The few terms we use
Glossary
Definitions for the handful of terms that carry weight on this site. Each is linked from where it’s used.
- Unreviewable fluency
- Work that is polished and apparently complete, but whose evidence, assumptions, uncertainty, branch choices, and human ownership cannot be efficiently inspected. Coined by Bud Bhattacharyya, July 2026. Canonical definition →
- Authority laundering
- You offer a tentative frame; the model develops it rather than testing it; your first guess comes back fluent and agreeing, wearing the appearance of corroboration.
- Premature artifacting
- A finished-looking draft arrives early, acquires gravity, and every turn after improves its words instead of reopening the question.
- Reviewer and producer
- The two roles in every piece of consequential work: the one who signs, and the one whose work is signed. At many firms, a partner and an associate. The roles are functional; one person can hold both.
- State of the Work
- The short account that crosses with a piece of work: what it rests on, what’s verified, what’s still live, who owns what, and where the reviewer’s judgment is needed. Generated by the producer’s AI from the same work at the same moment as the deliverable; corrected and certified by the producer. Not a transcript, not evidence, not a model’s certification of truth.
- Two cuts
- The deliverable and the State are two cuts of the same current understanding: one built to act on, one built to inspect.
- Native evidence
- The underlying property in the form where it can actually be seen: the bridge, the clause, the model, the data. Not a summary of it.
- Ownership
- The producer’s real relationship to a claim: owned and reconstructable; understood provisionally; accepted on evidence; relayed; not yet verified. Tested live, by asking the producer to explain, reconstruct, or update without the document in front of them.
- Partner Attention Brief
- What the reviewer’s AI prepares privately: the few questions and inspections worth the reviewer’s minutes. Never sent to the producer. It doesn’t decide, and it isn’t the AI that made the work.
- Warrant
- The contestable professional grounds on which reliance is based. The State makes the warrant legible; the reviewer’s decision establishes reliance.
- Reliance decision
- The reviewer’s bounded, human-owned statement of what can be relied on now, for what, under which conditions, and what happens next.
- Compounding
- Carrying forward the one distinction, changed state, or reopening condition that alters the next piece of work, not an archive. Pair-level first: the partner’s own team, then other partners.
- Installation
- Ten weeks; one partner and the people whose work they sign; live work inside the firm’s approved AI; trained human moves plus plain-text operating instructions for the models; no software. Installed means the team runs it without the founders.
A practical first step
Thirty minutes about the next piece of work you’ll have to sign.
Who’s bringing it, when, and whether that’s the team to start with. No deck, no demo, nothing to prepare.