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WERK.J01 · Jarvis operation reg. J.100 · daily cycle, sources, logbook, boundaries

How does an AI organisation brain work?

An organisation brain is not a chatbot or a note-taking app. It is the layer between your assignment and the AI that carries it out: it selects the context, passes the work to the right role, holds back the result until a human approves it, and only then writes it back to memory. This page walks through that cycle, including its boundaries.

from assignment to approval, with every step available for review
Gianluca, who builds Jarvis and uses it himself every day
image · the person describing how it works uses it himself every day
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Section 01 · The daily cycle

One assignment, five phases

Everything below on this page is connected to this cycle

An assignment comes in, receives context, is delegated, passes by a human and only then becomes part of the memory

The four visible steps are shown on the Jarvis hub; here, writing back counts as a fifth phase, because that is precisely where the difference lies between a smart chat and a brain that will still know tomorrow what was decided today. The example below is schematic: it shows the form of the cycle, not a real customer assignment.

FIG.01: The daily cycle as a terminal[#----] sheet 1/5
jarvis · organisation brain · schematic example
you > write the monthly message for this month's customers
[01 assignment] recorded with objective, desired output and ownera human or a connected AI prepares the assignment # a question without an objective first prompts a question in return
[02 context] only sources permitted for this role and scopethe server first filters by organisation, role and objective, and only then ranks by relevance # retrieval is also authorisation
[03 delegation] research, content, sales or support takes it onthe role receives minimal permissions and delivers a draft with supporting evidence...
[04 approval] a human reviews the exact versionWAIT FOR APPROVALuntil then, it remains a draft and nothing is sent out # no email, no publication, no payment
[05 storage] approved knowledge becomes memory, the rest does notthe item is given a source, scope, version, validity, status and approval, and the entire process is recorded in the logbook
[#####] 5/5 cycle closed · the next assignment starts with what has been recorded here
the loop, in brief: recorded → context determined → delegated → human approval → stored · what enters the logbook during each phase is set out in the logging protocol
5W.01 · phases in the daily cycle
6W.02 · fields per memory item
5W.03 · statuses per memory item
0W.04 · meters on prompts or tokens
W.01 to W.04 · product properties, not results, usage figures or customer numbers.
$ cat 01-wat-een-organisatiebrein-is.md
DOC.01

What an organisation brain is, and what it is not

In short, such an organisation brain is a shared, controlled memory for your company, plus the orchestration of who and what is allowed to draw from it. It stores the things currently held in people's heads, chats and separate documents: how you work, what you agree, which version applies, who approved something and why an earlier choice was reversed. And it passes that knowledge to the AI tools you already use, instead of each tool maintaining its own incomplete version of the story. Jarvis is our implementation of this: a knowledge and orchestration layer between your people, your sources and ChatGPT, Claude and Codex.

It is useful to first say what it is not, because the term borders on three things that closely resemble it

It is not a note-taking app. A second brain in the personal sense, like those people build in note-taking tools, belongs to one person and has no roles, no approval and no demonstrable audit trail. An organisation brain is shared by definition, and within a month, shared memory without permissions and provenance becomes a cluttered attic.

It is not a new chatbot.

Your AI tools remain in place and you keep your own subscriptions; the brain sits alongside them and supplies them with information. And it is not a search index of your files. A search index finds documents. A brain knows which document applies, since when, to whom, and who determined that.

The difference lies in that final word: validity

Almost any AI setup can retrieve text. Almost none can explain why that text is true now. That difference is precisely what an organisation brain adds, and it is also why the rest of this page is about metadata, statuses and approval rather than smart answers. The intelligence comes from the language model you already have. The reliability must come from somewhere else.

If you want to test the idea without software first, you can

The free company-brain template is the manual version: a single fillable file that tells your AI who your company is, what you provide and how you work. That works surprisingly well until several people start writing in it and no one knows which version applies any more. From that point onwards, you no longer need a file but a system, and that is where this page begins.

$ cat 02-waarom-elke-sessie-leeg-begint.md
DOC.02

Why every AI session starts empty

Anyone who works with AI every day knows the pattern. This morning, you explain in ChatGPT how your quotations are structured, what tone you use with customers and which margin you never reveal. This afternoon, you open Claude for another piece of work and that conversation starts from zero. Tomorrow, your colleague uses the same tool and explains the same things again, but slightly differently. Two different truths do not arise because someone is careless, but because there is no place where the truth belongs.

