The guides
Short guides on how AI actually behaves and what it means for personal details and for money work. Document Substrate is the system built around those answers: it reads a pile of documents, hides the personal details before they go anywhere, and turns the pile into answers and finished workpapers that show their working. Plain words, one picture per idea.
Start here
The ideas underneath. Read these first and the rest of the collection reads easily.
Five ideas that explain almost everything: messages, tokens, the context window, tools, and agents.
llm-fundamentals/eli5-llm-fundamentals.htmlWhat counts as a personal detail, where it goes wrong, and the two protections people mix up — a disguise and a promise.
pii/eli5-pii.htmlWhy a dice-rolling AI can be trusted with money work, explained simply: keep it out of the seat where sameness matters.
finance-determinism/eli5-finance-determinism.htmlDocument Substrate
Those ideas put to work: the system that turns a pile of documents into answers and finished workpapers.
The whole system explained simply, in eight big pictures — upload to workpaper, plus the practice manual and the safety gates.
how-it-works/eli5-how-it-works.htmlThe architecture explained simply: the pieces, the three shelves of memory, a question’s journey.
architecture/eli5-architecture.htmlThe privacy design explained simply: the promise, the three nets, the vault, and the honest edges.
privacy/eli5-privacy.htmlTeaching the system a new checking job, explained simply.
creating-a-workflow/eli5-creating-a-workflow.htmlHow answers stay good: the quality loop and the exam books, explained simply.
evals/eli5-evals.html