TimeWalk

Website: timewalk.org Status: Active (primary project as of 2026) Team: Ted Barnett (founder), Helm (AI technical cofounder), Craig Spitzer (Cobblestone Labs)

Overview

TimeWalk is Ted Barnett's current primary project — a large-scale initiative at the intersection of virtual production, historical visualization, and immersive technology. The project aims to let people experience historical places and moments through real-time 3D environments.

Early Vision (2015)

As early as 2015, Ted was already building a pilot in Unity, describing it as "a 3D Wikipedia called TimeWalk." The initial pilot locations were:

Mill Valley, 1915
San Francisco, 1906

The vision: walk through historical locations as they were — go back in time. Ted was experimenting with the tools and pipeline to build historical environments, trying to figure out the business model: games? Licensing cities to game companies? Historical societies?

He connected it to his interest in filmmaking: "Movies are going to be these experiences you walk into." He saw VR and 3D environments as the next generation of the digital medium — not as big as the web itself, but "big enough and influential enough."

At the time, Ted was also experimenting with quantified self, VR headsets, and Arduino/Raspberry Pi gadgets — casting around for which emerging technology deserved his focus. TimeWalk won.

The origin parallels When.com: "This is just like when I built the calendar — I was futzing around with it with my friends, something I personally wanted, and then I figure out where's the market opportunity."

Technology

The project started in Unity (2015) and later moved to Unreal Engine 5 for the NYC build (2024). Development work happens on a dedicated Windows PC (PC-5090) with GPU capabilities for UE rendering. Helm, an AI agent built on the same OpenClaw infrastructure as Gabriel, serves as a technical cofounder — not just an executor but an active collaborator who challenges priorities and proposes architectural decisions.

Connection to Career

TimeWalk synthesizes many threads from Barnett's career: - Virtual production skills from NYU's Martin Scorsese program - Storytelling instincts honed at Byliner.com - AI integration experience from SmartDeco.ai and Boswell - Product vision developed across decades of company-building - The "too early" pattern — Ted is acutely aware of timing risk from EO, When.com, and Byliner.com; with TimeWalk, he's betting the technology has finally caught up

Cobblestone Labs

Cobblestone Labs, co-founded with Craig Spitzer, is the organizational vehicle for TimeWalk development.