# What a company brain is _made of_. Twelve parts, as designed, in plain words. Every brain we build is built to this design, sized to the company it serves. What runs today in our own is set out, tested and with its gaps, in [how we run ours](/how-we-run-ours/). § 01 On one page The design, drawn once. What runs today in ours is the same drawing, marked, on [how we run ours](/how-we-run-ours/#today). ## Twelve parts, and what passes between them. Your systems come in through connectors and are kept in the record. A question comes in through its door, from an AI tool or from a person; what the asker may see is checked first, and the answer is found in the record, in your own terms. Acting goes through a second door, with approvals. Testing and upkeep run under all of it, and the work before anything is built comes first. The twelve parts as one system. Read left to right: what comes in, what it knows, and who and what uses it. --- § 02 What it knows Everything else can be rebuilt from the record. The record cannot be rebuilt from anything else. ## The record, the way in to it, and the part your people write. 01 · the truth store and write pipeline ### The record Everything the company knows, kept as documents people can read, with a full history of every change. Nothing goes in unchecked, and everything else in the brain can be rebuilt from it. 02 · the index and retrieval engine ### Finding the answer Turns a question into an answer with its sources, or into a plain “I can’t answer that well”. A question that needs an exact count goes to a checked query on the system that holds the numbers. 03 · the company manual and authority contract ### The company manual The part your people write: what your terms mean, who owns each definition, which system is the authority for each figure, and the decisions on record. It is useful from the first day. --- § 03 Who and what can reach it Controls are infrastructure, not prompts. ## The doors in, what comes through them, and who may use them. 04 · the access layer ### The way in for AI tools The door your AI tools come through, on the same terms for every tool. Reading and suggesting go through one door and taking actions through another, so what an AI tool reads and what it may do are kept apart. 05 · connectors and signal routing ### Connectors Material comes in only from sources someone accountable has named, each with an owner and a date to review it, along one route that notices duplicates, updates and contradictions. 06 · identity and entitlements ### Who may see and do what People, agents and scheduled jobs each hold explicit permissions, and every permission expires unless it is renewed. The brain only gathers what the person asking is allowed to see. --- § 04 Doing the work An agent acts only through actions agreed in advance. ## Where people use it, and what AI may do with it. 07 · agents and actions ### Agents and actions Agents that carry out work, but only through actions agreed in advance, each with limits and approvals and a named owner. Some actions are never available to any agent. 08 · surfaces and the panel ### Where people use it An assistant inside the tools people already use, a dashboard, a readable view of the record, and the screens for approving, correcting and adding to it. --- § 05 Keeping it trustworthy A check that has never been seen to fail has not been checked. ## Tested on your questions, kept current, and started properly. 09 · evaluation and assurance ### Testing it on your own questions A test set made of your company’s own real questions, run regularly. How often it answers is reported next to how often it is right, and every agreed definition is checked against its source. 10 · operations and lifecycle ### Keeping it running The upkeep that stops it going quietly out of date, a plan for when something goes wrong, who answers when it does, and what happens over the brain’s life, including leaving. 11 · the fleet and install layer ### Keeping every brain current How the brains we look after stay up to date: each one reports which version it runs, fixes reach all of them, and nothing passes from one company’s brain to another’s. 12 · discovery instruments ### Before anything is built The work that comes first: the question audit, a check of how sound your data and documents are, an early end-to-end connection test, and the approvals worth starting early. --- § 06 Where to start Part twelve comes first, for a reason. ## It starts before anything is built. A discovery call, then [the question audit](/question-audit/): about two hundred real questions from your business, each given a written verdict, so you know what a company brain would and would not answer for you before any of the other eleven parts is built. [What a company brain is, in plain words](/company-brain/). [book a discovery call →](mailto:hello@somai.studio?subject=Book%20a%20discovery%20call)