There are three causes, and they compound one another

The first is the session boundary: by design, a chat is a conversation, not an archive. What it contains is context, not knowledge. The second is the tool boundary: memory features offered by the tools themselves reside in that single account and that single tool, so as soon as you switch tools or a colleague joins in, they disappear. The third is the human boundary: most of what a company knows has never been written down. It is in the head of the person who devised it, and that works until that person goes on holiday.

Skills solve part of that, and we share them for free: a skill is an instruction file that gives your AI a consistent working method for one task

But a skill teaches the AI how to do something, and that is different from remembering what applies in your organisation. The skill is neither the engine nor the memory: it says how a quotation should be structured, not which rates you charge or which customer received an exception last month. Those two layers need each other. The skill teaches the AI, the brain is where the memory lives.

The consequence of that empty start is not just lost time

The main problem is that you can never say with certainty what an AI based something on when it wrote it on your behalf. As long as that remains the case, you can use AI for drafts, but not for work for which someone is accountable. The entire structure below exists to restore that certainty, and this comes at the expense of speed in exactly one place: approval. That trade-off was deliberate. The theory underpinning this design, from stateless models and context rot to retrieval and MCP, is explained in detail in how an AI brain forgets nothing between chats.

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Section 02 · The anatomy

One sentence, six fields around it

This is the brain's smallest building block and, at the same time, its most important one

A memory item is not the sentence itself, but the sentence plus everything needed to assess whether you may trust it

Without those six fields, a memory item is a claim; with those fields, it is a verifiable fact. The content below is a schematic example, not a real client rule.

FIG.02: The anatomy of a memory item[##---] sheet 2/5
memory itemschematic example · six mandatory fields
textA quotation remains valid for thirty days.on its own, this sounds clear, and that is precisely the danger
sourcevoorwaarden.md · owner: managementfile, system, owner and a reference you can open
scopeorganisation · applies to sales and quotationswho it applies to: organisation, team, role, client or process
versionv3 · reason: period shortened after review · previous version retainedcontent hash, reason for the change and the version it replaced
validityeffective from: 01-07-2026 · review: in six monthseffective date, expiry date and time of reassessment
statusactive · not: proposal, in review, conflicting or replacedone of five states, and only active items count towards answers
approvalauthorised actor · timestamp · exact version v3who approved it, when, and for which immutable version
# without these fields, a system can answer, but cannot explain why the answer currently applies
# THE HONEST EVIDENCE · NOT A DEMO

We use this system ourselves every day. Every agent session, every task and every decision is logged in it and can be reviewed. Our own product documentation, pricing files and release status are stored in that brain and published from it, so this explanation has the same source as the one we work with ourselves. If a page differs from that source, the page is wrong. The part that is not yet finished appears below, explicitly identified.

$ cat 03-hoe-kennis-binnenkomt.md
DOC.03

How knowledge enters

Knowledge enters through four routes, and the difference between those routes determines how strict the subsequent gate is. The first route is the person who records something: someone writes down an agreement, a rate or a working method and submits it to the brain. The second is a source that you connect: a document, a system or a file that the owner designates as the authoritative location.

The third is what emerges from the work

During an assignment, an AI role discovers something that is apparently true, for example that a client prefers to be updated by telephone, and proposes it as a memory item. The fourth is a proposal from outside your own brain: we can offer generic product knowledge or an improved working method.

That fourth route warrants a separate sentence, because it contains a boundary that many systems do not have

Our superbrain contains generic product knowledge, policies and proven patterns. A client brain contains the sources, people, rules and context of one organisation. Improvements can be proposed from the top down, but client content does not automatically flow in the other direction and is not used to train anything. The precise intent behind that separation is explained in the in-depth article on the superbrain and client brains.

What all four routes have in common: nothing enters as ready-made truth

A submitted item receives proposal status. It is immediately supplied with its six fields, because a proposal without a source cannot be assessed and is therefore returned rather than stored. Its status changes only after approval, and only then does the item count when the brain provides context for a subsequent assignment. That is why the memory grows slowly, and that is precisely the intention: a brain that swallows everything it encounters becomes unusable within a quarter.

There is a second filter as well, and it may be the least intuitive part of the entire design

When the brain retrieves context for an assignment, relevance is not the first criterion. It first filters by organisation, role, classification and purpose, and only then ranks by content relevance. A source may match the question perfectly and still not be permitted for the agent, the person or the task. Being able to find something and being allowed to use it are two different things, and applying them in that order is the difference between a useful assistant and a leak.

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Section 03 · The gate

From proposal to active

Between entering and counting, there is one gate, and that gate is a person. In this system, an approval is not a button but a recorded event: an authorised person approves an exact, immutable version, with a consequence that can occur only once. The five requirements at the bottom of the figure are the properties that make an approval usable as evidence.

