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AI agents are being given more memory and more ability to act, but there still needs to be a way to make sure they have the authority to do what they are trying to do and access what they are trying to remember.
That is what Trace Continuity is built to do.
Trace checks an AI agent's authority before it acts and governs the memory that agent keeps. When sensitive information such as personal numbers, addresses or emails is involved, Trace protects that information before it is stored. If the agent later tries to retrieve that memory, Trace checks the authority again to make sure it still has permission to access it.
Every decision creates a record showing what was allowed, denied or changed and why.
Trace is already built and live. You don't have to take my word for it. Go to tracecontinuity.com. We have a public Playground where anyone can test the system and a Break Arena where anyone is welcome to try to break through the governance. No one has yet.
The next step is getting experienced technical help around Trace, having the platform independently tested and putting it into real world pilots to see how it performs outside the environment where it was built.
My goal is to take Trace from where it is today and find out what it can really do inside a working company. I believe I have built something pretty amazing, and Trace has some things that make it different, including the Genesis Chain and the idea that every decision begins with authority. Anyone can go to the website, read the Technical Brief, use the Playground or try the Break Arena and see what I have built for themselves.
Trace has reached a point where I need another technical person working with me. I have taken it as far as I can by myself. We have already had some good conversations and gotten interest from people in areas like law firms, but getting interest and actually putting Trace into a company are two different things.
My goal now is to get the right technical experience beside me, get Trace in front of the right organizations and start running real pilots. All of the testing I have done so far has come back extremely well, but testing it in the environment where I built it only tells me so much.
I will achieve these goals by first getting out of the little storage room I have been working in for the last two and a half years and getting a small office where we can actually work. I would add another computer, maybe two depending on the funding, and whatever other equipment and cloud services we need.
The most important thing will be bringing in at least a part time technical person who can work beside me. I have gotten Trace to this point by myself, but I need somebody with more technical experience than I have to help me move it forward, work through testing and help get it ready for real pilots.
I would also like to bring in somebody with experience on the business and marketing side who knows how to get a platform like this in front of the right companies. I know how to build things. Getting enterprise technology into companies is something I have never done before, and I am not going to pretend otherwise.
From there the goal is pretty simple. Get the right people around Trace, keep testing it, get it in front of companies that could actually use it and start running real pilots. After two and a half years of building it mostly by myself, I think that is what Trace needs now to really start moving forward.
The funding will be used to move Trace forward in the areas where I can no longer afford to do everything myself. My biggest priority is bringing in a technical person to work beside me and take some of that load off. That will also free me up to work on the other things that need to happen to move Trace forward.
I would also get a small office and the computers, cloud services and other equipment we need to work efficiently. I have built Trace out of a small room at home for the last two and a half years. That worked when it was just me, but it is not going to work very well once I start bringing other people into this.
Depending on the amount of funding, I would also like to bring in someone part time who understands the business and marketing side and knows how to get enterprise technology in front of the right people. That is an area where I know I need help.
The rest would go toward testing, infrastructure and getting real pilots started. The purpose of the funding is pretty simple. I have gotten Trace this far mostly by myself. Now I need some experienced people around me and the resources to get it out into the real world and see what it can do.
Right now I am the team. I grew up very poor and quit school in the ninth grade to go to work as a carpenter. By the time I was 20 I was a journeyman, and by 25 I was a general foreman working on major jobs including aircraft carriers, high rises, refineries and paper mills.
One thing I learned during those years was how to coordinate different contractors with different skills and get everybody working toward the same finished job. That experience ended up playing a big part in how I built Trace.
About two and a half years ago I set out to build the most human like AI bot I could. I wanted to build something that could walk beside people dealing with addiction, weight loss and depression. I ran into the memory wall pretty fast. I realized she could not really get to know somebody, be their friend or help them through something like a detox if she had no lasting memory of that person.
So I started working on the memory problem.
I had no technical team, so I started using five or six different AI models much like I had used different contractors throughout my career. I would use them for different jobs, bounce ideas between them, have them challenge each other and sometimes spend hours figuring out which one was right. There was a lot of broken code and a lot of starting over.
Thousands of hours later, that memory project evolved into Trace Continuity.
I do not have a PhD. I do not have a technical degree and I do not have a background in marketing or building technology companies. What I do have is about 35 years of experience building things, running jobs, solving problems and making sure the job gets finished.
My track record with a project like this is Trace itself. I have been the sole person behind it for two and a half years, using those different AI systems as tools to help me build something I could never have built alone. Anyone reading this can spend five minutes at tracecontinuity.com, read the documentation, use the Playground and try the Break Arena for themselves.
I have probably slept less over the last two and a half years than at any other point in my life because when I get my mind on something that needs to be finished, I do not stop until the job is done.
Trace is built. I believe she is ready to start moving into the enterprise world. What I need now are people with the technical and business experience that I do not have to help me take what I built and get it into the right hands.
Failure is not an option for me. I have lived long enough to know that anything can happen and things do not always go the way you planned, but I did not spend the last two and a half years building Trace just to quit when it gets hard.
The biggest risk I see is not being able to get the experienced technical and business help I need to move Trace from where it is today into real companies. I have taken it as far as I can by myself. The next stage requires people who understand enterprise technology, testing, pilots and getting a platform like this into the right organizations.
There is also a chance that once Trace gets into real enterprise environments, we find problems that my own testing has not uncovered. If that happens, I do not consider that failure. That is exactly why I want to get it out there and tested. We find what is wrong, fix it and keep moving.
The project only truly fails if I stop pushing it forward, and I have no intention of doing that. I have spent my whole life building things and solving problems when they come up. Trace will be no different.
My first and last answer to this question will always be the same. Failure is not an option.
$0 in outside funding. Every dollar that has gone into Trace over the last 12 months has come out of my own pocket. I have bootstrapped the project from the beginning and paid for the development, infrastructure, hosting and other expenses myself. So technically I have raised zero dollars, but I have personally funded Trace every time it needed something.