Method
Name the landscape precisely. Place specific bets. Build with design partners to find out which hold.
01
Naming the landscape
Emerging fields fail first at vocabulary. We reduce each to its load-bearing concepts: identity, capability, authority, trust, provenance, memory, command.
02
Placing bets
Every system starts as a bet specific enough to be wrong. We keep the failed ones: why a reasonable bet failed is most of what clients pay to know.
From observation to advisory
One real example, traced through each stage.
01
Observation
Something doesn’t fit.
Banks hesitate to let agents touch money, even when the agents perform well.
02
Definition
Precise words.
Trust is a record of predictable behavior under uncertainty.
03
Bet
Specific enough to be wrong.
Institutions will spend more proving agents trustworthy than making them smarter.
04
Working system
The smallest real test.
KnowYourAgent: verified agent identity, merchant verification, immutable reputation.
05
Advisory
Survivors become frameworks; failures, documented judgment.
Agent trust frameworks for banks preparing for agent payments.
Co-design
Banks, credit unions, and fintechs co-design every system. They bring constraints no lab can simulate and shape the roadmap.
01
Problem framing
Defined in your operational terms. You keep it either way.
02
Working prototype
Narrow and instrumented, on your workflows, built to answer one question.
03
Shared findings
What held, what broke, what it means for you. Failures reported as plainly as wins.