FIG.03: The status gate of a memory item[###--] sheet 3/5
STATUS · PROPOSAL Submitted, not yet valid The item exists, can be found and does not count towards answers. A proposal without a source or owner does not progress beyond this column.
STATUS · IN REVIEW A person assesses the exact version The reviewer sees what is changing, where it came from and what the consequence is. For higher-impact changes, the policy may require two reviewers or a waiting period.
STATUS · ACTIVE Applies, and counts as context From now on, every connected AI uses this item. The approval remains attached to it: the actor, timestamp and version can be retrieved later.
Side path: conflictingIf two sources say different things, that is not a problem to be averaged away. The conflict is made visible as a review task, together with the sources, instead of producing a confident answer.
Side path: replacedA new version does not displace the old one, but changes its status to replaced. The previous text, the reason for the change and the approver are retained, because otherwise you cannot reconstruct a correction later.
[1]exact version · the approval points to an immutable content version, not to a text field that can still change afterwards
[2]authorisation · the server checks the role, organisation and task scope, not the button in the interface
[3]deliberate intent · the reviewer sees the action, destination and risk before approving
[4]idempotent consequence · the same approval cannot accidentally cause two emails or two payments
[5]audit and revocation · the timestamp, actor, reason and any revocation are recorded

There is a pitfall that we explicitly identify because it can break any approval system: approval fatigue. If the system asks for a click at every small step, people start clicking blindly and the gate becomes a formality. The solution is not less control but better grouping: define low-risk steps in advance as policy, show only decisions with a real consequence, and bring exceptions to the fore. The detailed reasoning appears in human approval.

$ cat 04-bronherkomst.md # why provenance is not a luxury
DOC.04
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Section 04 · The log

Enough evidence, as little content as possible

Logging is what enables you to establish afterwards what happened on your behalf

At the same time, a log that copies everything is a second copy of your trade secrets in a place no one thinks about

The principle is therefore clear-cut: record who did what and when, and which version was involved, but do not duplicate the content. The lines below are a schematic example of what such a trail looks like, not a real log file.

FIG.04: jarvis tail audit.log[####-] sheet 4/5
$ jarvis tail audit.log● append-only
09:12:04TASKactor: human · organisation: acme · route: /work · objective: monthly update # request-id recorded
09:12:05CONTEXT3 sources permitted, 2 rejected due to scope # which ones, with version and owner
09:12:41AGENTrole: content · tool action: prepare draft · duration: 36s · status: complete
09:13:02BLOCKEDexternal sending attempt · reason: no approval yet # draft remains a draft
10:04:19APPROVALactor: authorised user · version: v7 · result: send, once only
10:04:20MEMORYitem v3 → replaced · new item active · reason recorded
10:41:57EXPORTactor: administrator · secrets masked · data from other organisations excluded
[+] RECORDED
  • request-id, time, actor, organisation and route
  • changes to authentication, roles, connectors and subscription entitlements
  • versions of sources, memory items, agents and approvals
  • tool action, result status, duration and error category
  • support access, export, deletion and incident status
[-] NOT RECORDED BY DEFAULT
  • full prompts and full answers
  • the content of documents
  • API keys and tokens
  • payment card details
  • special categories of personal data

If content logging is nevertheless temporarily required for an incident, that is not a silent exception: that logging is assigned a purpose, an owner, a time limit, an access policy and proof of deletion. Critical audit events are intended to be append-only and time-synchronised, only authorised roles are given access, and an export masks secrets and excludes data from other organisations. The full protocol, including the retention periods, is set out in the logging protocol, and what happens during an incident is set out in the incident process.

$ cat 05-het-spoor-teruglezen.md
DOC.05
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Section 05 · The boundaries

What Jarvis deliberately does not do

The boundaries below are product features, not small print. They get in the way at precisely those moments when a system without boundaries seems faster, and that is the point. Each rule is a request you could make, followed by what happens.

