance while it was being built. This page is where we say so.
Prahas was not built in a straight line. What follows is not a list of partners or sponsors. It is a list of people and places that helped us question an assumption, find a mistake, build something, rebuild it, and keep going.
Prahas was designed, argued over, tested and debugged with the help of several AI systems. None of them built Prahas and none of them are partners. They helped one person think more carefully than he could have alone, and they caught a great many mistakes that would otherwise have reached a customer.
Opus
For the building, the arguing, and for finding its own errors and saying so.
Fable
For the work done in the long stretches, and for keeping the thread.
ChatGPT
For the early shape of things, and for asking the awkward question first.
Grok
For a second opinion that was rarely the comfortable one.
Sonnet
For the careful passes, and for the patience of going again.
While building the knowledge behind Plant Doctor, Growing Guide and Plant Match, we wrote to botanical gardens, herbaria and universities around the world. We asked permission before taking anything, and we said plainly that we are a company. Most letters went unanswered, which is entirely fair — none of these people owed a small company in Punjab a reply.
Some answered anyway. We are grateful to them.
Kevin Houck
Plant Records Manager, National Tropical Botanical Garden. Thank you for the permission, and for pointing us at a better route than the one we proposed.
Daria M.
Plant Information, Missouri Botanical Garden. Thank you for a clear yes, and for telling us plainly which parts of Plant Finder would not suit an Indian garden.
Dr Alastair Robinson
Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria — VicFlora. Thank you for taking the time to understand exactly what we intended before answering, and for the API you volunteered.
Jessica Teo
National Parks Board, Singapore — Flora & Fauna Web. Thank you for your guidance on how the resource may be used.
Serena Lee
Senior Manager (Herbarium), National Parks Board, Singapore. Thank you for reading an unexpected letter and for putting it in the right hands.
Jennie Tang
National Parks Board, Singapore. Thank you for following it through and making sure nothing was lost between colleagues.
Bazilah Mohd Ibrahim
National Parks Board, Singapore. Thank you for helping while covering for colleagues who were away — a small kindness that cost you time you did not have.
Flora e Funga do Brasil
Jardim Botânico do Rio de Janeiro. Thank you for explaining the licence carefully, and then for correcting our citation format when we got it wrong.
Horto Didático de Plantas Medicinais
Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Thank you for your permission, and for the trust behind it.
Botanic Gardens Conservation International
Thank you for guidance we did not ask for and badly needed — on how to approach an entire field of institutions without wasting their time or ours.
New York Botanical Garden — Plant Records
Thank you for taking the time to reply. NYBG could not assist with this project, and a clear, courteous no is worth more than silence.
Some helped us with code. Some challenged an idea we were fond of. Some answered an unexpected email from a small company in India when they had no obligation to. Some simply pointed us in the right direction and went back to their own work.
We remember all of it.
Naming someone here is a thank-you and nothing more. It is not a partnership, an endorsement, or a claim that anyone approved of what we built. Where an institution has asked for particular wording or attribution, that wording appears with the data itself — this page does not stand in for it.