A ship carrying no cargo is sailing toward the future
On 5 July 2025, a domain named xuzhoulab.cn was registered.
The registrant had just turned 12; it was the second day after graduating from primary school. That day, CaelLab was founded.
A year later, this youth technology team, with the mission “Exploring the frontiers of the future · Carrying boundless new life”, already has a complete online infrastructure, more than ten projects of its own, several game works nominated for competitions, and a creator community that keeps running.
Who CaelLab is
CaelLab (caellab.com) is a youth technology team focused on innovation in programming. Its core ideas are “open, collaborative, innovative” — setting no walls, holding nothing back, and not confining itself to any single track.
The two characters in its name come from the “empty boat bumps a boat” story in the Shan Mu chapter of Zhuangzi: when an empty boat drifts into yours, the person in the other boat does not get angry, because there is no one aboard. An empty boat means being open and clear, free of contention, and yet always moving forward.
That is exactly the underlying character of this team: not fighting for fame or profit, just purely making things and moving forward.
From one person’s idea to a group’s cause
In July 2025, founder Yunyun founded CaelLab on the second day after finishing primary school, starting out as a sub-brand of Guoyuan Programming Studio. A month later, the team decided to leave Guoyuan and move into independent operation.
Independence means losing shelter, and it also means gaining freedom. CaelLab chose the latter.
In November 2025, the team completed its first brand upgrade, changing its name from XuZhouLab to CaelLab and switching its main domain to caellab.com. The same month, CaelLab announced its withdrawal from the CCW community and shifted its strategic focus to building its own platform.
After that, the official site, forum, resource center, wiki, unified authentication system, site monitoring… a series of infrastructure went online one after another. CaelLab was no longer a content creator lodging on someone else’s platform, but an independent organization with a complete technology stack.
Infrastructure: not “good enough”, but “thorough to the end”
The most obvious difference between CaelLab and other similar teams is its outsized investment in “infrastructure”.
CaelLabID is a unified identity authentication system covering all sub-services, supporting TOTP two-factor authentication, device management, IP location display, recovery codes and open platform APIs. Users describe it as “like using Google”. (See: CaelLabID documentation)
Light Ark Wiki records the team’s development history, project documentation and technical details; it is both an internal knowledge base and a window into its transparency.
XMUER Forum is the daily gathering place for members and followers, carrying technical discussions, project feedback and community interaction. The team’s official announcements are currently published mainly there.
SiteLop is a general-purpose tool site with a wide range of features. It not only provides WHOIS lookups and domain change history tracking, but also has a built-in Minecraft server plaza that can monitor player count fluctuations in real time and record historical data. All features are free and run as a public service, the data belongs to the team itself and does not depend on third-party services, reflecting CaelLab’s commitment to data independence and practical tools.
Together these facilities form CaelLab’s digital skeleton. The skeleton cannot be seen, but without it the flesh cannot hold up.
Portfolio: games, tools and exploration
CaelLab’s public projects cover several fields.
Games: the 2025 Summer GameJam work “The Celebration of the Fifth Day” received a single-award nomination; the 2026 Winter GameJam work “Song of the Twelve Teachings” was completed within 14 days; in-house projects such as “AreYouOK?” and “Endless Corridor” cover genres from platformers to psychological horror. In May 2026, the team set up a dedicated game development branch, CaelLabGameTS.
Tools: GPCL is an Electron-based Minecraft launcher that reached version 1.4.3 within two weeks, supports offline and premium dual-mode login, automatic Java completion and the three major mod loaders, and has been open-sourced on GitHub. Tools such as XMUER Browser, CAL AI and XMUER Coding Packager cover scenarios including browsers, AI applications and packaging works.
Platform: in June 2026, CaelLab launched its own programming community, XMUER Coding Community, further expanding its presence in the field of programming education.
Open source, licenses and public value
CaelLab has published its own open-source licenses CaelLab BY-SA Code and CaelLab BY-SA Content, balancing open sharing with protection of rights.
GPCL has been open source since 28 May 2026, with its source code hosted on GitHub and open to community contributions. Other projects are being opened up one after another.
Open source is not just making code public; it is an attitude: what we make, we welcome everyone to improve together. We do not hide things, and we are not afraid of being examined — because being examined is itself a form of growth.
Controversy, growth and candour
CaelLab’s development has not been all smooth sailing.
The process of leaving Guoyuan Programming Studio in August 2025 was accompanied by the departure of some members and public controversy. In November of the same year, CaelLab issued a legal statement on brand infringement (see: Statement on Guoyuan Programming Studio), and after the other party removed the infringing content, CaelLab announced it would suspend pursuing liability. The team also acknowledges that the original official blog site (CaelLab X) did not perform as expected, and that it adjusted direction in May 2026; the team’s main information channels have now moved to the forum and caellab.org.
These events have all been recorded in the public materials, without deliberate concealment.
For a youth team less than two years old, having victories and setbacks written into its timeline at the same time is itself a posture of growth — not packaging itself as perfect, but allowing the good and the bad to be seen at the same time.
Closing words
As of mid-2026, CaelLab has 74,000 followers on Bilibili, about 10 core members and an active community of about 18 people. The scale is small, but the density of output and the depth of collaboration exceed expectations.
The charm of the name lies in this: an empty boat carries no cargo, but it can carry people. It carries no heavy burden, but it can carry dreams. It carries no profit-seeking, but it can carry passion.
How far can a ship that carries no cargo go? Unknown. But it is already sailing, and still moving forward.
If you are interested in technical creation, you are welcome to take a look. CaelLab’s official site is caellab.com, where all projects and services can be found. For the team’s latest news and discussions, visit forum.xmuer.online. Or you can just pass by occasionally and watch this small boat sail on from a distance.
Exploring the frontiers of the future · Carrying boundless new life