FIG.05: boundaries.conf[#####] sheet 5/5
boundaries.confproduct rules, not terms imposed afterwards
send that message to the client immediately, I will read it laterBLOCKEDNo silent external action. Email, publication, contract or payment does not go out without the agreed human approval. The draft remains ready, while sending waits.
use what you learnt from that other clientBLOCKEDNo mixing of knowledge between client brains. What is in one brain stays there. There is no free exchange, and client content is not used for training.
just save this as truth, I will look up the source laterSENT BACKNo memory item without provenance. Without a source, owner, scope and validity, it remains a proposal. The brain would rather leave the question open than store a claim that nobody can verify.
those two sources contradict each other, just pick oneREVIEW TASKNo smoothing over conflicts. When sources conflict, a review task is created with the sources attached, rather than a confident answer that happens to choose one of them.
charge me for last month's AI usageDOES NOT EXISTNo billing per prompt, token or call. We do not put a meter on your usage. Your model costs run through your own subscription with your own provider, and that subscription remains yours.
apply that improvement of yours to our entire brain straight awayAS A PROPOSALNo automatic adoption from above. We can offer an improvement, but your organisation decides. A proposal only becomes active after passing through the same gate as all other knowledge.
just give me the logs with the full prompts in themRESTRICTEDNo content logging by default. The log proves who did what and on which version, and does not duplicate your documents and prompts. A temporary exception during an incident is given a purpose, time limit and proof of deletion.
you are certified, aren't you, just add thatREFUSEDNo claiming certification that does not exist. There is no certificate, and citing someone else's standard is no substitute. Until there is valid external certification with a defined scope, we will not market it that way either.
$ cat 06-wat-nog-niet-af-is.md # release gates
DOC.06

What is not yet finished

Jarvis is a preview, and that is not modesty but a status. What is there is a working interface containing the core interactions: assignments, approvals, memory proposals, knowledge reviews, inbox, task statuses, subscription changes and the five-step onboarding process. And we identify what is not yet there just as precisely, because a product page that shows only the attractive part is exactly the kind of source we would reject in the brain itself.

Not yet connected or not yet demonstrated:

production authentication, the negative test set demonstrating that data can never leak between organisations through a client parameter, the OAuth connections to external tools, the automated payment flow, the provisioning of client brains and production observability. This also includes exercises that have yet to take place: an incident, recovery, export and deletion exercise, and an external security review. That list is why we currently present Jarvis as a preview rather than a finished product: we do not put a promise on display when its evidence is still sitting on the shelf. Precisely what is still missing for each item is stated on the security page.

The pricing reflects the same honesty.

The plans you see below are the current proposition, undergoing validation. Final amounts, VAT treatment and the payment provider integration will still be formally approved and tested end to end before launch. Automatic payment is therefore still disabled: you will not see a payment screen for a process that has not yet been completed behind the scenes. Choosing a plan and starting independently is the route we are building, and we will only open it once the payment, invoicing and withdrawal chain works correctly.

What is already correct: the demo is the real interface with fictional sample data and works without an account, the pricing model without a usage meter is a verifiable property rather than a promise, and the working method shown on this page is the one we ourselves use every day. The current status of each gate is available in machine-readable form in the documentation, and the underlying materials are in the trust centre, including documents that are still labelled as drafts there.

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Section 06 · The entry ladder

Try it yourself first, then start independently

You can start using Jarvis yourself, yet there is still an order below. An organisation brain that does not suit your situation is costly in a way that has nothing to do with the price. The sequence below helps with that: first the free template, then the demo, and only then a conversation.

$ cat entry-ladder.shthree ascending rungs
entry-ladder.shfree · look · start
RUNG 1 · FREE
available today
The company brain template: the manual version A single fillable file that teaches your AI who your company is, what you provide and how you work. The free template is the paper-based predecessor of everything on this page: the same idea, without roles, without approval and without a log. Works in Claude, ChatGPT, Codex and Cursor, and you do not need anything from us to use it. $ download bedrijfsbrein.md · 0 euros · no account
RUNG 2 · LOOK
without an account
The interactive demo: the real interface If the template becomes unmanageable because several people are writing in it, you will want to see what this looks like as a system. The demo is the working Jarvis interface with fictional sample data: approve a draft, assess a knowledge proposal, see where the payment gate remains closed. The explanation for each screen is in the platform tour. $ open /jarvis/app · fictional data · no registration
RUNG 3 · START
independently or together
Start independently, or first tailor it together You choose a plan and start independently. If business agreements or customisation are involved, we go through four things together: the use case, individual, team or multiple brains, the plan, the sources and AI accounts required, and the agreements concerning terms, privacy role and price. If it is not a good fit, we will say so, and the template from rung 1 is then a perfectly good final destination. $ start independently or have a conversation · automatic activation is still disabled
# the rungs are ascending but not compulsory: rung 1 remains free and complete, even if you never go any further.
$ cat plannen.mdpay for your brain, not per AI query
Brain Start €9 /month incl. tax 1 organisation brain · 1 user · 1 AI employee
Brain Solo €29 /month incl. tax 1 organisation brain · 1 user · 3 AI employees
Brain Team €99 /month incl. tax 1 organisation brain · 5 users · 10 AI employees
Brain Business €249 /month incl. tax 3 organisation brains · 20 users · 50 AI employees

These are the current plans and the proposition is undergoing validation: the amounts have not yet been finalised. What counts towards capacity under each plan is stated on the pricing page, together with the reason why there is no meter for prompts, tokens or calls. Anyone who first wants to know how isolation, roles and release gates are arranged can go to security and privacy.

