Our plan
Teach first. Then set the standard together.
Our aim, if we can earn it, is to be for the harness layer, the layer that connects AI to a business's work, what the best-practice standard-setting bodies of accounting and law are for those professions. We will get there in two stages, or not at all.
The harness layer
The harness layer is the layer that connects AI to a business's own work and records. It is where a model meets the business: the rules it works under, the queue it takes work from, the records it keeps, the tools it may use and the person it answers to.
Every business that uses AI seriously will have one, whether it designs it or not. Today each is built differently. We think it needs what bookkeeping gave business: a standard way of keeping the record, so that anyone who knows the standard can read any business's factory, and a business can take its records with it when it leaves. Andrew Warner, a CPA, calls this intelligent bookkeeping, intelligence accounting: harness layer intelligence bookkeeping standards.
Two stages
Where we start, and where we may go.
Stewardship
The mission matters more than the institution.
The Foundation is being set up to steward the factory standard. If a better-placed organisation emerges to carry it, we would rather the work go on well than stay with us.
We are loyal to the mission, not to the form. If a government body comes forward to set standards for the harness layer, we are open to it: we would evaluate working with it, working under it, or giving it our entire system. We are also open to handing our mantle of responsibility and our intellectual property to another non-profit, or to a private company that matches our mission and values. Until then, we stick to our principles.
If stewardship ever moves, no one is stranded: everyone keeps the copy they downloaded, and only the maintenance moves.
Where stage one stands
Today.
- BuildingThe factory standard is being defined. It is not published yet.
- TodaySix public repositories carry the MIT licence. See them.Measured 14 October 2026
- TodayThe Foundation does two things: it keeps free, open software maintained, and keeps the guides for it. What the Foundation does.
- TodayBackground articles explaining the ideas. Read them.
- PlannedDownloadable factory blueprints made to the standard.
- Later, maybeStage two. Nothing in it has started, and we do not act for any industry today.