~/jarvis/werking/07-further-reading[ok]
Section 07 · Further reading

Where the evidence is

This page describes how it works. Every promise made here has a document or screen somewhere that explains it in detail. Below you can see where it is, sorted by what you want to know.

We provide the AI employee through Mansotti, the company of which TheSEO is the trading name, with the same core rule as above: output remains a draft until a person approves it. That is a different proposition from Jarvis. Jarvis manages the memory and coordination of the AIs you already have; the AI employee is for anyone who wants to hand over a recurring task completely.

$ jarvis --interactief # seven questions, seven answers
DOC.07 · FAQ

Frequently asked questions

How does an AI organisational brain work, in brief?

In five phases. A task is recorded with its objective and owner. The brain determines which sources are permitted for that role and scope. The work goes to the appropriate AI role, which produces a draft with evidence. A human approves the exact version before anything is released externally. Only then does approved knowledge become part of the memory, together with its source, scope, version, validity, status and approval. Each phase leaves an entry in the log.

What is the difference compared with ChatGPT's or Claude's memory?

An AI tool's memory resides in that tool and that account. If you switch tools, or a colleague joins in, it starts again. An organisational brain sits alongside them and passes the same core knowledge and agreements to every connected AI, together with roles, provenance and approval. You retain your own subscriptions with your own provider; the brain does not replace them, but supplements them.

What exactly is contained in a memory item?

The text itself plus six fields. Source, with the file, system, owner and a traceable reference. Scope, meaning who it applies to. Version, with a content hash, reason for the change and the previous version. Validity, with the effective date, expiry date and review point. Status, one of five states: proposed, under review, active, conflicting or superseded. And approval, with the authorised actor, the time and the exact version that was approved.

What is logged and what specifically is not?

Logged: request ID, time, actor, organisation and route, changes to authentication, roles, connectors and subscription entitlements, the versions of sources, memory items, agents and approvals, the tool action with result status, duration and error category, and support access, export, deletion and incident status. Not logged by default: full prompts and answers, document contents, API keys and tokens, payment card details and special categories of personal data. If content logging is temporarily required for an incident, it is assigned a purpose, an owner, a time limit, access controls and proof of deletion.

Can the brain send something without my knowledge?

No. Email, publication, contract changes and payments are subject to the agreed human approval, and until that approval is given, output remains a draft. An approval points to an immutable version, is checked server-side against the role and scope, and has a consequence that can occur only once, so the same approval cannot accidentally cause two emails to be sent. The time, actor, reason and any revocation are recorded.

Does knowledge from different customers remain separate?

Yes, that is a product principle: customer brains are logically isolated, there is no unrestricted exchange between brains and customer content is not used for training. The TheSEO superbrain can offer generic improvements as a proposal, but a customer brain never adopts them silently across the organisation, and customer content does not flow back automatically. The negative test set intended to demonstrate this in production is still outstanding as a release gate, and we explicitly state that alongside it.

How much does it cost and how do I get started?

The current plans are Brain Start 9 euros, Brain Solo 29 euros, Brain Team 99 euros and Brain Business 249 euros per month including tax. The amount remains the same everywhere and only the tax component within it varies by country. The proposition is still being validated, so these amounts are not yet final. There is no metering of prompts, tokens or calls. You can get started in this order: first the free business brain template, then the interactive demo without an account, and then choose a plan and start by yourself. A conversation is available for business arrangements and bespoke work. The automatic payment route remains disabled until all release gates are green.

DOC.08 · Next step

And now

If you take one thing away from this page, let it be this: the difference between a smart AI and a useful organisational brain lies not in the answer, but in the question you can ask afterwards. Where did this come from, who approved it, and since when has it applied? As long as you cannot answer those questions, AI remains a tool for drafts. Once you can answer them, you can entrust it with work for which someone is responsible.

Section 08 · Next step24/7 accessible · sales@theseo.nl
Schedule a conversation ↗
$ whoami
Written by GianlucaFounder. Has been building visibility for Dutch businesses since 2017, in Google and in AI answers. More about the institute.